What happened to the Discovery and Learning Channels?

Cafe Society
1

I remember when the TLC and the Discovery Channel were really nice for, well, learning. I remember the Discovery Channel in particular had a lot of cool nature and science related shows, documentaries on almost any subject under the sun…not boring, dry shows either, but they had engaging narrators, a seemingly high production value, and the subjects were quite interesting. I swear, even a few years ago, they had some things going on about Dinosaurs and ancient animals that was fairly good.

I remember TLC being similiar, maybe leaning more towards history and warfare and mechanical things (like cars, airplanes, ships, etc.), but still interesting.

That was several years ago. I remember growing up and watching them back in the 90’s, I learned quite a lot, actually.

But what’s happened to them? All I ever see on them nowadays are reality shows, fashion-type shows, house decorating shows – some of the shows in particular seem geared towards either stay at home moms or guys that are light in the loafers (not that there’s anything wrong with that…).

In particular, I swear everytime I turn on the DC in the evening there’s some type of show where these guys in their garage are in some type of competition to make custom motorcycles…I think it’s called…Monster Garage? Whatever.

And then later in the night (on DC still) there are, well, complete BS shows that ‘investigate’ the kind of things Penn and Teller would cry foul on: ESP, alien abductions, loch ness monsters, bigfoot, ghosts, huge conspiracy theories, etc. and it ALWAYS seems like they’re going in with a POSITIVE attitude or as if it’s ‘up in the air.’ What the hell??

I’m guessing I can owe the slide in quality to ratings and the fact that no one wants to learn or be curious about anything? I mean, who would want to watch a documentary on insects or microbes in our house? But hey, two fat greasy guys in leather screaming at each other…oh boy.

At least I still have the History Channel.

2

What happened to them has happened to other “fringe” channels. They became popular and they want to make as money as possible. At least the Discovery Channel spun itself off into multiple channels: Home, Science, etc.

I’m surprised the History Channel has lasted this long without collapsing, but at least it’s not the Hitler Channel anymore.

3

Hmmm, I wasn’t aware that the DC split up into smaller components. There’s also the Animal Channel…it does have its corny shows, but it hasn’t surrendered completely. I don’t watch it much, though.

And everyone wants to know The History of Hitler’s Jewish Sex Fantasies!

4

Mythbusters is great.

5

Mythbusters is a wonderful show, and it seems to be the only thing worth watching on Discovery/TLC these days. Whatever happened to Junkyard Wars? That was awesome, too.

6

Junyard Wars can still occasionally be found on the Science Channel. Hm. Evidently it’s on the Science channel every Thursday at 8pm Eastern time, and again at 11pm. Or at 4:00 am on Fridays.

Episode for November 11: “Demolition”.

I really miss the forensics shows. NO, I do not consider CSI to be worth watching, sorry. I want a show with forensic “this is how we caught the bad guy” stuff, not a drama with some forensic whatevers thrown in as a backdrop.
New Detectives has been moved to NOON on weekdays - real handy for those of us who have to work first shift; thanks guys.
Secrets of Forensic Science were excellent as well - originally done in Canada with the name of “Exhibit A”, narrated by Graham Greene.
sigh
At least the…erm…unmentionAblE channel still carries Cold Case Files on Saturday nights.

Did anyone else catch the Mummy Road Show while the National Geographic channel was still airing it? Cool show. Wish they’d bring that one back.
And yeah, Mythbusters rocks.

Oh, by the way, the one with a bunch of overweight guys screaming at each other over the best way to do whatever-they’re-doing to a motorcycle is American Chopper. I see the ads for it all the time. I never want to see this show. Why can’t they spin this crap off into its own channel? Call it “The Complete Makeover Channel” and they can show all the Monster Garage, Monster House, American Chopper, Trading Spaces, While You Were Out, and Oh Look We’ve Come Up With Yet Another Way To Pimp Out Your Belongings In Order To Completely Piss You Off programs they want. And then they can put the good stuff back on TLC.

7

. . . remember when American Movie Classics used to show classic American movies?

8

I too, mourn the loss of TLC and DC’s quality shows. A similar thing occurs at the history channel. They take shows with an interesting premise, such as Medieval Lives or **Conquest, ** and then restrict it to a half-hour. Then kill 5 minutes of that with commercials. I remember listening to Peter Woodward talk about how frustrating it was to cram hours of info into 25 minutes. The data-compression that these shows suffer through forces them to make statements that are generalized almost to the point of fiction. Terry Jones’ **Crusades ** is great because he has time to really talk about a subject. **Medival Lives **, on the other hand, angers me for being a tease. Hey, it’s a show by a cool guy on a subject that no one ever talks about and that I really like! But we’re not going to have any time to say anything! Ha ha. I bet Terry would love to make a real 2-hour documentary about Medival history. Maybe if we can get him and Mr. Woodward over to the folks at PBS…

9

Sometimes it still is. I’ll notice several hours of Hitler shows in a row over and over again for a few days. And then they revert back to either Iraq or WWII stuff.

The show I dearly miss from the History channel was “History’s Lost & Found” when they would show old historical artifacts.

10

The channel that has really gone to shit lately is Game Show Network, or GSN as it’s officially called now, maybe since “game” is no longer applicable. Back in its prime they showed many of the classics, including “The Price is Right”. They had several of their own originals, too, most of which were okay if not good (Russian Roulette was one of my favorites of the originals). Ever since they officially became GSN they’ve jumped on the reality show bandwagon and are showing less and less of what I consider real game shows. I don’t even watch GSN anymore. It’s too depressing to see what’s become of it.

11

The two shows I remember liking most from The Learning Channel were:[ul][li]PaleoWorld, and[/li][li]The Operation[/ul]The former was a nice, regular dinosaur paleontology show.[/li]
The latter showed all (and I mean all) the details of more-or-less routine surgical procedures, without any of that wimpy “don’t show the incisions and guts” prudishness that graces broadcast TV. I remember one episode that showed a Caesarian section, and I remember commenting, “Hey, stop playin’ with her uterus like that!”

12

Yes. and the ads were reserved for between movies instead of in the middle of them, and they weren’t “formatted to fit your screen” or “edited for time and content.”

AMC sucks now.

13

I think it must just be a lot cheaper to have a bunch of jamokes troop over to a neighbor’s house and demonstrate that they have even less taste than the owners than it is to make some quality programming.

I miss the original Scrapyard/Junkyard Wars when it was still aimed at the intelligent tinkerer before they started mucking with the formula in an attempt to make it “Survivor” Junkyard. I don’t care about the damn team dynamics – I care about how they figure out how to jam a V-8 engine into a couple of floating oil barrels in 10 hours. The first time I caught Junkyard Wars was on a post-Thanksgiving marathon, and I sat riveted to the TV for eight hours. Some of the best TV evar.

The networks must have really taken a bath on the “build-it” shows, though. Two years ago, we had Junkyard Wars, Full Metal Challenge, and a nearly infinite variety of Robot Wars type shows. Last year, just a badly retooled Junkyard Wars and the almost acceptable Monster House. This year, all I’ve seen is a bunch of Trading Spaces retreads and those dysfunctional idiots building motorcycles.

14

without commercials?

You should check out History Detectives on PBS, same sort of show. I wish they would cover more cases each season.

15

TLC and DC only had a few “homemaking” shows in the daytime, but reverted to some good science shows by primetime. Apparently, smart programming was too boring, so the two networks decided to go directly to the worst, shallow programming as they possibly could. I know it’s all for ratings, but the science was doing well. Now all the science can only be found after 11:00 p.m. and on weekends. At least Mythbusters is good. And all of those motorcyle shows are boring as hell. I think they are another TV fad.

The History Channel turned from “The Hitler Channel” to “The Stupid Conspiracy Channel” and “The Bad Historical Observation Channel.”

16

I loved The Operation! I used to eat dinner while watching it. The first one I saw was a hip replacement. It was all saws, hammers, and big power drills and my first thought was, “Hey, I could do that! Just like Fine Woodworking but with gore.” The Caesarian, though, was a bit over the top. We guys pretty much like the uterus to be a hidden-away mystery.

17

GSN has always been a bit dodgy. Way too much Newlywed Game and Family Feud. Some of their originals had promise (Friend or Foe in particular) but the pace is so slow that any hope of dramatic tension is drained right out of them. And whose bright idea was it to cram that chipper nitwit onto the set of Lingo? No, not Chuck, the chick who jabbers away “21 for Lingo!” and equally enlightening tidbits. The game was already slow enough, was there really the need for a co-host whose sole function seems to be pressing a button on a keyboard? Best thing about GSN was the old B&W shows but they’ve restricted those to the wee hours so I almost never see them anymore.

I have hopes that Extreme Dodgeball and Celebrity Blackjack will bring some much-needed redemption to the channel, but seeing as how they dumped Alex Boorstein from CB and stuck the dodgeballers into generic uniforms, that hope is sorta dimming.

18

Yeah. Same two reasons that Wheel of Fortune still has Vanna even though the board has been computerized for years. :wink:

19

I really miss the days of TLC when they’d show the British program “Connections” with James Burke. That was one of the best learning-type shows I’ve ever seen. Nowadays, there is so little on TLC to interest me, I don’t even know what channel number they are on my cable system.

20

I can’t stand her accent. It’s like she is either an American attempting a (bad) British accent or a British person attempting an American accent. Either way it sounds incredibly fake.

Unfortunately, I could see a mile away what the GameShow Network was going to become as soon as they changed their name to GSN. They call it GSN so that they won’t have to actually show game shows, but “reality” shows.

I’m surprised Cartoon Network still shows cartoons.