You guys think you got it bad? Hah! I live next to the Sudaten land…EVERY channel overdoes Hitler here. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a WWII TV show, memorial, commentary, tour group or what have you. Every weekend is chock full of shows on Hitler’s dog (seriously, I think I’ve seen 3 seperate ones about the dogs in Hitler’s life), his mistress(es), tanks and planes, the SS, etc. I am so fucking sick of it. Yes it should be taught, yes people should go to Auschwitz, yes we should learn from our mistakes, but damn! Find something else to add to the lesson, m’kay?
You’re right – I watched the Lousiana Purchase show. It was really good.
They’ve done some good book-to-documentary adaptations, too. I enjoyed the adaptation of “Killing Pablo” a great deal. And while I missed the adaptation of “Founding Brothers,” I’ve heard it was good too.
I also missed “TR,” which was supposedly really good. Was that a book adaptation? I know they got Dubya to introduce it.
I officially gave up on the History channel a couple days ago. I was watching a program on crash test dummies. Then all the sudden they were talking about the Roswell aliens and UFO crap. After fifteen minutes of off-topic alien conspiracy crap they finally got back to the subject by saying “And one possible explanation is that Roswell was a test vehicle crash, and the aliens were early dummies, but no-one was used to seeing them back then”. :rolleyes:
Perhaps the Hitler overload of late (I have noticed this as well, History is one of our default channels) has something to do with commemorating the Warsaw Uprising of 1943? It’s that time, you know.
Guys, let me tell you the dirty little secret behind the History Channel and its fixation with war, especially WW2.
The law says that everything the federal government creates – publications, maps, posters and films – is in the public domain. During WW2 the US Army Signal Corps, and other military outfits, I assume, went out and shot miles and miles and miles of film. Film of battles, of aircraft, of training, of ships, of rocket tests… you name it, they filmed it. And not one frame of it is under copyright.
If you – or the History Channel – wants a copy of it, no sweat. Go down to the archives in Washington DC, screen the stuff, ask for the scenes you want and specify the transfer medium (film, tape or whatever). All you have to pay for is the cost of the raw stock and the transfer process. You can take your footage and broadcast it across the sky a thousand times for all they care, and not pay anybody a penny for the privelege.
As you may have guessed by now, this is not how it works with private stock footage companies! You pay for everything. And the rates vary depending on what you do with the footage and how often you show it. Because they ultimately hold the copyright on the footage, the bloodletting literally never ends.
So that, my friends, is why the HC loves war. It’s cheap to produce!
And here I thought the OP was going to rant against the History Channel’s overblown radio ads for “Terror Week,” where they delve into the minds of “history’s most ruthless tyrants – Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Adolph Hitler…”
Been drinking a bit too deeply from the Bush Administration’s propaganda well, have we?
