Cable television has never been a particularly impressive landscape, bright spots like Comedy Central and ESPN aside. The premium channels (HBO, Showtime, etc.) get better and better each year, tempting you to fork over that extra cash, but the basic cable landscape is barren. The channels cater to specific markets, knowing that, say, your dad will always watch the Golf Channel because no other network cares about him. This does not make for the greatest programming.
In recent years, reality TV has infected all stations, sucking out whatever goodness and purity still existed in this digital landscape, bringing about an age of darkness and despair. Does gazing into this abyss makes us stronger? Or will it simply destroy us by bringing us face to face with our deepest fears: re-runs of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
These are the 25 Most Worthless Cable Channels.
Written by Brenden Gallagher (@muddycreekU)
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25. OWN
Worst Show: Staten Island Law
There is such thing as too much of a good thing. Oprah hosts or co-hosts a ton of shows on her channel, as is her right. Though the tedium of watching the same feel-good, uplifting shtick over and over is rough, it's nothing compared to the torture that is the shows that aren't Oprah. These include the bargain-hunting game show Super Saver Showdown and a legal reality show called Staten Island Law. They're rejects from the bottom of the reality TV barrel.
We believe Oprah can do anything. We just don't need to see her do it all day, every day.
24. Cloo TV
Worst Show: Walker, Texas Ranger
Cloo TV: Where every day is a middle-school sick day. Relive the days that you faked a fever to skip the algebra test with endless re-runs of Walker, Texas Ranger and Law & Order. We thought that the burden of airing old Law & Order episodes was supposed to be evenly distributed amongst all cable channels. Apparently, times are changing and Cloo TV has cornered the market on re-runs of mediocre procedural programming. Go ahead and skip Cloo TV and watch this supercut of every Law & Order intro.
23. SoapNet
Worst Show: Days of Our LIves
SoapNet provides you with the unique opportunity to watch all the awful programs you'd be subjected to if you spent an afternoon with Grandma, but without the cookies and encouragement. The idea of syndicated soap operas is particularly strange, as much of the appeal is social. In the pre-Twitter days, people would watch these and chat about them together. Now, the only reasons we can think up to catch these is nostalgia or sheer boredom. Luckily for SoapNet, those are two powerful forces.
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22. Music Choice
Worst Show: Music
There may have been a time when channels like this made sense, but now that we have Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, and any number of other music streaming resources at our disposal, what do we get out of poorly rendered screensavers with musical accompaniment? The musical diversity of 45 channels of tunes, from "Throwback Jamz" to "Soundscapes," is respectable, but these days, if you're into even the most out-there genres, there is a friend or a blog or website that can provide a better "music choice."
21. Lifetime Real Women
Worst Show: Love Handles: Couples in Crisis
Lifetime is a powerful, three-pronged empire of sentimental programming, and this particular incarnation of their brand is the most overwrought of them all. From a reality show contest featuring overweight couples, to a show following the exploits of a "supernanny," the programming on Lifetime Real Women manages to be exploitative and boring at the same (sigh) damn time. It's best to be kind, though—if Lifetime's channels keep multiplying at this rate they'll have a Soviet level of control over our media outlets in no time flat.
20. The Weather Channel
Worst Show: The Weather
Think about it: If it weren't for natural disasters that harm real people and places, the Weather Channel wouldn't eat. The sheer joy the broadcasters display when the big storm hits is evidence of this. Watch as men and women who normally suffer through mundane discussions of cold fronts and precipitation percentages get to exclaim and ejaculate when a hurricane or blizzard hits. The reporters must vie for the privilege to stand out in the storm in one of those ponchos, facing the risk of being blown away by extreme winds. It's hard to fault them for their excitement; on any other day, all they do is report the weather.
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19. The Live Well Netwrok
Worst Show: Live Big with Ali Vincent
If living well involves following around the winner of the first season of The Biggest Loser or watching a show about peoples' family recipes, as the Live Well Network would have you believe, let's stick to debauching our bodies on alcohol, drugs, and fast food.
Also, there seems to be something inherently paradoxical about this network, as the first step to living well can't be to plop down on the couch for some third-rate cable programming.
18. Home Shopping Network
Worst Show: Shopping
How does this channel—and its partner in crime, QVC—still exist? With the rise of the Internet, most shopping happens at home. And if you can't do it in your underwear because you need to ask a human a question, there are brick and mortar stores. There's nothing novel about HSN anymore. What motive does anyone have to tune in to shills hawking products you don't need?
Then again, that blender does look really cool. I could really use a new blender. The top does what? Okay, I just bought a blender. Damn it.
17. TV Land
Worst Show: Happily Divorced
Of course there should be a place to watch re-runs of shows people liked before we were alive. That's fine. We hope that we can grow old watching 30 Rock and The Sopranos re-runs while complaining about how they just don't make TV like they used to. To deny that right to a generation would be inhumane. But the problem with TV Land is their movement to new-sitcom-made-to-look-like-old-sitcom shows. The character of those old shows is charming precisely because of their authenticity.
Why watch Happily Divorced or The Soul Man when you can just wait a few hours and catch Three's Company or All in the Family? There's just too much great TV out there to idle away the hours watching shows that refuse to learn the lessons of the medium's past.
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16. Lifetime Movie Network
Worst Show: Lifetime Movies
Now that Lifetime has taken the obligatory plunge into the dark abyss of reality television, they needed to create a channel to carry the banner of the terrible films that Lifetime was built upon. Thus, Lifetime Movie Network.
Whether you're watching Lies My Mother Told Me, Seduced by Lies, or Love, Lies and Murder, Lifetime Movie Network promises fun for the whole family, provided your family is comprised entirely of channel-surfing middle-aged kooks.
15. C-SPAN3
Worst Show: Politics
That's right, folks. If it wasn't quite rivetting enough for C-SPAN, if it didn't have that C-SPAN2 sizzle, then it is going to enthrall you on C-SPAN3. C-SPAN3 is so exciting that if they don't have a rollicking sub-comittee hearing to turn you on to, then it might be time to switch things up with a lecture live from the Smithsonian. This is in-your-face entertainment at it's most spine-tingling, and, the best part, with new resolutions forever being brought to the Congressional floor, the party never ends—unless Congress is in recess. In that case, it ends for a while.
14. SPEED
Worst Show: Dumbest Stuff On Wheels
Even guys who love profess to love NASCAR like it in large part as an excuse to drink and hang out with friends. Or they just enjoy having the race on in the background as they putter around the garage. Nobody asked for a 24-hour motorsports network, but that doesn't mean that they aren't going to try to give it to you.
SPEED offers you everything you could ever not want, from cars racing each other to guys fixing cars so that they can race against each other. Sometimes they even have women with large breasts standing next to cars. And there's also a cars-only version of America's Funniest Home Videos, which you'll want to be sure to catch...if all the other channels black-out and you decide to punish yourself.
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13. GSN
Worst Show: Baggage
Not only does GSN feature some of the most boring game shows you grew up with, it's created some truly terrible new game shows for you to enjoy! What does GSN have for you? Let's start with two personal favorites. One is called Baggage, where three women compete for a date with one man—but there's a twist! They brought a briefcase with them that contains their symbolic "emotional baggage," and the guy has to decide if he wants to try to deal with it. Jokes!
The other must-watch program is a Bible quiz show hosted by Jeff Foxworthy. It's like Sunday School without the social aspect! The only game we'll be enjoying involving GSN is How Quickly Can You Change the Channel?
12. CMT
Worst Show: Redneck Island
Country music isn't exactly Complex's bread and butter, meaning CMT never really had a chance. However, in recent years, the channel has pulled an MTV and gone off the music videos and journeyed to a strange place where the Blue Collar Comedy Tour is the most important social movement of the last 25 years.
The network has embraced stereotypes that the best country artists transcend. Between Redneck Island, a backwoods version of Survivor, and My Big Redneck Vacation, those of you who didn't grow up in the sticks have all the help you need to form a close-minded and stereotypical view of the folks living in the fly-over states.
11. Golf Channel
Worst Show: Golf
Rarely is a game more boring to play than it is to watch, but golf manages to achieve this with ease. Create a channel devoted entirely to that sport, and you have a recipe for madness. (Your dad will love it.) Of course, an unbearably dull channel wouldn't be complete without a few competitive reality shows. There's golf news as well. And golfing how-to shows. Frankly, it's a lot of golf. Might be time for an intervention. These people have a problem.
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10. YouToo
Worst Show: LOL Pets!
No one understands the Internet. It's a wild beast that no mortal was meant to tame. Certainly the mind behind the YooToo channel doesn't get it. The main thrust of the network is that YouToo lets "you" be on TV. You accomplish this in one of three ways. You can "record a fame spot," "record a peoplemercial," or use their "texts to TV" feature. Trust us, you want to do none of these things.
As if that weren't bad enough, the channel has a roster of reality programs that continue this "celebri-me" approach with shows that allow everyday folk like you and me to propose to their partners on TV, or show off their zany pets. A tip for would-be YouToo-ers: if you aren't on TV already, there is likely a reason.
9. Animal Planet
Worst Show: Hillbilly Handfishin'
Hopes for Animal Planet were high after that first Puppy Bowl, weren't they? Don't you remember how small their paws were, how damp their noses? Life seemed full of promise. But, sadly, it's all been downhill from there.
Currently, the network produces a show called Pit Bulls and Parolees, and another show about taxidermy called American Stuffers. The low-water mark, though—somehow—is Hillbilly Handfishin'. It's about people wrestling fish with their bare hands.
8. Hallmark Channel
Worst Show: Marie
It's a natural move to go from the greeting card business to the television business, right? While Hallmark's programming might not make you feel good like a greeting card can, the shows do have the approximate depth and complexity of those paper salutations. Whether it's saccharine made-for-TV rom-coms, cloying cooking shows, or a talk show hosted by Marie Osmond, the programming of the Hallmark Channel is sure to leave a taste like rotting fruit in your sorry mouth.
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7. Style.
Worst Show: Big Rich Texas
Style. is yet another one of those channels that has succumbed to the reality disease. While there seem to be some shows that are tangentially related to fashion or style, the network's bread and butter appears to be Southern women who excel at meanness. You have Big Rich Texas and Big Rich Atlanta to choose from, depending upon which accent you like to hear catty cruelty drawled.
This trend of vapidity shows no signs of slowing, as the network has a show coming down the pike with a revolutionary premise: hot guys fix up your house.
6. Lifetime
Worst Show: Bristol Palin: Life's A Trip
This crown jewel of the Lifetime empire is the home of all the best programming schmaltz is capable of. From Dance Moms to Bristol Palin's reality show, from Prank My Mom to Wife Swap, from Army Wives to The Client List, Lifetime is home to some of the least tolerable entertainment on television.
Can't they just go back to playing the cornball movies that have been relegated to Lifetime Movie Network? More fiction about pregnant liars, please.
5. WeTV
Worst Show: Bridezillas
WeTV's slogan is "Life as We Know It." The "we" here is women, and if we are to trust the network, women understand life as shows about weddings and Charmed re-runs. While WeTV is extremely marriage focused, it doesn't have the one wedding show that provides genuine moments of sweetness and entertainment, Say Yes to the Dress. (The writer has seen plenty of this program. The writer has two younger sisters. They will hurt individuals who try to turn it off. They are powerful. The writer is not.)
Instead, it has Bridezillas, which is, scientifically speaking, the worst thing ever. It does nothing but celebrate harmful stereotypes. That said, if you know any truly awful people who are getting hitched, WeTV would love their help keeping this travesty going.
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4. TruTV
Worst Show: Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura
"Not Reality. Actuality." This is TruTV's nonsensical slogan, which is totally appropriate for such a nonsensical network. TruTV operates on the generally accepted principle that men like stupid things. You're a man, so of course you enjoy people singing karaoke while swimming in a pool of snakes, or ex-professional wrestlers attempting to give credence to debunked conspiracy theories. It's the perfect channel for the anti-intellectual in all of us.
Many people claim they watch TV to turn their brains off for a while. If you want to take this principle to the next level, tune in to TruTV.
3. E! Entertainment
Worst Show: Keeping Up With the Kardashians
The Kardashian shows alone are enough to land E! a prime spot on this list, or in hell. Every day that the Kardashians remain a sensation is another day that E! tries to strike gold again with a new addition to their half-dozen strong stable of Kardashian dead-ringers.
Though E! has tried with the Jonas Brothers and Eastwood Wives, none of the network's shows have caught on the way that Kim and company have captured the popular imagination. E! will keep trying, though, until there are no more D-list celebrities left alive.
2. TLC
Worst Show: Toddlers & Tiaras
Reality television has taken cable by storm, and the eye of that storm is TLC. Other networks wish they had access to the hot-button manipulation that continue pouring out of TLC's hit factory. Just when you thought that the network had reached a new low, it sinks even further into Lowest Common Denominator entertainment, exploiting all manner of humans born with interesting predilections and body types.
When one of the network's reality stars has a melt-down, or the network can no longer contain an ever-expanding ego, it simply moves on to the next worst thing. If you want to teach someone the definition of irony, note that this station used to be known as The Learning Channel.
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1. Fox News
Worst Show: Fox and Friends
The other channels on this list are bad in the sense that they pass off cheap thrills or easy sentimentalism/exploitation as entertainment. The harm they do amounts to little more than minor sins (mostly).
But when a cable channel can poison the discourse of a nation, well, that's something special. When a channel achieves this with such a caustic mixture of smugness and vitriol, it's even more impressive. When they do all of this while passing off lies as truths and truths as lies, by deliberately deceiving and agitating viewers, that is an achievement worthy of the highest recognition.
