Friday, March 21, 2008

Cable Television Channel Changes


Two thoughts on this subject. First is the battle that is going on between Verizon and Comcast. Click here to read the details and what they should be doing.

2nd thought was inspired by a story about the History Channel. Except they are no longer going to be called the History Channel. Just History.

Problem is that they are not just History as the story below points out.

So, what's a name worth these days? Especially a name for a product or service that doesn't quite describe it anymore.

Step back into the previous century and the birth of traditional Radio and Television. We had the Mutual Broadcasting System, National Broadcasting Company, American Broadcasting Company, and the Columbia Broadcast System. Mutual Broadcasting was the radio home of the Lone Ranger and later Larry King.

ABC, CBS and NBC are now known by their acronyms and are easily identified by their 3 letter monikers. The 4th broadcast network that debuted in the 1980's is Fox. Unlike the other three, the word Fox is not an acronym, but got it's name from it's sister company, 20th Century Fox.

When MTV debuted, they were 24 hours of music videos, like a visual top 40 radio station. It was Music TV, but evolved into it's current line up of regular programming with a focus on pop culture aimed at teens and young adults.

The Cable News Network became known as CNN and like MTV spawned differnet, seperate channels such as Headline News.

But what about this move by the History Channel to drop the word Channel? Will it make a difference? Will anyone notice or care? I guess only time (and history) will tell.

Here's the story from my email from Mediapost:

Cable Net Now Just "History"
Associated Press
The History Channel has dropped the beginning and end of its long held moniker and now wants to be known as "History." Says Nancy Dubuc, the network's executive vice president, "Our brand is, in the media landscape, synonymous with the genre of history, so I don't think it's presumptuous of us to call ourselves History."

She adds that many viewers already refer to it that way and that using "Channel" drags down its efforts to establish the brand in other media like the Internet. The net has also changed its "H" logo to make it look bolder and supposedly less ancient as it switches to a more "immersive" style, Dubuc, says, one that shows rather than tells.

Besides, between adventure job shows like "Ice Road Truckers" and the series "MonsterQuest," history ain't what it used to be. "It's not exactly history, is it?" says Sean Wilentz, a professor at Princeton University. "Anybody who thinks that there's only one place to go for history is badly mistaken." - Read the whole story...

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