The problem with niches…
May 8, 2008 | Filed under Rants, TV
With cable and satellite viewers assaulted with eleventy-billion channels, cable broadcasters have to carve niches for themselves so they can find an audience. This is how we ended up with channels like E! Style, Sleuth, The Food Network, and thirteen different Discovery channels. Within the last five years or so, TBS decided to change its image from that of a low-rent local UHF station that plays reruns of old sitcoms all day, to that of an upscale basic cable network specializing in comedy by playing reruns of old sitcoms all day. They essentially accomplished this by snazzing up their logo and reminding their audience whenever possible that they were “Very funny.” They also gave Bill Engvall his own show, which is just like The Jeff Foxworthy Show except without Haley Joel Osment and not cancelled.
The problem with obnoxiously promoting your network’s niche, however, is that 24 hours of programming a week is a lot of air to fill, made even harder when you’ve got to fill it with something very specific. And wishful thinking isn’t going to magically make more Friends and Sex and the City episodes than there already are. So, TBS does what every other cable network does, and plays well-aged movies cut to pieces and stuffed with commercials day in and day out, because someone, somewhere, watches them. But as a network that promotes itself as a home to all things comedy, there are some strange selections currently on their movie rotation.
Maybe I’m just not looking at these movies properly. After all, what’s not funny about Haley Joel Osment playing a creepy child robot? Or casual sex and abortion? Or, you know, the mentally handicapped? Sometimes it seems like when they promote these movies with their tagline of “very funny,” TBS may actually be in on the joke, letting us know how they really feel about the crap they have to play whenever Dane Cook isn’t talking about something more boring than one of his shows. Then again, sometimes it seems like maybe they’re not.
This article is the current Random Rage leader in Haley Joel Osment references with a total of two (2).
May 8th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
It has come to my attention that E! Style is now just Style. I make no apologies, as I maintain that is knowledge that a heterosexual male shouldn’t immediately have.