Reality TV killed The history and discovery channel

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That is when History Channel was the Hitler Channel.

ruveyn

Actually, the very first thing I had watched on the History Channel was about Charlemagne.

Locked Up Abroad is a personal favorite of mine on Nat.Geo. And speaking of documentaries, has anyone been watching "Cosmos" as of late?

Yeah, my wife and I have been watching it on Fox On Demand. That it's hosted by Niel DeGrasse Tyson, the coolest scientist alive, is an obvious plus.

Somehow those shows are complete opposites. The Pawn Stars people are interested in the things they buy, they explain the history behind it. That other show... it's just people swearing at eachother.

Maybe it's just because crappy reality tv is cheap to produce. When you make a documentary you need a research crew, when you make a tv series you need scriptwriters and sets. When producing a reality show you just need some yokels and a camera crew.

Incidentally, the star of Ice Road Truckers was arrested the other day for kidnapping and assaulting a prostitute. Guess that will put a damper into making a new season.

You also need very easily amused people for reality TV.

Yesterday, H2 (formerly History International) had an interesting series on Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan. (I think Vanderbilt was covered in another program.) It included commentary by contemporary business tycoons and financiers which gave it bigger dose of credibility than just interviewing historians and journalists. I wish they would do more along those lines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%2BE_Networks

Does U.S cable have commercials? Australian cable does. It therefore contributes to public ignorance and stupidity, and as such, I do not watch any of it. Most of the content does that as well of course.

Why not watch documentaries online? There are millions of them.

Last edited by Stannis on 25 Apr 2014, 2:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Basic cable does, though premium channels like HBO does not.

Whole documentaries are kinda hard to find online for me.

Cable is where all the halfway decent shows are (not talking about reality tv) without it I would just cancel completely. HBO/ShowTime shows are decent. PBS is the only low cost (excuse me: "Paid for by viewers like you") channel that produces anything worth watching.

NBC/ABC/FOX, etc. = Gag. Cheese. Acting is just that. Acting. Where are the actors with natural talent? Not hired for those channels.

Reality tv is low cost fill. Shows with effects get cancelled as the production companies realize they have to make them to budget and the tv stations that air them compare them to the reality tv show budget. Not a fair comparison and it doesn't work. This system is systematically killing decent tv.

I download a lot of them from youtube. YTD downloader works well for me. It's free, and it lets you convert into different formats, but there are plenty out there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... ownloaders

Link to hundreds of thousands of full documentaries:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... ies&page=1

Here are a few channels that I recommend:

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/episodes/ - This is from the Australian national broadcaster. I'm not sure if you can get it internationally.

Vice: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn8zNIfYAQNdrFRrr8oibKw

Crash Course: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6b17PVsYBQ0ip5gyeme-Q

There is a very easily amused person born every second.

The same thing has happened in Britain. I can remember getting satellite TV in the late 1990s because both I and my mother were dismayed at the lack of quality documentaries and factual programs on the 4 terrestrial channels and how there were channels full of them on satellite. The History and Discovery channels weren't without criticism. I considered them a bit too American centric and History Channel overemphasised WWII. Kids at school used to say that History Channel was Hitler Channel. Despite these minor nuances there were countless hours of quality documentaries. I can remember watching some fantastic documentaries about ancient Egypt about 10 years ago when I visited the country. They were far superior to what you would find on the BBC or Channel 4. The BBC very rarely showed any programs about engineering and technology but Discovery Channel showed more in a day than the BBC showed in a year.

Now History and Discovery channels have descended into the abyss of reality TV, non-technical jobs, pseudoscience, and armageddon. They are are totally dismal shadow of their former selves.

This is reported well in Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-r ... 76751.html

Do the hard rules of economics precludes the concept of TV channels showing solid factual documentaries even on satellite nowadays, or is it just pure short term greed and profit by the companies owning History and Discovery channels that have degraded them into cesspools of bludgeoned and shallow popular entertainment because it brings in the $$$? I would not say that History or Discovery channels were all that popular amongst adults 10 years ago but they had their loyal followers mostly from the BBC2 sphere. They attracted much smaller audiences than the 4 terrestrial channels and entertainment channels on satellite like UK Gold but they appeared to focused on discerning viewers rather than aiming at the masses. I make an intelligent guess that about a third of their viewers were under 16 with a significant fraction of adults being their parents.

What has happened with the archive of programs from the glory days of these channels? Does the management really have a right to get uptight over copyright and threaten to sue if people start uploading them onto YouTube because the channels themselves no longer show them?