Inside the Cable TV Hospice: Can NBCUniversal’s Divorce From MSNBC, Syfy, E! and More Prolong the Life of Once-Popular Channels? – Variety
Source: Variety
In the early 1980s, when cable TV was young and music videos were on the cutting edge, Doug Herzog used to fly coach for his job as a junior MTV programming executive.
When he traveled, Herzog would make a point of wearing something with the familiar logo, and he would pack a generous amount of MTV-branded swag — T-shirts, hats, tote bags. At the check-in counter, if the ticket agent was under 50, Herzog would almost always get a question or comment about MTV. When he did, he was quick to offer the agent a free T-shirt or hat.
“Next thing you know, you’re flying first class,” Herzog recalls. “That was absolute currency. People loved those MTV satin jackets and would kill for one back in the day.”
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Today, you can still buy MTV T-shirts at Target. But nobody’s getting a seat upgrade on the strength of a free branded network hat. MTV’s fortunes have declined so far that most Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers have never seen more than a few minutes of the channel, other than old clips harvested on TikTok and YouTube. Fewer still have actually watched MTV via an old-fashioned cable TV subscription.
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And MTV is not alone. The traditional cable television business that gave rise to CNN, USA Network, ESPN, Nickelodeon, TNT, Discovery Channel and A&E Network is in steady decline. Some would call it a “state of decay,” made worse by a woeful lack of investment. Although cable’s been waning for years, industry veterans are still stunned to see long-established brands evaporating against the competitive challenge posed by streaming platforms. In recent years, the money and resources that NBCU once funneled into channels like USA and Syfy has been diverted to build up NBCUniversal’s Peacock platform, for example.
And nothing is more symbolic of cable’s hard times than the news announced in late November by NBCUniversal’s parent company, Comcast, that it was selling off most of its linear cable channels. (Comcast, the largest provider of cable and broadband service in the country, makes most of its money from providing the northeastern U.S. with high-speed internet access and cable TV subscriptions.) NBCUniversal will hold on to the NBC network and the ever-buzzy Bravo, but will essentially divorce itself from the not-inconsiderable problems faced by seven outlets that were once the backbone of NBCUniversal’s TV division: USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Syfy, E!, Oxygen Media and Golf Channel. (Also included are digital assets like Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes.)
If that’s not “inflection point” enough for the biz, there are also big shifts afoot elsewhere. This year, Warner Bros. Discovery’s ad-supported entertainment networks have a new leader in Channing Dungey, who is plotting a different course for channels like TNT, TBS and Discovery while keeping her primary focus on running Warner Bros. TV Group. And Paramount Global is about to be acquired by Skydance, which brings with it a new leadership team that likely has its own ideas about what to do with a once-vibrant collection of cable brands like MTV and Comedy Central.
How quickly things changed after Netflix revolutionized the way we watch TV. Since the rise of that platform, the media giants that own the largest cable channels have turned their focus to building up streaming services. Peacock, Max, Disney+, Hulu and Paramount+ are now the flagship outlets for the conglomerates, serving as a cable replacement for a new breed of TV viewers. Amid this generational transition, long-established outlets that still generate solid profits have been left to wither on the vine.
Many industry veterans are dismayed at how quickly Big Media gave up on the channel brands that helped introduce the concept of cable TV service to Americans in the 1980s and offered up an enviable dual revenue stream. Others caution against engaging in nostalgia, and they note that consumers have been voting with their wallets for 15 years. In the U.S., cable and satellite service subscriptions peaked at roughly 100 million households in 2010. That amounted to a penetration rate of 90% of all TV homes in the country. Today that number stands at 85 million, which accounts for about 65% of available households.
“These brands are just basically gone. And it’s a real shame. There is just an abject lack of strategy at most of these enterprises that just confounds you,” says Evan Shapiro, a veteran of New York’s once-thriving cable programming scene, who is now a media analyst and NYU adjunct professor. “In many cases, they’re just not decisions — it’s just ‘We’re going to make cuts to improve the bottom line, but we’re not going to ma
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