What we may be seeing is the drawing of a line as to how small a niche market can get. Or to put it another way, we could have a separate channel for every American over age 5. But that would cost too much. So we start clumping people into groups and targeting channels at them: one for women who like escapist movies, one for men who like T&A (OK, so that's a large group), one for people who like game shows, one for people who like hard news 24-7.
The line is between specializing too much to get enough audience to make a profit, and being too general to keep your niche viewers. (Think CNN; it draws poorly unless there's big breaking news.)
Then add demographics; you are not only going after interests, but interests that buy. That's why you don't see, say, a Nursing Home Channel, even though there could be a lot of programming done for it that would draw well among a certain audience.
And that may be where GSN is; its old audience had reached its limit, and for the network to grow, it had to change with originals, new attempts at programming, and so on. The trick is to do this without alienating your old audience, keeping those niche viewers and building on them.
Or, to bring this back to ESPN and quote Keith (If it's Thursday, I must be back on MSNBC) Olbermann, \"He's day-to-day, but then again, aren't we all?\"
