Dumbest Network Name Ever? Tell Me Tru

Actually, I think that Spike was a good name, considering the demographic it was aiming for originally....

And TrueTV would be a good name -- but TruTV sounds like a network that specializes in reruns of Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Glass Harp. (I bet TrueTV is copyrighted by someone else!)

Hmmmm, I don't see reality based programs as "true". Perhaps a better name would have been RealTV.

I'm betting that any name which started with the letters "R-e-a-l" would've brought upon them the wrath of or undue association with RealNetworks (of RealPlayer fame, or infamy if you prefer.)

It had to be something like that, because they surely seem to hammer that it's real, real, real -- as in this article http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2007/07/09/daily18.html
which takes us one step beyond "real engagers" to let us know that Turner has identified these folks as a "psychographic" (their quotes) made up of "people who watch a tremendous amount of television and love real-life action programming".

The words psycho, graphic, tremendous, and love, all in the same sentence just sounds ... creepy. Cue visions of Kathy Bates in Stephen King's Misery.

Oh, the other funny bit here is that it's not bad enough about the name spelling being faux nouveau hipster goofy. It's even (not) *capitalized* in a faux hipster-y fashion, i.e. it's "tru TV".

Aha. Found the TrueTV reference. It's the name of the network in the movie EDtv. Mmmyyeah... probably taking on that association would've been even less palatable than dealing with the RealPlayer guys. Spike probably already has exclusive rights to Matt McConaughey anyhow.

LB,

I did wonder about the RealPlayer issue.

Perhaps CheapTV since reality based programming is cheaper to produce.