[Retric]

There’s only so much time in the day so people actually wanted a tiny fraction of that content. Basic cable was setup to be mandatory even if you wanted nothing in it and the money was to be made via advertising. Thus MTV added Real World and the history channel had Ice Road Truckers. Both popular shows, but seemingly out of scope except the audience was anyone flipping channels. This ends up being a quest for the cheapest content that still attracts an audience.

HBO on the other hand was constantly fighting for subscribers not just viewership. For them every viewer was worth more money so they had a high bar without much filler.