20 January 2010

Programming on The History Channel


The dumbing-down of the content of The History Channel was the subject of a rant and discussion thread at Reddit.

19 comments:

  1. Which is why I almost never watch the "History" channel!

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  2. Wow. That's really, REALLY sad!

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  3. I used to always watch the History Channel and now I pretty much never do. It's sad that it has come this.

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  4. I dunno, I wonder if the current programming isn't better than back when it was all war, all the time.

    Is that all gone now, or is that what the little tiny sliver of "Actual History" is in the chart?

    Who did the chart, BTW? Who decided which shows went in which category?

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  5. The Discovery Channel isn't much better than History. Someone should do a pie chart like this for Discovery , too.

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  6. @Swift - the site from which the graph comes posts user-generated charts and graphs, typically created for humorous purposes to justify individual biases. This was almost certainly made of whole cloth from imaginary "data." It's meant to offer an opinion, not to present truth.

    There are lots of funny charts there, btw.

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  7. So right, though even the "actual history" portion should largely be "stuff about Nazis".

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  8. It's sad. Both the History Channel and the Discovery Channel have strayed so far from their origins I no longer watch either--I don't even bother to see what's on. Tattoos? Pawn shops? Ice Road Truckers? Very sad.

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  9. All these tv`s are owned by one corporation and they pushing the shows across the network, spreading different type of truth, also there is not enough independent resources, scientist, it`s all lead by mainstream science which is sometimes ignorant.

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  10. Discovery Channel would be:

    25% Mythbusters
    25% Planet Earth
    25% Dirty Jobs
    25% Man vs Wild

    That's about it.. :)

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  11. 90% of the actual history that they do show is almost always on WWII.

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  12. There used to be a time when I believed that the existence of cable channels such as Discovery, TLC, etc. rendered PBS obsolete. Now, over a decade later it is clear that when it comes to cable tv market mechanisms serve to homogenize content to the point that what used to be educational channels are now mostly reality tv and sensationalized crap. Thank god for PBS.

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  13. We have to bear in mind that TeeVee is taylored to the mentality of the average viewer. The program moichant piggie will push the envelope as far as he can to improve profits. A thinking public could work wonders by informing the advertisers who support this trash that they are no longer going to purchase their (probably Chinese) products. I don't think that the public has it together today though. So, thank God for PBS.

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  14. Hi all,
    I have started a Save the History Channel page on Facebook. Please join!
    http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#/group.php?gid=301319281208&ref=share

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  15. That's the third comment on this post re Save the History Channel/Facebook. If there's another, I'll remove them all.

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  16. Righto! The History Channel shares its dismal programming quality with the likes of Discovery, and SciFi whose main goal is to sell shoddy products and services to a trailer park mentality. These channels offer viewers a cluttered screen with juvenile animated "teasers" hawking future telecrap. Please public, notice that the only clean screen is given to the moichant piggy so that he can peddle his "stuff" without annoying screen animations and network branding. Some of this junk occupies the lower third of the screen during the programs which we're supposed to be enjoying. The job of the viewer is to call, email, or post messages to the advertiser that his product will be boycotted until things improve. Trust me, moichants don't like to hear things like that. One third of the program hour is devoted to the commercial. I'm paying 33 or more percent of my television dollar for the privilege of watching ads. We need to think and act definitively before it is too late. Continuous on-screen advertising is the next logical step if something is not done and soon.

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  17. Hah! A friend shared this tonight after I remarked how I just learned on the history channel how aliens have been mutilating our cattle for thousands of years. Also, apparently angels could not have come down to impregnate women thousands of years ago, according to one *expert*, because angels can't have sex; ergo, it must have been extraterrestrials!

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  18. And to think I was so excited when the History Channel started broadcasting.....

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