A few weeks ago I saw a new Nat Geo documentary on the Incas being pushed on Hulu. 4 episodes, 3 hours, sweet. I made some popcorn and turned on the first episode only to be completely bewildered after about 30 minutes.
Now, I’m already annoyed with the fact that every documentary starts with a 5 minute advertisement for the very documentary you’re watching, as though nobody would be interested if they didn’t have a full summary of the topic. But this series never really seemed to get rolling. Archeologists and researchers would be introduced, deliver a line of little substance, and then we’d cut away before they could say anything too interesting. They kept showing the same shots, the same CGI flybys, the same narration delivered in different ways. I felt like I was getting teased with a documentary that never actually started. There was some content, of course, but it was so interspersed with filler that I never got the sense that it was building a coherent educational narrative.
Fast forward a few weeks and they start advertising Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston. I love Pompeii, and the premise seemed interesting. But it was delivered in the same repetitive, inane manner and I didn’t even wait 30 minutes before turning it off.
I know Fox bought Nat Geo a while back and now Disney owns it, but still, what happened? There were so many talented and smart people involved in the production of both of these, but the way they were produced and edited just made them unwatchable.
Perhaps they were under a directive to cater to the “second screen” audience - i.e., viewers who scroll on their phones while only half-watching their TV?
That 10 minutes of content crammed into 60 40 minutes of airtime (and 20 minutes of advertising) has certainly made the various channels under the Discovery umbrella a hell of a lot of money at very little cost of production.
I don’t think it needs to be any more complicated than that. To fill the needs of a 24/7 cable channel and a streaming service, they need a lot of fresh content. Making dreck is always faster and easier than making gold.
… Reflect the continuous dumbing down of the TV audience, especially in the US. I watch very little of today’s commercial programing, and can’t help wondering when it’s going to hit absolute rock bottom.
I first noticed this trend after the first season (maybe second) of the TV show Mythbusters, which, granted, was one of the few commercial tv shows I watched at all, and one of the kings of edutainment.
Filler - several minutes before the show starts about what was going to happen (with clips) and the experiments.
Filler - as each experiment starts, re-explain it all over again.
Filler - before each commercial break, talk about what is going to happen after the break.
Filler - after the break, summarize everything that had happened before the break, along with the earlier results in the show.
So agreed, maybe 20-25 minutes of content, 20 minutes of filler, 15-20 minutes of commercials.
I don’t think it’s just the factor of two-screen life, or my earlier “Have the TV on for noise while I read a book”, but an effort (then at least) to keep you tuned in and coming back instead of flipping away and missing those oh-so-valuable commercials.
The issue is that it’s not that long ago when there were interesting, engaging, and truly educational television programs produced and presented on U.S. television (some made in the U.S., some from England). The original Cosmos, Connections, Sir David Attenborough’s various works, etc., and a brand name like National Geographic connoted that sort of quality programming.
As noted, it’s become a race to the bottom for many examples of those sorts of shows.
Check out the YouTube channel The Fall of Civilisations, where they cover so far 21 cultures including the Inca.
Note that the channel has both the original audio-only episodes (labelled PODCAST) and the later-produced video versions with the same audio. Their depth, research and production values are unrivalled by anything else on YT, Nat Geo, or most especially the History channel!
In 2015, it was sold to Rupert Murdock (Fox News) which is now part of Disney.
Ever since, it has gone downhill from an accurate, informative semi-scientific journal to just entertainment. Hardly worth reading/watching anymore., IMO.
