OT - What Happened to the History Channel?
Instead of covering arguably one of the most important days in American history, the history channel decides to do an Ice Road Truckers marathon. I grew up watching a lot of programming on the history channel. In recent years I haven't watched nearly as much, but I noticed the Ice Road Truckers marathon when I was flipping throw channels and was really confused. June 6th always used to be a huge day for the History Channel, with tons of really cool WWII programming. When did the History Channel totally sell out?
When did the History Channel totally sell out?
~4 years ago.
Well said. I grew up watching the channel and still check it all the time to see what's on, but they've gotten away from what made the channel great. Got a History Degree from UM, so maybe I'm the obvious one to complain about this as well, but still...
Some of the stuff isn't even worthwhile. Tried watching Ice Road Truckers and couldn't stand it.
mstier - Check out History International. It's not as common on some cable providers (I get it on DirecTV), but it's a pretty good channel. In my opinion it became a lot of what History used to be.
That doesn't seem to much like history, huh? I've yet to see a single episode; surely there must be something historical and popular out there.
I can go without Ice Road Truckers as well. I do love Pawn Stars though, which actually has some pretty interesting historical artifacts/items from time to time. WWII in HD was well done and the America: The Story of Us series was fantastic. Gangland is a guilty pleasure as well.
History Channel has some pretty odd programming but I still enjoy it better than 8 or so years ago when they featured Hitler documentaries 24/7. The OP is right though; today should deserve better than Ice Road Truckers all day. Pretty lame.
Was very good because of the many visuals. America: The history of us wasn't nearly as good in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible, but it provided little depth and had its share of misleading facts. It was kind of like history from elementary and middle school days to me, and would have preferred to have profs and what not talk about history rather than celebs.
As far as the channel itself goes, they still have some good mini-series (like WWII in HD) and occassionally get a good show (I liked the first two seasons of the universe), but Ice Road Truckers, Axe men or something, and these other reality shows don't belong. But all channels are doing this. All are getting closer to middle ground to attract more views rather than only a small margin. It's done on History channel, ESPN, Discovery (I remember watching wild discovery every Sunday as a kid) and essentially every other channel out there. It all comes back to money.
On another note, I guess that makes us lucky we live in the age we do. A lot of the history on the history channel is very brief, but in the age we live there are countless numbers of resources on the internet and in books if we want to get more in depth.
I agree that the content was pretty broad on the Story of Us series but the production value was incredible. I was pretty impressed with the detail in visuals, which also supports the "middle school feel" to it. Haha. Completely agree with the celebs though. The last person I wanted to hear talk about "manifest destiny" was Charlie Sheen's dad. Gross.
I agree about the significance of today (it's also my dad's birthday) but if I had to guess, the marathon is leading up to tonight's new season premiere of "Ice Road Truckers."
And for the record, I enjoyed the Hitler documentaries and other WWII stuff the station used to air. But I agree the airings of that content became too frequent.
I miss all the old war shows they had, now they have a lot of dumb shows, mainly Ice Road Truckers.
can you?
Actual history replaced by stories of truckers in Canada's far north who risk death on a daily basis to supply DeBeers and other companies as they systemically destroy our far north. Hey, what's not to like?
Well, it did last year as well.
Sorry, my dad really enjoys watching it, so I hear about it.
I checked the History Channel listings here in the Great White North for today and we will not be enjoying this new Alaskan version (likely due to the draconian laws that legislate Canadian content).
There are some other History Channels (kinda like MTV2 of History). I know there is a Military History and an International Histroy Channel. Both of them are where you want to be.
Military History is great, especially the Dogfights and Mail Call marathons
If you want good history content, just start downloading Ken Burns documentaries.
A ton of them are on Instant. I watch his docs and Sir David Attenborough for my nature docs (He was the original voice for "Planet Earth", and has other great doc series like "Life of Mammals")
I don't know, dude, but it's a great question. Court TV owned up to its totally unrelated content and changed its name. The History Channel should do the same and call itself Meijer Brand Discovery Channel or TLC Xtreme Corn Nuts
Pawn Stars has a lot good old historical shit coming thru the door, and Chumley is pretty knowledgeable.
on the ice truckers, but for the life of me I can't understand why anyone would watch more than one episode of trucks doing the same thing over and over. Same with all those goddamn cooking reality shows. What sort of loser watches those things every week?
Just because you don't enjoy it, it doesn't mean people that do are "losers." I'm sure people could pick out something you like and call you a loser too. Obviously a lot of people watch these shows, if they didn't, the shows wouldn't be on TV.
Do you watch baseball? If so, you're essentially watching the same thing over and over for 3 hours, 162 times a year. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
You mean they've finally discovered that there was actual history that took place before 1939 and after 1945?
1.) I don't consider Ice Road Truckers (the show) history. Definitely an interesting profession, and worthy of a documentary maybe, but a reality TV show in my opinion doesn't belong on the "History Channel"
2.) I'm all for history from the big bang to the present, but on D-Day you would expect at least some WWII programming. Not a reality TV show marathon.
It's interesting for maybe 2-3 hours while they explain why we have arctic highways, etc. There's no need for there to be a reality show. They even make up fake dramatic moments. Oh no! Will these trucks heading towards us pull over? Let's show the same computer graphic for 2 minutes! Good thing those trucks pulled over. What would happen if we fell through the ice??!?!
The logging show is equally as bad, as is American Pickers.
On the good side, they had an alcohol themed Modern Marvels marathon this last week. That's always fun.
Even History International is a joke from what I've seen of it. A lot of specials about aliens and Templars visiting North America with a lot of "authors" and "scholars" without Ph.D's.
Gotta agree. I don't mind Ice Road Truckers (and other attempts of cashing in on the success of "Deadliest Catch"), but the History Channel doesn't seem like the right place for it. There's other good channels (like History International) on bigger cable packages, but shouldn't the History Channel programming actually have something to do with history, WWII or otherwise? Modern Marvels is another peeve in regards to this. Is the manufacturing process behind candy really history? Sigh. I guess I can learn from 8-years-ago-me, who was constantly asking "doesn't MTV have to have music?" until I changed the channel in frustration. Click.
Because Hitler was the man!...
Whoops... I mean... that didn't come out right...
But yeah, Military is ok, some of the modern weapon shows they have I wish would be trimmed in length so they didn't repeat a lot of stuff, but for the 15 minutes of info you get for every 30 minutes you watch it's alright. As is History International and Military History channel as others have said before.
Maybe my memory fails me, but even in the mid to late 90s the history channel was dominated by 1 hour specials about the Bermuda Triangle, The Face of Jesus and similar stupid shit that can now be more fully understood with a quick trip to wikipedia.
The History Channel has really gone south. There's crap like Ice Road Truckers and then lots of crappy history shows like UFOs, Bigfoot, Vampires, etc.
They should never run out of legit programming. There are a hundred major events in just the last 50 years that would make good 1-hour specials.
Don't worry, 3 dudes with 2 cameras on a boat will do a comprehensive search for the American Loch Ness monster.
Never mind that their tactics are dumb and they never find something. It costs less to produce an hour of that than actually doing research on Martin Van Buren.
And to think they had no specials on one of history's most important dates. June 6th 1944, D-Day. My god History Channel where has my once favorite channel gone?
While I'm not a fan of shows like "Ice Road Truckers" and "Ax Men", I imagine they're necessary evils to generate revenue so that more history-centric programming can be produced. If having to surf around "Ice Road Truckers" ultimately means I get more "Engineering an Empire", "Barbarians", "The Dark Ages", etc, then I think it's a fair trade-off.
AT&T U-Verse also carries History International. It's sort of like MTV2 to the History Channel's MTV.