Channel drift or network decay is the gradual shift of a television network away from its original programming in order to target a different, more profitable audience. Channel drift can also be a network's attempts to broaden its viewership by incorporating less specialized content. This drift often results in a shift from informative or artistic quality programming—designed for educated viewers—toward sensational, ratings-based, or reality-style programming designed to entertain a mass audience. With channel drift, a channel's schedule often incorporates infotainment, reality television, and substantial advertising.
United States Cable Networks that focus primarily on a specific topic—such as the History Channel—tend to add shows that the channel's management feels are wanted by a larger audience. The degree of channel drift can vary. Some nonconforming programming may retain an association with the channel's original purpose; examples on the History Channel include shows such as Pawn Stars, American Pickers, and Top Shot. A channel such as Animal Planet offers the show Tanked. Some programming may have no association with a network's original focus; examples include Ax Men and Ice Road Truckers, which aired on the History Channel.
Channel drift can also result from acquiring sports rights or reruns of popular television series that would otherwise not fit a channel's format. Outdoor Life Network, for instance, acquired the rights for the National Hockey League in 2005. This acquisition caused the network to transition toward a general sports network known as NBC Sports Network (NBCSN). Conversely, WGN America abandoned its expensive sports packages in 2014 as part of drifting from a Chicago-centered superstation into a nationally oriented general entertainment channel.Channick, Robert. Cubs, WLS-Ch. 7 closing in on deal to air 25 games next season. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 12 December 2014. WGN America eventually began a gradual transition away from entertainment programming (which was structured so as to fulfill contractual commitments for existing syndicated programming); the network adopted a cable news format and rebranded itself as NewsNation in March 2021.
A channel may rebrand itself to more accurately reflect the new content. The Sci-Fi Channel changed its name to Syfy for two reasons: to protect its trademark, and to allow stretching the network's definition of appropriate programming to include content such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit reruns and ECW professional wrestling. Another example of rebranding is the conversion of Warner Bros' Court TV—which was revived as a digital subchannel network in 2019—to TruTV. This rebranding allowed the channel to include more reality-based programming, though initially retaining a focus on law enforcement, including reruns of World's Wildest Police Videos. This rebranding also allowed the channel to slowly phase out its legal system and courtroom programming, which were unappealing for advertisers. This process ended in October 2009, when the remaining courtroom analysis programs transitioned to CNN's legal news section with occasional courtroom coverage from CNN Center on the mainline channel. TruTV then aired competitions, hidden camera prank shows, and the first three rounds of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. TruTV was further reformatted toward a more conventional reality network, strongly emphasizing comedy, on October 27, 2014; then it was reformatted for full-time comedy programming in 2016 with the addition of scripted programming. Other rebranding examples include the following: The Learning Channel, which has officially renamed itself using the orphan initialism TLC since the channel transitioned primarily to reality television series; and the Travel Channel, renamed as the Trvl Channel, which abandoned its destination-themed shows for paranormal programming.
MTV Networks (now part of the conglomerate Paramount Skydance) was an early example of channel drift. Music Television (as MTV was originally called) was originally devoted to music videos when launched in August 1981. But in the 1990s, MTV began adding reality programs and other entertainment aimed at a young adult audience, beginning a gradual progression toward its current focus on reality and scripted programming. Music videos on the main channel were eventually limited to overnight and morning times, and these were eventually pushed to the spin-off networks MTV2 and later to MTV Hits. MTV2 gradually drifted from an all-music video format to include reruns of MTV programs, original series, and acquired off-network sitcoms. In the fall of 2016, MTV Hits was discontinued in favor of NickMusic.
Likewise, Video Hits One began as an outlet for adult contemporary music, before transitioning to a Black-targeted pop-culture channel with the name VH1. Country Music Television drifted toward Southern culture and general rerun programming under the name CMT. Perhaps most dramatically, The Nashville Network drifted toward a general entertainment format as The National Network, now known as TNN; then it drifted to heavily male-oriented programming under the name Spike, only to drift back toward general entertainment in 2015, and then become the Paramount Network in 2018.
While Nickelodeon has largely remained a children's channel historically, its late-night Nick at Nite programming block (which Nielsen TV ratings treat as a different channel than Nickelodeon) has drifted significantly—from classic television (first from the Golden Age of Television, and later also from the 1960s and 1970s), to more recent shows still airing in local syndication, to its current focus on teenage and young adult audiences similar to those of ABC Family (now Freeform). Nick at Nite launched TV Land as a spin-off channel because of the channel's increased focus on more recent programming (as well as the elimination of non-sitcom programming on Nick at Nite); ironically, TV Land eventually shifted to more recent programming and original programming. In recent years, networks such as Cozi TV and MeTV have emerged to fill the gap, programming mainly television shows from the 1950s and 1960s; even these networks have relegated older content to the early hours of their broadcast days, in favor of more recent content. Retro Television Network is the most prominent network still focused on television shows from the 1950s and 1960s.
Nickelodeon's cable channel Nicktoons provides another example of channel drift, though that channel was already an overflow channel for Nickelodeon. In 2014, Nicktoons added sports content to its lineup with little resulting viewer interest, but the new sports block continued, as three of the programs—NFL Rush Zone, WWE Slam City, and Wild Grinders—were produced by sports leagues or to promote Viacom personalities on other networks (e.g., Wild Grinders to promote MTV host Rob Dyrdek). For a time, Nicktoons' schedule began to feature live-action sitcoms on a cyclical basis, depending on the output and success of Nickelodeon's animated series. As of mid-2024, animation-focused spin-off Nicktoons became fully dedicated to reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants.
Channel drift can also result from a network's owner purchasing a competing channel, and then drifting one or both channels' formats to avoid any resulting overlap. TNN was an example of such media cross-ownership, as its Southern cultural programming overlapped extensively with CMT's. ABC Family was another example: The Walt Disney Company's 2001 purchase of the channel from News Corporation dramatically reduced ABC Family's children's programming to avoid redundancy with the Disney Channel. Destination America, a channel prone to frequent format changes historically, began as a network targeting rural middle America. Destination America's parent company, Discovery Communications, purchased the former Scripps cable networks, bringing it under the same corporate umbrella as Great American Country. Thus, Destination America began to add professional wrestling (briefly) and paranormal ghost-hunting programs to its schedule; the paranormal programming has since shifted to the Travel Channel. Both GAC and Destination America were candidates for complete reformatting in 2019 to make way for the Magnolia Network, which replaced the DIY Network when it launched in 2021. GAC was spun off to Great American Media that same year.
Another case of channel drift is HLN, which began as CNN2. This channel's format originally consisted of rolling half-hour newscasts that were updated periodically throughout the day. A year after its launch, the channel changed its name to CNN Headline News to better reflect this rolling news format. By 2005, the channel's programming began to include hour-long specialty and discussion-based news programs similar to those found on the main CNN channel. Examples include Showbiz Tonight, Nancy Grace, and Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell. By 2013, the channel had further reduced its rolling news coverage—relegating it to morning and early afternoon time slots—and shifted toward crime mysteries and docudramas, showing programs such as Forensic Files.
The drift of channels to lineups dominated by reruns—as a cost-cutting measure—has become a major trend in the 2020s; cable television has lost subscribers, with general interest channels being especially prone to the trend. Such channels remain with little to distinguish between them, other than price; they range from free ad-supported streaming television channels to Internet television channels designed to compile mostly free archival programming.
Broadcast
One of the earliest examples of channel drift, predating modern cable television, was programming change at CBS. During the late 1960s, CBS had a reputation for having a disproportionate number of shows that targeted rural and older viewers. Beginning in 1970, incoming network Vice President Fred Silverman orchestrated the "rural purge", which canceled these shows in favor of shows targeting younger, suburban viewers.
A less obvious example of the phenomenon has occurred in American public television since the 1980s. Since the start of the medium in the late 1950s, public television stations—then affiliated with National Educational Television (NET), the precursor to the current PBS—served two specific audiences: on weekdays, they provided instructional programming for children, which was used in schools to supplement traditional curricula; on evenings and weekends, these stations served adults, by scheduling shows offering alternatives to mainstream commercial broadcasting. Such shows included theater, classical music, and literary dramas; they also included serious public affairs initiatives, such as investigative reporting and civil political discussion, formats that had been mostly abandoned by the commercial networks with the end of the Golden Age of Television around 1960. Starting with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the federal government—together with most state governments—invested in the production and distribution of such programming via NET/PBS, as well as the construction of many new stations. The political climate of the time was liberal and thus supportive of governmental funding for television, which developed its institutions accordingly.