I watched a 30 minute programme today about female murderers. The feature involved Ma Barker and described her as the brains behind a murdering, criminal gang.
Despite the fact she was never arrested or charged with anything.
Despite that other people involved described her as not being involved and incapable of planning anything. (Refer Creepy Karpis).
Do they do any research or just try and make it all sound melodramatic?
Some of the shows seem to have researchers, others don’t.
I think history channel buys programs that others have made and puts them on, I dont think they produce more than a few of their own shows [i think they produce some of the series like the ones about the wild west]
Normally when there are programs on about a few select subjects you can tell we are watching by the resounding cries of bullshit and laughter followed by Honey, you got to hear this idiot…
The History Channel was one of the reasons I signed up for cable some years back. I don’t know what I was expecting.
Is the History Channel shown in Australia the same as the one shown in the U.S.? Can’t you guys create your own junk? As has been mentioned in a number of threads on the SDMB, the various documentary channels on American cable aren’t very good. They buy pretty much anything halfway presentable that producers make for them. The documentaries aren’t well researched and are sometimes about silly supernatural subjects.
I don’t know. The show I saw the other day that provided a factual account of some lunatic who supposedly worked for the government’s UFO program and his claims that everything from Kevlar, Velcro, lasers and fiber optics were reverse engineered from Roswell UFO wreckage. :rolleyes:
A lot of the shows are US made. Lets face it, programmes about Australia would get pretty boring and repetitive after a while. You can only see so many episodes of Australias Icon towns.
We get a lot of British made shows as well (on the history channel).
I call it, The Hysteria Channel. And I don’t watch it.
I love history which is why the *History Channel * as let me down so often. I suppose the American mind set is responsible for the ‘Hitler Network’ it was a few years ago as WWII was the last war everyone felt good about, but now with the Ice Trucker crap!?! Or the increasing amount of supernatural/big foot exposes?!?!
It must be a lot of work to put on a show about history because unless you’re willing to get a bunch of actors and a massive amount of extras to do reenactments you’re stuck with the rehashed stock war footage in the recycle bin. I suspect that some of the powers that be want to put on quality programs, but they don’t want it to be the stuff you were forced to watch in Middle School. It’s sad really as I don’t think they appreciate the patience of their audience. I’m just guessing, but by watering down the history they’re appealing to the lowest common denominator.
You must not have been watching the same show I was. All that stuff was developed by studying the Allspark and NBE-1. 
Ridiculous! Everybody knows Velcro was invented by the Vulcans.
I call it the Mythology Channel, because it is all about pop history, conspiracies and fruitcake subjects. Their newest show (I think) is something called Monster Quest, and when they promote it they claim no one has ever looked for the Loch Ness Monster before. Right. And now I’m seeing ads for something new called “Shockwave”, which AFAICT is about people dying in sudden catastrophes caught on tape.
I believe Scooby Doo is their programming executive.
Has anyone seen Dogfight on History Channel? The few episodes I’ve caught of it have seemed rather good. CGI re-enactments of various air and sea battles.
I liked it better when it was the Hitler channel, before it became the UFOs and psychics channel.
Firts, the documentaries are VERY cheaply made-if the subject is WWII-you can ALWAYS count on film footage from the Nazis invasion of Poland (1939) being used for scenes from 1945! They just use the same stuff over and over-I saw the same scene (stukas dive bombing) for a show on the battle of Kursk. Second: they hire the cheapest “consultants” they can find-instead of Prof. Edward Norton-Jones (OXON), they have Dr. Joe Flatus (New jersey Junior College of East Bumfuck, NJ)-he provides the real historical insight!
Third: totally bogus claims: remember the show about Nazi UFO’s? they showed an old concrete gas tank frame, somewhere in Poland-they calimed it was where Nazi scientists worked on anti-gravity!-odd that those advance UFOs never showed up attacking allied bombers!
The HC is mostly crap, these days!
And what about airing The Men Who Killed Kennedy crap? On the History Channel???
I watched that thinking it would be a good story on the Kennedy assassination (yes, I admit I should have read “Men” plural) but it turned out to have the wildest, most ridiculous bullshit conspiracy theories imaginable. Not just that Oswald was hired by the mafia, or the fatal shot came from the grassy knoll.
No. This story had FBI and CIA agents stealing Kennedy’s body aboard Air Force One and altering his wounds.
I lost a lot of respect for the History Channel after that…
Oh yes…?Iwould suggest that you’re talking too much.
Its not a problem everyone, Smithy is on medication and what has been said is ludicrous …and just you remember that OK?
Huh?
I lost a lot of respect for the HC when a lot of the urban legends/folk etymology that I’d seen debunked right here on the Dope ended up being repeated as fact on their programs.
But for their Barbarians miniseries (which I haven’t watched) they consulted with the author* of one of my required texts for Late Antiquity this semester, and his book was very thoughtful and well-researched, so I would assume that some of their programs they do try.
*I don’t know how involved he was in the program, I just know that the back cover mentioned he’d worked with the HC on Barbarians.
Alvin (Creepy) Karpis was a member of the Barker gang and the one who probably survived the longest. In his books and interviews he said she was never involved in any actual planning,
I agree about the use of footage - over and over again. If there is an article about submarine warfare, there will always bea shot of the battleship Barham exploding. Anywhere.