Tel, I like your boat analogy--the Titanic meme got a workout in the last days of The Forum That Shall Not Be Mentioned By Name, and that's the perfect follow-through. Not luxurious quarters, but a decent berth and that'll suffice for now. A high-five, shout-out, show of love should go to the creators of this site. In the short time allowed, they did indeed perform a little herculean miracle--I tried to promote them around on some of my favorites boards during the final week before the shutdown; I'm hoping more survivors are out there waiting to be seen above the water line as the days and weeks pass.
I recall the initial Me format with real love, Tel. They tried, in fact, to replicate the programming schedule of the CBS 'golden age' comedy years, running MTM, MASH, Rhoda and a number of other shows in a 'block' format that was great fun. The Noir night was fantastic: I'd often sit up way past bedtime to catch all the shows (arriving bleary-eyed at work Monday morning, lol). I was so pleased that it seemed a channel which was really going to live up to its pledge to bring back the best of the past had finally arrived. Then came the--alas, probably inevitable--scaling back, and the introduction of 'stunt' programming to appeal to a younger crowd--Brady Bunch marathons, endless replays of Gilligan's Island, the emphasis being placed on what the hipsters and millenials found amusing. The audience who wanted the cream couldn't compete with the need to draw the younger crowd; as you say, it wasn't the vast lowbrow conspiracy, it was simply the usual numbers game that did in Me's initial format. And no, sadly they're not running an art gallery, and the days of the cable 'boutique' channels who could afford to do just that got plowed under in a similar way in an avalanche of cheap-to-produce reality shows that drew in the inevitably larger crowd of mouth-breathers like a magnet, shoving out everything else in the wake of the dollar bonanza these shows proved to be for their parent networks. Business...it's life alright, but it still tarnishes everything it touches.
And yes--the bad news becomes worse with the fact that you'll always draw the kiddies with the latest, shiniest set of bells and whistles, because that's the nature of children--short attention spans and a craving for novelty. The horrible part of this reality is that it's now surrounded by a cultural reality that takes low boredom threshold in its stride, and no longer tries to provide the young with the critical and cultural tools to supersede those cravings and find worth in the older, slower models. Much as I think entities such as The Children's Television Workshop, in their heyday, did to improve the vast wasteland of kid's programming back in the day, I can agree with the conservative argument that shows such as Sesame Street and The Electric Company created their own set of problems in helping to spawn a generation of minds that required jumped-up, hyperactive presentation as a must and left little room or inclination for slower and more thoughtful presentations. Eventually we'll reach a point where even the traditional 60-second commercial will become too lengthy for the average viewer to tolerate, and where we'll be when that happens God alone knows.
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