Rebranding - or This Ain't Your Papa's Cable

I tuned in last night to watch 'Warehouse 13' on Sci Fi channel, which is now SyFy. (Raise your hand if you want to pronounce that 'Siffy.' Me too.) Apparently the channel wants to branch out beyond science fiction to 'imagine more' or whatever the new tagline is.

And it's also showing wrestling.

So why do niche networks suddenly drop the niche that made them household names and go broad? I assume it's because they see what networks like USA and TNT are doing - creating original TV that doesn't fit into a narrow box and get success. (FX is another one I forgot to mention, and AMC.)

What are we getting instead? Not just 13 channels of generic TV, hundreds and hundreds of them!

Look, I like the idea of niche TV. If I was into golf, I would turn to the Golf Channel because I know, shocker, it's all about golf! I turn to HGTV because I want to watch home and garden-related television shows. And I turn to Sci Fi to watch SCIENCE FICTION and maybe fantasy, which I consider kissing cousins. I consider that a pretty broad genre that can show a lot of really great television and movies (and some not-so-great, like that sand worm movie they're advertising). I don't want to watch wrestling.

Nobody wants to be niche anymore because they want to attract a broad scope of viewers. I used to watch A&E to catch old episodes of Masterpiece Mystery, like Poirot or Midsomer Murders. Nowadays I couldn't even tell you what's on that station because I never watch it. I think it's a bunch of reality television. But apparently its ratings are up.

TLC, the learning channel, has stopped focusing on teaching you anything and is now focused on reality - and so has its pal Discovery. What should I wear? What should I blow up? That's about it, and I LIKE some of those shows. (At least Mythbusters includes some actual SCIENCE.) But I miss the idea that Arts and Entertainment was full of shows that might air on PBS or BBC America, and that TLC and Discovery were aimed at teaching me something.

I'm waiting for Animal Planet to drop shows about animals in exchange for another incarnation of The Real Housewives of New Jersey or wherever they're from these days. I can hear the executives now. "Well, they behave like animals, so it fits."

Somebody hand me the remote. I'm going to go read a book.