Cable's Last Days Pt.1
Sam Sykes ~ 04/28/2025
Cable television is like an 86-year-old man quietly fading away in hospice care. He’s technically still alive, but increasingly ineffectual while the clock ticks on. He has no friends left and maybe some kids that try to help, but they are approaching senior citizenship quickly. It’s the end of the line for the man, he’s had a good run full of wild moments and fun memories, but that’s it. He’s got time, but not good time, just time.
Travel
Anthony Bourdain is never coming back. Not just for the obvious reason… you know, rope and stuff, but because we will never see a show like his again. Not only because he’s dead, but because the television world he existed in does not exist anymore. Of course when he started A Cook’s Tour in 2000ish, it was a different time in entertainment. It made sense that he could jump from the Food Channel to the Travel Channel to finally, a big ass budget with CNN. It wasn’t really the kind of show CNN would usually produce but Bourdain was a loyal soldier to the cause and a juggernaut of travel TV. He did just fine there.
While he was starring in Part Unknown throughout the 2010s a huge shift was beginning to take shape. Online public streaming platforms like YouTube were growing out of the low-fi amateur productions it had become known for and began dipping its toes into higher budget longform content. This really began to show the rift forming between TV and creator content. A show like Bourdain’s was really just being grandfathered into the new era of entertainment. If he had tried to start A Cook’s Tour in 2022 instead of 2002, it would have NEVER been even considered for TV.
Nowadays we have travel vloggers by the boat load and they star in, produce, and direct all of their content for a fraction of a bloated CNN budget and with very limited (sometimes no) crew. They don’t get 4 million dollars an episode to play with, they have a gopro, some mics, and go to even more fucked up places. We saw Bourdain eating lunch with Obama in Vietnam and acting like that country does suck balls, but now we have guys crossing sketchy borders, getting scammed, navigating the disgusting streets of India, and so much more. Why would we ever need a predictable, low energy cable travel show when we could literally have a dude with boots on the ground without restrictions on content or runtime?
History
When I was kid I remember watching the History Channel recount the stories of WW2 fighter pilots or model various military strategies and conflicts throughout history. Now it’s basically just retards talking about their “encounters” with aliens and guys treasure hunting, but never really finding anything. It’s become a hub of milquetoast conspiracy theories and a never ending carousel of regurgitated nonsense. Oh yeah, and there’s only one channel on cable showing “history”.
The great thing about YouTube is that you can find even the most specific historical events and watch a full description of the event without huge commercial breaks, cliff hangers, and (most importantly) time restraints. The problem with cable television is that the show needs to be 21 minutes of content and 9 minutes of commercials. No matter how interesting or boring the subject, they are forced to stretch or shrink it to fit the allotted time. It’s hard to imagine a world where cable television even tries to get into history as a subject at all in 10 or 20 years.
News
Old reliable news. Green screens and dudes wearing a shit-ton of makeup and blasted with film lights as they read a teleprompter in that weird news voice. The mainstream news probably has about as long to live as Lester Holt’s hairline, still alive but hanging on for dear life. It’s no surprise that here at Riot Club we fucking hate the mainstream media and everything they stand for. The media giants are bought and paid for, running stories that are not only just non-offensive to their “advertisers”, but running cover for them. All while operating as a mouthpiece for whatever redirect the modern left tells them to.
Where is our apology or retraction of the COVID hoax? “Two weeks to flatten the curve”, “99% effective”, and “The debunked lab leak theory” are just a few messages that helped us stay at home and destroy children's educations while eviscerating small businesses. After all, it was the right thing to do.
The news is not only completely uncredible, but it is very expensive to produce. With the average nightly news viewer hovering around 60 years old, the younger generations have turned to platforms like X, YouTube, or other news/social media apps to get their news. It’s quicker, reliable, and most importantly, much cheaper than the big productions at the major cable companies.
TO BE CONTINUED…
