Station Identification

When I was a kid, there were five channels that you had to pay to get - HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, and the Disney Channel. We only got the Disney Channel, needless to say. My parents thought it was educational or something, which perhaps it was back then. Since it was funded by viewer subscriptions, it didn't have commercials...except for itself. Unlike HBO, which at least gave you an unbroken movie experience before telling you what else was coming up, the Disney Channel would routinely break in the middle of a program to let you know how awesome the Disney Channel was and what else was on it that you could try to watch before getting a similar interruption.

I guess this business model didn't pan out for them, and eventually they moved to their current commercial/Miley Cyrus plan, which makes more sense anyway. If you're going to have commercials, I'll like you less. If I'm already paying for your programming, chances are I want to watch your channel without being blasted with your shameless self-promotion.

A similar thing happens when I'm listening to Major League Baseball on the radio - they'll pause for 'station identification.' This just means a shorter than normal commercial for the network you're already listening to. But they can't call it that because nobody likes commercials. It's as if they think we'll just get blown away by the changing winds of the radio dial, and be utterly unable to find our way back. It would make a lot more sense for them to advertise their station on someone else's, during another network's broadcast of a different game. Then if we don't like what's playing, we know there's another option out there. They could still call it Station Identification. Just not for the station you happen to be listening to.