Network decay

Network decay is a phase when many TV channels stray away from their original purpose from their television programs.

List of decayed channels

Paramount Global

• MTV is the worst case of Network Decay in the entirety of TV history. It was almost exclusively devoted to music videos in its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s, but with the popularity of their original series like The Real World they gradually showed fewer and fewer music videos outside the late night/early morning hours and the TRL block until they were nonexistent; then they canceled TRL in 2008 and dropped their "Music Television" branding in 2010. MTV even made fun of it themselves with the tagline "MTV: We Don't Play Music". They started focusing on music again in the late 2010s, though. The channel is now obsessed with the viral video TV show Ridiculousness and airs it to the max; so much that they can give Cartoon Network from 2014-2017 with Teen Titans Go! (and even Nickelodeon with Spongebob SquarePants and The Loud House) a run for their money.
  • The network shifted in the 2000s to only playing R&B and hip-hop videos.
  • They also air the same movies (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Grown-Ups and its sequel, Rush Hour 2 and 3, Wedding Crashers, White Chicks, Mean Girls, My Cousin Vinny, The Wedding Singer, and Big Daddy) over and over again.
  • MTV used to occasionally air shows from other Viacom-owned networks like SpongeBob SquarePants and The Ren and Stimpy Show.
  • MTV2 started as M2 and originally aired nothing but music videos 24/7 when the main MTV began gradually removing music from the network. Like the main MTV network, they shifted to only airing hip-hop music videos (and sometimes rock videos) and reruns of canceled MTV shows in 2005, as well as original programming not suited for the main network mostly female-skewing demographic. Viacom's 2017 restructuring resulted in the network giving up on all their music video blocks and airing nothing but reruns of '90s sitcoms, MTV shows, and eventually canceled Comedy Central shows that were removed from their network like Tosh.0 and Reno 911!.
  • MTV Classic started its life as VH1 Smooth, a music video channel that played smooth jazz, new age, and adult contemporary music. In 1999, the channel changed its name to VH1 Classic Rock, then VH1 Classic. At first VH1 Classic Rock would only play music videos, and later some music-related programming. In July 2016, VH1 Classic changed its name to MTV Classic. The channel still mostly aired music videos, but sometimes reruns of classic MTV shows. Most of the reruns were later removed, so now MTV Classic almost exclusively airs music videos from the 1980s to 2000s.
  • However, some countries, like the UK, have subchannels that show music videos 24/7.
• Logo was originally devoted to LGBT programming, like their famous RuPaul's Drag Race. After Viacom moved that to VH1, it devolved into showing old sitcoms with only a very few episodes having any LGBT themes. However, they still show RuPaul's Drag Race UK.
• Noggin was co-founded by Nickelodeon and Sesame Workshop in 1999, with the channel being devoted to 24/7 educational programming. Most of the brand-new original shows were aimed at pre-teens, like Sponk! and the award-winning A Walk in Your Shoes, and also aired episodes of Sesame Street (there was also a program called Sesame Street Unpaved that aired 67 episodes from between 1969 and 1979, and edited them to remove three to five minutes to accomodate commercials, as the original PBS versions had a runtime of 58 minutes). In 2002, the channel launched a nighttime block for teenagers named "The N", and the preschool block grew to take up the daytime lineup. Unfortunately, Sesame Workshop eventually sold half of Noggin/The N. As a result, old reruns from the Nick Jr. block overtook the entire channel and were aired much more often than the Noggin originals and Sesame Workshop shows. In 2009, the Noggin brand was temporarily shuttered, as it was replaced by a 24-hour channel based on the Nick Jr. block.
  • In 2015, Noggin was relaunched as a paid streaming app that kept the famous "thinking head" logo and brought back the channel's hosts, Moose and Zee. Classic Noggin originals like Oobi, Jack's Big Music Show, Pinky Dinky Doo and The Upside Down Show were all added to the app. Unfortunately, the same problem eventually happened: In 2017, newer shows like Team Umizoomi, Bubble Guppies, PAW Patrol and Blaze and the Monster Machines were added to the app, and in 2019 the app was rebranded with a generic simple logo resembling the current Nickelodeon logo, with "more recognizable" characters from Nick Jr. shows replacing Moose and Zee as the hosts. In 2020, all of the Noggin originals were removed from the app. Now you can only watch the same new Nick Jr. shows that Nickelodeon plays daily, thus making the app a clone of the Nick Jr. app, but with more shows, games, and features. And to add salt to the wound, in 2024, they've laid off the entire Noggin employees and announced that they would shut down the app on July 2, 2024, thus killing the app and the Noggin brand once again.
• The Nick Jr. channel, since its debut in 2009, has been used as a dumping ground for shows with low ratings. It is now obsessed with toyetic preschool shows (mostly from Canada and CGI-animated) to the point where the only shows that stand out on the entire network are re-runs of older shows.
  • Noggin original series such as Oobi and Jack's Big Music Show had their reruns buried in early morning timeslots. After the 2012 rebrand of Nick Jr., these shows only sporadically aired before they were removed completely.
  • The network indefinitely pulled Little Bill from the air due to controversies with creator Bill Cosby in 2014 and would pull more and more reruns of older shows (Jack's Big Music Show, Oobi, Blue's Clues, Ni-Hao, Kai Lan, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Wonder Pets!, The Backyardigans, Go, Diego, Go!, Dora the Explorer, Max & Ruby, Yo Gabba Gabba!, etc.) as time went on in favor of newer fare.
  • Just like Nicktoons, when shows finish their production and get cancelled, they eventually get removed out of the channel. Today, save for Team Umizoomi, the Nick Jr. channel is filled with Peppa Pig timeslots and barely any other shows.
  • In 2012, they had an awful block called NickMom, which targeted millennial moms. The block was unoriginal, only lasted four hours and then degraded into a Nick@Nite knockoff in around 2013 when many of their original shows started to decline. It was then shut down in September 2015, just barely three years after it launched.
  • Following the shutdown of NickMom, several shows with TV-Y7 ratings started to be put on that channel, the first one being Mia And Me (which was exclusively on that channel), which was actually promoted on that channel. And it then led to future burnoffs like Winx Club, Kuu Kuu Harajuku, and Regal Academy to try to appeal towards a female audience despite being aimed towards an older audience. And that other TV-Y7 shows like Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness aired there, which basically makes the Nick Jr. channel like a 2nd Nicktoons channel in some timeslots.
• Nicktoons, which was originally dedicated to airing nothing but cartoons, dropped most of its original Nicktoon programming in 2008 and put some of them (even SpongeBob) in the graveyard slots. They also started airing sports content with NickSports in 2014 instead of reviving Nick GAS. Despite the channel's name, it occasionally airs Nickelodeon live-action shows and sitcoms and has also been airing SpongeBob SquarePants throughout the night since 2018, thus making this channel a clone and a mixture of Nickelodeon and TeenNick.
• TeenNick decayed almost as soon as it launched, thanks to the network being over-reliant on reruns of older Nick sitcoms, mostly from Dan Schneider.
  • The network's late night block NickRewind used to shift around several older Nick programs, both live-action and animated. However, it became narrowly focused on the Nicktoons (Rocko's Modern Life, CatDog, Rugrats, Doug, and AAAHH!!! Real Monsters) and continued to rotate the same five ones. Even The Ren & Stimpy Show was constantly removed and put back on the air after the controversies with creator John Kricfalusi and shows like Kenan & Kel received less and less airtime over the years. The block was reduced to run from 4:00 to 6:00 AM in June 2019, with the rest of the time being dedicated to teen-oriented programs from MTV and AwesomenessTV.
    • Nickelodeon Teen (France version of TeenNick) discontinued the "Teen Classics" block (similar to NickRewind, without the cartoons) since Feburary 2021.
    • In December 2021, the block was reduced to iCarly and Rugrats with other shows like Doug and Hey Arnold! being wiped off completely. Rugrats was removed in January the following year, leaving iCarly as the only show on there, besides a 4-day Hey Arnold! marathon. This decay led to discontinuation of the block on January 31, 2022.
• TV Land was launched following the success of Nick@Nite, airing reruns of classic TV shows. While they still show The Andy Griffith Show, Bonanza and Gunsmoke, more modern sitcoms (i.e. Two and a Half Men and The Goldbergs) have begun airing on the channel.
• VH1 was launched in 1985 with adult contemporary music videos, later adding shows themed around music from the 1960s and 1970s, plus some stand-up comedy. By the end of the 1990s, it had started airing music-related films and documentary and trivia shows. In the 2000s, however, VH1 turned into a pop-culture channel, with reality shows starring D-list or washed-up celebrities, with music videos playing for a few hours in the morning. In November 2015, VH1 removed its video blocks in favor of sitcom reruns, including acquired shows that already aired on MTV, MTV2, and BET.
• Starting in the mid-2000s, SpongeBob SquarePants began to take up almost all of Nickelodeon's schedule. The network also became notorious in the 2010s for hardly airing reruns of newer shows that weren't as high in ratings as SpongeBob (the only show that was able to match it was The Loud House, which also became a massive cash-cow) and cancelling them after only one or two seasons, to the point there is allegedly an unwritten policy stating that new animated shows must IMMEDIATELY match or exceed SpongeBob in ratings to be considered a success, demonstrating Nickelodeon's impatience in allowing a show to find its feet. More infamously, they will move such shows to their low-rated spin-off channels, especially Nicktoons, to artificially manipulate ratings to justify cancelling them. In 2009, they replaced their iconic "orange splat" logo that could take any shape imaginable with a "professional"-looking one more suitable for business cards and started churning out panned cartoons and live-action sitcoms like Fanboy & Chum Chum, Seasons 6 and 7 of SpongeBob SquarePants, Planet Sheen, Sam & Cat, FRED: The Show, Pig Goat Banana Cricket, Sanjay and Craig, ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks, and Breadwinners. Some shows that they put out were better-received but barely got off the ground (like the All-That and Double Dare revivals, which only lasted for one and two seasons respectively).
• Nowadays, the only original shows Comedy Central cares about and airs regularly are South Park, Crank Yankers, and The Daily Show.

Walt Disney Television (Disney Branded Networks, ABC Family Worldwide, A&E Networks, FX Networks)

• Disney Channel was originally all about Walt-era content during Walt Disney's lifetime, aimed at all ages. In the mid-2000s, with hit sitcoms like Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, they shifted to the teenage demographic (thus earning it the nickname "Teen Disney") and dumped most of their animated series, while airing others only late at night. As of early 2021, Big City Greens was the only original animated series to get the most reruns on the channel. Mickey Mouse and the gang were relegated to their shows on Disney Junior and Disney XD.
• Disney XD became a dumping ground for shows like Phineas and Ferb, Gravity Falls, and Wander Over Yonder. After it finished airing DuckTales (2017) in early 2021, the channel ran out of ideas for new shows and became a rerun farm (aside from Amphibia and The Owl House) until G.O.A.T. premiered in November. Before 2009, Disney XD was known as Toon Disney.
• A&E was originally devoted to high-brow art films, British dramas and soap operas, fine arts programming, and documentaries. It later shifted to airing reruns of shows like Law & Order, CSI: Miami, and Criminal Minds and then to reality shows like Storage Wars, Duck Dynasty and endless marathons of true crime shows like The First 48.
• History was, as its name says, originally devoted to shows about history, then mainly focused on World War II documentaries in the early 2000s (thus earning it the nickname "The Hitler Channel"). Since the late 2000s, however, they've had content that has little to nothing to do with history like Pawn Stars and several pseudo-documentaries that cover nothing but pseudoarchaeology and conspiracy theories.
  • The US and UK also have their spinoff channel named Military History, but even that has some decay with a regular "Demilitarized Zone" block devoted to the things the main channel would usually air. The UK version was later replaced with H2, while the US version is now only available on some low-key cable operators.
• Freeform had a strange history with its "Family" branding on its older incarnations. Originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service in 1977 by televangelist Pat Robertson, it originally focused on Christian programming with an appeal towards the Bible Belt. In a bid to get itself recognized outside the South, the network rebranded itself as the CBN Family Channel and eventually got spun off into an independent company known as International Family Entertainment after it became too profitable to remain with the tax-exempt ministry, with the name "CBN" dropped and the network becoming just the Family Channel, and dropped much of its Christian programming, though Robertson's The 700 Club remains to this day. Things did not begin to decay until ABC proposed buying the network (then known as Fox Family) and rebranding it as XYZ, to show various repurposed ABC shows. The XYZ rebranding did not happen (it was rumored that Robertson forced ABC to keep the word "Family" in the network name, though the Freeform rebrand debunked this) and it was stuck with the ABC Family name. This led to the name being inappropriate for the content it broadcasted, which included shows like Greek and Slacker Cats. In 2016, it finally ditched the "Family" name and became Freeform, with a target audience of millennials. However, The 700 Club still airs, not because Freeform wants it to, but because of Pat Robertson. As such, Freeform tries to distance itself from The 700 Club as much as it can. During Freeform’s “25 Days of Christmas” block in December, the Christmas programming that airs during the block drastically dropped in variety, with the rights to staples such as Elf and The Polar Express, as well as 99% of the Rankin-Bass specials, getting grabbed by AMC in 2018 (though the next year, they got the cable rights for the original Rudolph and Frosty specials, with the former airing in an uncut format for the first time since at least the 1970s). Within the past decade, they only pick 5-10 Christmas movies and specials (mainly the Santa Clause trilogy, the first two Home Alones, and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, the last Rankin-Bass special ABC owns the broadcast rights to, Rudolph and Frosty being licensed from CBS) and cycle them throughout the month instead of having a wide variety of Christmas specials and movies like they did before the 2010s. They also have one night per year dedicated to airing Toy Story and its sequels during the “25 Days of Christmas” block, which is out of place and makes no sense because the Toy Story movies are not Christmas movies.

Warner Bros. Discovery

• Cartoon Network with its CN Real block, which aired live-action shows. This went against the channel's purpose (hence the name) in a desperate attempt to compete with Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, and they drew heavy criticism from fans of the network. Thankfully, CN canceled all their live-action efforts in 2014 and now the channel is back to animated content. The channel also over aired Johnny Test (until 2014), Teen Titans Go! and The Amazing World of Gumball. By 2018, Johnny Test was long gone from the US schedule (and when it was revived, it was a Netflix exclusive), and TTG and TAWOG were given fewer slots in an attempt to bring back variety to the network. However, those two shows (three including Craig of the Creek since late 2021) still made up two-thirds of CN's daytime schedule.
  • The Toonami block was restricted to Saturday evenings in 2004 and became made up of mostly reruns of Naruto (which was also going through its infamous two seasons of filler) and Dragon Ball Z. The block was rebranded entirely in 2007 and was cancelled a year later. It was thankfully revived in 2012, but its timeslot has been moved around over the years, currently running from midnight to 4 AM.
  • Adult Swim only tends to air Robot Chicken and Rick & Morty nowadays, with almost no other original AS series (although Space Ghost Coast to Coast still has sporadic reruns to this day). They have also become over-reliant on reruns of shows from other networks (mainly FOX). In 2021, Adult Swim lost the rights to Family Guy because of FOX's current parent Disney wanting to make their shows exclusive to Disney+ and Disney-owned networks like FXX and Freeform, though several months later, they regained the rights to Futurama (which Adult Swim reran in the mid-2000s; these reruns were credited with helping to revive the show on Comedy Central).
  • CN began to announce drastic, unwanted changes after Tom Ascheim's tenure began, including the introduction of Cartoonito for the US, a new preschool block that will include the already controversial and doomed-from-the-start Thomas the Tank Engine reboot All Engines Go!, as well as the ever-infamous Caillou (which WarnerMedia nabbed the rights to immediately after PBS dropped it like a bad habit). Even more ire was drawn from fans when the cancellation of Infinity Train in its fourth season was ordered, despite the show intending to last for eight seasons. Then Comic Book Resources published a damning article revealing that the network is following Nickelodeon's lead in only picking up low-effort comedy shows, forcing Cartoon Network to do damage control to assuage fears that it was narrowing its age appeal to little kids.
  • There have also been cases of false advertising, especially when it comes to episode bombs (new episodes airing all week long). The advertisements for them claim that the new episodes will be airing "5 days a week" or "Monday-Friday". While in reality, the episodes air Monday-Thursday with Friday just being reruns of the episodes that aired that week. This kind of advertising sounds very desperate and is a lackluster way to attract viewers to watch episode bombs.
  • They seem to be starting up live-action shows again with the announcements of Family Mash-Up and Tweety Mysteries in 2022. They also started airing live-action movies again, airing the first six Star Wars movies and Rogue One as part of a theme week in September 2021 (due to Turner owning the broadcast rights for the films), as well as other Warner Bros. films such as Shazam! as part of the Sunday night ACME Night block. The reasoning behind adding live action shows is just stupid, they claim it’s because “girls grow out of cartoons faster than boys.” That statement IS NOT TRUE as there are plenty of girls who love cartoons, the real problem is a lot of people don’t know how to make a good cartoon that appeals to girls. There are also girls who watch cartoons that aimed towards boys such as the Transformers cartoons, the Marvel and DC cartoons, etc. Even the infamous YouTuber, Roundtable and Reddit agrees!
• Boomerang originally aired classic cartoons (primarily Hanna-Barbera cartoons and classic Cartoon Network shows) from the '30s to the '80s, with Pokémon being the most modern series they aired. The channel would also start airing reruns of older Cartoon Network shows. In 2015, the channel underwent a major rebrand to catastrophic results that ended up hurting the channel's viewer rate more than ever. They started showing reboots of Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, and Tom and Jerry. In addition, until 2018 and then again in 2020, they also aired newer TV shows originally from Cartoon Network, including Teen Titans Go!, Clarence, My Knight and Me, Bunnicula, Johnny Test, Adventure Time, the 2016 reboots of The Powerpuff Girls and Ben 10, Uncle Grandpa and others. The Smurfs and The Flintstones carried over from the network's heyday, though in the case of the former, it often aired early in the morning when most potential viewers would be asleep. Furthermore, the old Cartoon Cartoons were restricted to graveyard slots, effectively killing their exposure on the network. Not helping is the fact that Boomerang is primarily carried by satellite providers, with cable customers being left out in the cold.
  • Even though they still air classic Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes cartoons, they are now heavily limited to only a rotation of around 25 shorts. While Tom and Jerry still had balance with all eras and the inclusion of The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show episodes, Looney Tunes is usually limited to post-1948 shorts, most of which come from the 1959-1964 red rings era. However, compared to Cartoon Network (which aired a large variety of shorts including pre-1948 and post-1964 Looney Tunes shorts back then), that rarely changes.
  • The Latin America feed also suffered from this. Around 2005, the classic cartoons started to airless in the channel, when shows like Beakman's World and Jackie Chan Adventures were shown on the day. In 2008, the channel started to be teen-oriented, starting to air telenovelas, movies, and sitcoms, to the point that it became the only feed that didn't show any animated content in 2011. However, in 2014, the channel gradually started to air animated shows again, like Totally Spies, Stoked, Sitio do Pica-Pau Amarelo, As Aventuras de Gui & Estopa and The Powerpuff Girls.
    • Because of this, Turner decide to create another channel focused on classic cartoons named Tooncast.
• The British Toonami channel functioned similarly to its US block counterpart, by focusing on a young male audience by airing action-packed cartoons and Anime series. However, Toonami UK went a similar route to what Cartoon Network in the US did in 2006 by acquiring live action "Tween" programs (even though the channel is called Toonami) like Life with Derek, Blue Water High, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Stencil and Backyard Science in order to appeal to the "Tweenage" market. The rebranding was highly criticised by viewers who wanted to see the channel air more animated programming (The channel did still acquire new shows, like One Piece, but this was rare). The whole rebranding would end up proving to be a massive failure for Turner, which led to them merging the channel with Cartoon Network Too in May 2007, allowing the latter's pre-school block Cartoonito to expand to a full channel.
• The U.K. Cartoonito has been airing almost nothing but the CGI Fireman Sam series almost every day since 2015, while the Italian Cartoonito has been acquiring some shows from the Nick Jr. channel and its sister channels, Boing and Boomerang, the shows from the latter channels having no educational content at all.

BBC

• BBC Four, whose original purpose was documentaries and arts programs, shifted in the 2010s to a mix-genre channel (similar to France 5). The channel's original purpose is not gone, however.
• CBeebies, although having good variety, heavily airs and adores anything starring children’s television personality Justin Fletcher, especially Something Special. He is so adored that some of the channel's other shows like Postman Pat and even Teletubbies don't get enough air time thanks to the BBC milking Justin's shows and constantly keep running them into the ground a lot of times.

Discovery, Inc.

• Discovery Channel originally aired shows about history, science and technology, but eventually shifted to reality shows and pseudoscientific content.
• TLC, whose original purpose was nature and science documentaries (TLC originally standing for "The Learning Channel), shifted in the late 90s and early 2000s to reality shows that have been widely mocked, most infamously with Toddlers and Tiaras and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
• Discovery Family has slipped off multiple times throughout its start as Discovery Kids. When it began in 1996, the channel was originally aimed at children, offering educational TV programs around nature and science (like TLC). However, by 2003 with the launch of a Saturday morning block on NBC, it began to air animated shows that had little educational content at all, such as Kenny the Shark. In 2008, Hasbro bought the channel and renamed it to The Hub in 2010, with a changed goal to Hasbro-original programming such as G.I. Joe, Transformers and most notably My Little Pony. Due to the popularity of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic swallowing up the channel, viewership on other shows began to decrease and in 2014, the channel was rebranded as Discovery Family. Nowadays, it has strayed completely off its educational goal, being limited to animated content aimed at younger audiences such as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Pony Life, Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy, Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, Hanazuki and True and the Rainbow Kingdom, with the classic G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons from the 1980s airing in the overnight hours. At night, all the channel airs are reality shows, TV documentaries and cooking shows such as Cake Boss, Winner Cake All, The Lottery Changed My Life and other original content from TLC.
  • In February 2021, it was announced that the new My Little Pony film and subsequent animated series would be Netflix originals, singlehandedly severing the link between Discovery Family and My Little Pony going forward. Rumors of Hasbro and Discovery's contract ending in 2021 began circulating; by 2021, My Little Pony: Pony Life, the final Hasbro animated series to premiere on the channel, was quietly cancelled. As a result, the network no longer has any original series.
  • Certain seasons of Friendship is Magic were pulled from the rerun cycle in 2021, possibly due to allegations of syndication rights expiring and Discovery slowly burning off Hasbro content.
  • Ever since 2016, Discovery Kids in Latin America has aired many shows that don't have much educational value in them (with some exceptions), and they air a lot of Peppa Pig and Mini Beat Power Rockers causing the channel to have very little variety.
• Planet Green was a channel originally launched for environmental programming in 2008. It slipped away from that in 2009, airing shows about oil drilling, ghosts and conspiracy theories while all the environmental programming was shoved into after-midnight slots. At one point, their logo was red. However, this was for occasions and was rarely seen. On Memorial Day 2012, it was rebranded as Destination America, a channel devoted to the United States. The programming on the first few days had little to do with America, meaning it decayed as soon as it launched.
• Travel Channel, originally a channel about travel, shifted to a channel featuring mostly paranormal reality TV shows when Discovery re-acquired it in 2018.

Other

• 4Music was formerly a British music channel, but it started to focus on entertainment during the 2010s and the channel was moved from the Music section to the Entertainment section; it still airs music in the mornings, though.
• Every subsidiary of the Japanese Animax network. The original Japanese channel and all its international subsidiaries all began as 24-hour anime channels, but except for the original, every channel programming block bearing the brand has experienced some form of decay, from adding K-dramas in the Asian feed, to blatantly reducing anime programming in favor of teenage and young adult-oriented non-animated shows in the European, South African and Latin-American feed, to the point that most international feeds either changed names before eventually being killed under their new identities (the sad fate of the Latin-American, South African, Indian and most European feeds) or reinventing themselves as video-on-demand platforms (what the German feed decided to do).
  • At one point, Animax aired Elmo's World (a segment from the live-action children's show Sesame Street) before it was quickly pulled.
• Universal Kids began its life as PBS Kids Sprout, a cable channel that aired preschool series from PBS Kids, as well as others (including James the Cat, a British children's show from the 1980s that had faded into obscurity, and was now being introduced to American audiences in the most-understated way; PBS Kids Sprout also introduced Fireman Sam to American audiences). When NBCUniversal bought the entire network in 2013, they removed the "PBS Kids" name from the channel. In 2017, it was renamed Universal Kids, airing reruns of kids' series from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, acquired programming from other channels like Family Channel/CHRGD and CBeebies, and family-friendly reality shows. By that point, Caillou and the 2003 Berenstain Bears were the only PBS show still airing on the channel; both were gone by 2019, with Caillou being removed from the main PBS Kids block in 2021, only for the rights to be snatched up by WarnerMedia for Cartoonito a few months later. In June 2019, NBCUniversal announced that they would no longer produce new series for the network, so now the channel pretty much only airs acquired programming and nothing else, seemingly on a slow march to death.
• Gloob originally had a varied programming when it was launched in 2012, with shows like Fish and Chips, The DaVincibles, Invisible Network of Kids (I.N.K), Ariol, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, The Smurfs, Popeye the Sailor, the 2001 version of Sítio do Pica-Pau Amarelo (along with Futura), Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, Me and My Monsters, Grandpa in My Pocket, LoliRock, Angry Birds Toons, Osmar the First Slice of the Loaf and others. But once Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir become a huge success to the channel and Detetives do Prédio Azul returned, some shows that were shown on the channel left the channel, and now due of the obsession with the channel have with Ladybug and DPA nowadays, Gloob airs several hours dedicated to both shows, which left the channel with little variety.

• ProSieben Maxx was originally a free-to-air channel when broadcasts some movies, series, and anime but now, the channel is obsessed with reality shows like Auction Kings, Ghost Hunters, and Storage Wars every day.
  • Fortunately, anime including My Hero Academia, Fairy Tail, and Demon Slayer is still airing on a programming block called "Anime Night" due to the German version of Animax shutting down and becoming a video-on-demand service in 2016.
• G4 was a television channel mostly dedicated to gaming and tech, with shows focusing on the two, most notably X-Play. However, in the late 2000s, the network began to suffer from a massive decline due to its transition to a more general entertainment format by airing shows that have nothing to do with gaming or nerd culture whatsoever with the worst offenders being Cops and Cheaters, both of which had marathons of reruns after two of the channel's most popular shows X-Play and Attack of the Show were canceled, leading G4 in its entirety to getting cut off from television on December 31, 2014. Fortunately, the channel's revival was announced at Comic-Con on July 24, 2020, and was relaunched on November 16, 2021, thus returning to the roots of its early days before its shutdown.
  • On January 11, 2022, the channel started yet another network decay when Indiana Black (also known as "Frosk") had a massive rant about "sexism in gaming", meaning that she complained about fans finding her "not as bangable as the previous hosts" of G4 during its original run, and even insulted her own viewers during that rant. This turned a great many fans against the channel as a whole and even caused them to unsubscribe from their YouTube channel as well as dislike bomb more recent G4 videos.
• The Weather Channel experienced a devastating decay due to lack of viewership. The original purpose was to give a local forecast and to broadcast the weather. Around the late 1990s, they added weather documentaries. However, the decay really fired up after 2008, when the channel was bought by NBC, Bein, and Blackstone Group. They then changed the programming to where at night, canned programming, like nature and planet documentaries cover the block. Sometimes, due to the canned programming, they miss weather events, like the 2021 December 10th Mayfield Tornado eventǃ The Weather Channel is still bleeding money after this purchase and the 2018 purchase from Entertainment Studios, with an estimated 300 million dollar buyout, compared to the 2005 cost of 3 billion dollars.

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