Maybe it's when they catch their parents playing Santa Claus, or maybe it's when they find the place where their parents buried their dead pets; but every child at some point experiences a universal epiphany, the day that they realize that grown-ups lie. Last year, with all of the corporate scandals being reported in the news, we now have undeniable proof that giant corporations lie too. So now, we may be ready to admit that the name of a given cable channel has nothing to do with the type of programs that they air.

Cable stations started out with very specific goals in mind, and they attempted to serve their niches as well as they could. Unfortunately, this turned out to not be a very profitable strategy. Originally, it was thought that there would be more than 300 cable stations -- even though this would drive ad rates through the basement, unless the American public could somehow find a way to watch 40 hours of television in a single day. The negative aspects of this train of thought were quickly ignored by the dozens of companies who decided that they had to get in on the ground floor of this media phenomenon. It might have worked too, if it hadn't been for the fact that cable tv providers realized that they could charge subscribers $40 a month for six channels.

So we now live in a world where news stations don't carry much news, sports networks show "Magic: The Gathering" tournaments, and classic movie stations show "Revenge of the Nerds" at all hours of the night. The first channel to completely disregard its own name (and therefore, its mission) was MTV. People over the age of 15 (if they try very hard) might remember that the "M" stands for "music". Of course, just a cursory glance at the channel reveals that there's precious little of that. If you want to hear music while watching tv, you're better off tuning into BET, since the main focus of MTV these days appears to be wringing the joy from the spirits of anyone unfortunate enough to stumble upon it. Sadly, this will probably continue until the surgeon general begins to warn people that watching excessive amounts of reality television can make you retarded.

Other stations began to follow MTV's lead, as deregulation swept through the entertainment landscape like a colossus, crushing all goodness and decency that stood before it, driving them from the face of television. The now ironically named channel known as, "Comedy Central" started out alright, but let's face it: Any station which plays that many Saturday Night Live reruns is anything but funny. Their name implies that a journey to the very center of comedy can completely destroy any sense of humor that you might have once had. Would a station that takes comedy seriously ever show the movie Airheads? I think not. Not only does Comedy Central not live up to its name -- it hates you and wants to feast upon your suffering.

There's an unlikely hero in this story. TNN once stood for "The Nashville Network", but the executives there decided that they should take off the ridiculous cowboy get-up and ditch the hillbilly relatives. So TNN became "The National Network" and got about the business of delivering even more mediocre syndicated TV shows to an already bloated public. Sure they abandoned their core audience, but they gave them plenty of warning. It would have been even better if they had changed the name to "The all Star Trek, CSI, and James Bond Network" but hey, nobody's perfect.

-B. C. Silvia