Requiem for the History Channel

[onager]

This topic pops up from time to time, so here's a wonderful rant about it from Jezebel.com:

Ancient Aliens? Dan Brown? 18th Century Carrie Bradshaws?

I never thought I'd say, let alone write this, but: Give me Adolf Hitler - please.

As always on Jezebel, the comments are great too:

Every time I've seen the History channel over the past few years it seems more and more like that weird bin at Barnes and Noble filled with Nostradamus books, 2007 Sodoku puzzle mags and chewed on kids books.

http://jezebel.com/5402287/requiem-for-the-history-channel-a-nerds-rant?skyline=true&s=x

[salvorhardin]

1. Hah! The History Channel is exactly like the remainders bin at a book store

I think most of their "documentaries" are assembled from the chopped and pureed offal of other documentaries anyway. Oh, OK, so I guess that makes The History Channel more like sausage.

[lizerdbits]

2. The last 2 days made me realize why I don't watch most TV anymore

Home sick (much better now) and finished everything on my Tivo and my netflix DVDs. I turn on the TV and it's fashion crap on TLC and Nostradumbass on History. Fortunately I get a couple PBS stations.

[Orrex]

3. A few nights ago, three different channels were running programs about 2012

One of those channels was SyFy, so I guess that one gets a pass for at least sticking with subject matter appropriate to the channel's intended shtick.

[Lionel Mandrake]

4. The History Channel was pretty bad at first,

but then it went downhill.

I remember Roger Mudd hosting "Movies in Time". After watching a silly movie, Mudd (with a perfectly straight face) would ask a historian, "What was the most historically accurate moment ... ?"

The only appropriate answer in most cases would be raucous laughter.

[Odin2005]

5. The history Channel has become truely AWEFUL.

But most of my disgust is aimed at the Discovery Channel and TLC, which used to have tons of very good science and tech shows.

[Warpy]

6. History and History International are pretty good during working hours

and seem to save most of the total swill for prime time and weekends.

If you haven't seen "Black Blizzard" or "The Hillbillies," watch for them, they're wonderful shows that remind us of the potential of those channels if they didn't have to purchase programming from wooheads who let them have it cheap for proselytizing purposes.

It just sucks to have that stuff taking up all non working hours.