I caught a show called “Supersize She” on TLC last night. It’s about a female body builder’s quest to become Ms. Olympia.
This was followed by something like “Half a Woman, Full Life” about a woman who was basically a torso.
How is this “learning?” Does TLC typically have educational-type shows during the day and then have these “Wow!” stories on later at night? The stories are told about real people and not in a glamorized or tabloid-type way. I guess I’m just curious about why it’s called The Learning Channel. Does anyone know?
By the way the girl, her friends and other other body builders seemed to be kind, friendly people who just wanted to be taken seriously in their sport and I respect that; however, there were, maybe 2 women who did not look totally like men (in the face.) I swear, the main character looked like she may have had to shave. I’m not trying to be judgemental or mean. I get how women could get their muscles to look like that, but what causes their facial features to be manly? I hope this isn’t a stupid question, but I am curious. Thanks!
Look at some of the moives that pass for “true life” or “mysteries” on Encore’s Mystery and True Life channels as well.
In other words, I think sometimes channels stray from their intended programming to get better ratings, or when they simply don’t have enough programming to fit the bill. When they do, they should at least change the name of the network.
AFAIK, they changed their official name from “The Learning Channel” to “TLC” precisely because there wasn’t much learning going on, anymore. Back in the day, when there were thirty cable channels, its programming was more contentful. Now, not only do the programs go for shock value, but they have a stock rotation of about a dozen of them that they play over, and over, and over, for years.
I too want to know what was wrong with the bodybuilder. “Her” voice was distinctly masculine. Was it just a hormonal disorder, or had she taken mega-doses of testosterone? I always miss the first ten minutes–maybe the answer is there.
It used to be that the (quasi) educational stuff was on The Learning Channel, and the “gee whiz” stuff was on Discovery. They seem to have flip-flopped that - American Chopper is an entertaining program, but you’re not going to learn anything from it, other than how not to build a motorcycle, and how not to weld. It started out on Discovery, but they’ve moved it over to TLC, for some reason.
We had a general thread on this awhile back, about how cable channels with initial highfalutin’
pretensions invariably regress to the lowest common denominator. I think I mentioned A & E
(when’s the last time they did opera?), Discover, SF, even Speed (which used to, and admittedly
now occasionally has, half-hour shows on classic race cars).
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