I understand the “reality shows are cheaper” thing, but come on, History channel. Either show history or give up the name. I remember when they had they had stuff like “biograohy” on the air. I used to watch because I knew I’d learn something about history.
But now?
Axe Men? Are you kidding me? Its a lame survivor ripoff with lumberjacks.
Pawn Stars? Amusing for a few minutes, but seriously…a bald fat guy with his fatter son and and his father plus a dumb fat guy? Really History Channel? Have you sunk this low?
American Pickers? Watching these guys make me think they don’t even care.
I used to love atching the History Channel. What happened to them? Maybe its just me…
I don’t get cable, but it sounds like their ratings are hurting and they’re trying to pander to a wider audience or go broke. People don’t want to watch educational programs, they want mindless, stupid shit to entertain them. It’s unfortunate.
The History Channel sold out a couple years ago. The crap they do now has no resemblance to real history. Several of their living history show came & went in a few months time. One of the worst was a build team that recreated historical devices from old books and drawings. Total garbage. Thankfully it didn’t last long.
It’s a shame because they were doing some great documentaries. Some like the series on all the presidents could be used in schools. The series on the American Revolution was also really good.
Actually Pawn Stars is the closest they come to real history with their regular programs; some of the items brought in are interesting. My main beef is it’s so scripted: Chumblee (or however it’s spelled) is like a bad Horatio Sanz character that SNL wouldn’t kill and I don’t really give a damn about hearing anybody speak save the bald guy (Rick?) and the experts, but that would make the show 4 minutes long (which I’m fine with).
Agreed on all the rest though. American Pickers doesn’t even do the Pawn Star information segment- it’s just “Gay guy and his Trekkie best friend play Sanford & Son”.
I was thinking the other day that if they want to do reality they could actually do historically themed reality shows- things like 1890s House (a PBS show) or chronicle reenactors of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars having them explain their equipment and the like, but nope. Some kind of Antiques Road Show type series might even work, and genealogy would be a great topic for a reality program (especially with some reenactors). Instead when they do present history it’s usually pseudohistory like “Did the Bible Code Predict Nostradamus?” or “Were UFOs in the Bible and if so did they help Marilyn Monroe Fake Her Own Death and Kill JFK?” type crap.
The Learning Channel used to be great as well- I would actually pick up a notebook and jot down notes from some of their shows. Now it’s home decoration. National Geographic is about the only channel that shows interesting historical documentaries once in a while now (and they have 5 hours of Dog Whisperer for every hour worth watching).
Cable tv & satellite gave us over a 100 channels.
That made it possible to have channels devoted to a specific audience. Comedy, Sci-fi, History, Arts etc.
I don’t understand why these channels don’t embrace their target audience. Instead they piss them off with programming that doesn’t fit. A & E running Dog the Bounty Hunter, The Learning Channel running Cake Boss. Now the History channel is selling out.
Even HGTV is selling out. 75% of their schedule is that stinking House Hunters. There’s rumors that the real estate folks are behind that. HGTV was supposed to be home improvement programming and gardening. The G in HGTV is almost totally gone.
Land After People was another landmark. It was interesting for about five minutes of one episode but they made it a series! If you haven’t watched the series I’ll synopsize it for you: things get covered with weeds and animals and then fall down- tah dahhh!
For a while there was a series on called Cities of the Underworld that was actually interesting- they went underneath various cities (the sewers of Paris, the abandoned subway tunnels in NYC [including one built so FDR could use his wheelchair to get aboard the train without having to worry about photographers], the vast caverns (some natural and some carved) under Istanbul, etc… It didn’t last long unfortunately.
There was also one with Josh Bernstein that had potential but got so dumbed down it wasn’t worth watching. One of its WTF? moments was, of course, Da Vinci Code related when they decided to test the DNA of a Merovingian queen to see if she had semitic DNA. The queen in question married into the Merovingian dynasty- i.e. she had no Merovingian blood- so while there’s only a .000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance a Merovingian king would have semitic DNA (per the legends of them being descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdelen) there’s essentially NONE of their wife having it, though if it turned out their wife’s DNA was exactly sequence for sequence the same as Sarah Silverstein’s it still proves nothing; it would be like trying to test the theory that somebody today is an illegitimate descendant of George Washington by digging up Martha.
I’ll give them a pass on Pawn Stars because they often times give you a brief description of what the item is, when it was made, and how it was used. For the most part, I gave up on the History channel a few years ago.
There have been several threads about this over the past year. But I figure this is a point you can’t emphasize enough.
Yeah, they were a little heavy on the Nazis back in the day, but at least that was actual history. Now if they talk about World War II at all, they’ll more often then not try to tie it into the occult or talk about how Nostradamus predicted the rise of Hitler or some such nonsense.
I concur entirely. I loved TLC about 15 years ago. Now, it’s all Jon/Kate/Duggars/Cakes/Brides/Little People. Argh! “Dog the Bounty Hunter” has nothing to do with the “arts”. Bravo shows bad movies.
I would like to watch something intelligent and educational. But I can only find it on PBS, or the Knowedge Network here in BC.
Wow … an TV Tropes page without an “Anime and Manga” section! Amazing.
History International is much like the old History Channel, but it’s only available on digital tiers in most US cable systems. I don’t doubt that it’ll become watered down in cue time, just like the various MTV spinoff channels.
Don’t you wish you could get the Hitler Channel back now?
I tend to hit History and History International as part of my usual channel surfing routine, but rarely do I stop. Modern Marvels, American Eats, and Gangland–especially Gangland!–are what tend to get me. (I realize that Gangland probably doesn’t belong on the History Channel either, but I love it anyway.) As close as History seems to get to actual, y’know, history these days is the Biblical archaeology stuff, which doesn’t much interest me.
History International isn’t quite as bad, it’s true. It’s always been a bit of a channel without an identity, though–I think they originally intended to make it a less US-centric version of the History Channel, but it never panned out that way. I suspect it’ll wind up being a place to show repeats of the History Channel’s reality/cryptozoology schlock.
Yeah, History rarely has good stuff on anymore. Almost every time I flip past it it’s always showing either Monsterquest or yet another psycho Omg The World Is Gonna End in 2012 “documentary.”
Pretty sure real historians don’t spend much time speculating, History Channel. Bring the Hitler Channel back, at least that shit’s friggin’ HISTORY.
That being said, there IS apparently some miniseries of some sort about the building of America or something that I kind of want to see. It might be a total trainwreck, but, again…HISTORY.
I still try to watch the History Channel when they’ve got something vaguely historical on. But even their semi-educational stuff has some howlers from time to time.
Recently sitting through Wild West Tech episode on the Battle of Glorieta Pass. (US Civil War in the West.) Much was made of a raid the Union force staged on the Confederate baggage train. The raiders destroyer wagons and equipment, ran off the horses, and deliberately killed “all the mules.”
Two separate historians give their take on this incident, both agreeing that “without any mules, the Confederates are in serious trouble and must retreat.”
A third historian soon describes the misery of the retreat; many hundreds of miles through desert and mountains without adequate food and water. Men died. Said historian continues: “The course of the retreat was marked by discarded equipment, fallen men, and the skeletons of mules.”
Now I know that it’s possible that the Confederates seized new mules from settlers as they retreated…or, more likely, that they didn’t lose ALL the mules in the raid, just “a militarily significant amount.”
But still, where’s the editing? Right there we saw two educated sources tell us that the Confederates had NO mules before the retreat and a third talk about all the mules they lost during the retreat. It’s not like it was an incidental mention – the loss of “all” the mules was portrayed as the key crisis forcing a retreat.
They get a pass on Pawn Stars, because some of the stuff that comes in is just so freaking cool. You also get a mini-lesson from the pro who evaluates it.
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