I think the more focused channels that launched in the early 90s have certainly degraded to the point of having almost nothing to do with their original concepts. Sci-Fi/SyFy, History, Discovery, TLC, MTV (granted, launched in the 80s), and so on have all become these bizarre collections of reality shows that are -- if you're lucky -- occasionally sprinkled with bits of the original material folks tuned in for. But that's, I think, due to a lot of their "niche" market being taken over by other channels with bigger budgets, and them not being able to compete.
I mean, take The Walking Dead, for example. You'd expect to see that on Sci-Fi, right? But no, it's on AMC. AMC!! Which, traditionally, is that channel showing a lot of B&W movies you've never heard of. Likewise, HBO is showing Game of Thrones, which, to be fair, I wouldn't expect to see on "free" cable in a million years due to the graphic content, but still. You'd figure Sci-Fi would've covered that one too.
Or take The Tudors or The Borgias on Showtime. Perfect fodder for the History Channel, right? Well, minus the boobies, but you could edit that stuff.
The thing is, channels like Sci-Fi and History were ALWAYS low budget channels. And there's only so many times History can talk about the same old WWII footage or whathaveyou, and they're not likely to get deep into historical analysis because that'd almost guarantee people tune out.
So, what we're seeing now is a lot of the stuff that "niche" channels used to do -- which nobody had much interest in anyway -- being taken over by the bigger budget channels that can do 'em up right. This, incidentally, is why I think that there's a lot of good to be found on TV. Plenty of crap, sure, but a lot of good stuff too.
