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All a natural progression of profit-motive driven mass media. I remember when the national news was fantastically informative and boring at the same time, covering a wide range of stories. Compare that to today's "Giant fires in California" followed by three other spun bits disguised as "investigative news" and a lollypop or flag-waving finish.
I wouldn't mind it as much, but advertisers lead the pack on stupidity, spending money like drunken sailors to get an impression out there - based SOLELY upon numbers of viewers. I have become convinced over the past few years that advertising dollars have become less of a symbol of a free market and more of an almost criminal conspiracy of kickbacks and networking.
Indeed, it was better when it was still the Nazi Network/Hitlery Channel. At least the unending string of WWII-related programming was pretty much factual historic information.
All a natural progression of profit-motive driven mass media. I remember when the national news was fantastically informative and boring at the same time, covering a wide range of stories. Compare that to today's "Giant fires in California" followed by three other spun bits disguised as "investigative news" and a lollypop or flag-waving finish.
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I definitely agree with this. (Sorry I couldn't give you any rep as I've given too much in the past 24 hours!) Anyway, it really IS too bad that in order to find real news, I have to search for it online.
I don't have television because the only reason I used to watch it was for news and weather and an occasional PBS documentary. Anyway, I am obviously not missing much, because whenever we go on vacation now, I will flip through the TV menu, and it just AMAZES me that out of 50+ stations, there is usually not even one show I want to watch -- and if there is, I usually give up watching it after only about 15 minutes because it seems that for every five minutes of program, there are three minutes of commercials!
Television certainly has gone progressively downhill since the 50's and 60's!!!
We turned on the Animal Planet channel last night and it was some cop show. I don't know what citing someone for having pot in her car had to with animals, and I turned it off after a minute or so. It seems like all the fun educational channels play now is America's Next Top Pawnshop and Reptile Boss and junk like that.
To me the final nail in the coffin of the History channel was the Ancient Aliens series. I still chuckle when I remember one sentence:
"Is it possible there were aliens during the first thanksgiving dinner ? Well, we don't know. But we can't say there were none!"
Yac.
IF you have never watched the Southpark episode lampooning that you need to.
Even if you hate Southpark or never have watched it....their satire was brilliant.
Some of my favorite channels from my childhood, Discovery Channel, TLC, The History Channel all have gone to crap.
Smithsonian channel and a few others like BBC are still pretty solid.
Animal Planet got deleted from my TV when they covered about 20% of the screen with advertising overlays for Big Foot hunters, their own station and I forget what all else....on top of the visually beautiful Blue Planet series. They had three semi-transparent ad overlays on the screen at the same time. ugh.
Gaudy, large, multiple screen overlays on shows that are largely based upon cinematography are like going to see your favorite musician perform and during the songs they are announcing over the PA system to eat McDonalds, buy tee shirts in the lobby and other upcoming performances at the venue.
About 10-15 years ago, The History Channel and PBS were both running a mini-series about Rome and/or Pompeii. On the History Channel, the narrator said something like "Pliny the Younger said..." and the narrator would relay the gist of what they said. Then, on PBS, the narrator said something like "Pliny the Younger said:" followed by a new voice reading Pliny's actual words, in Latin, with English subtitles. This, to me, is a good example of how watered-down the history on the History Channel was, even then.
I recall someone saying that all the "straight history" programming (documentaries, biographies, etc.) were shifted over to H2 (formerly History International), but I believe H2 is soon to be rebranded as something else, as well. History Channel has never bothered to change its name. Perhaps "The Speculation Channel"? "Freaky Hair Channel"?
Well, we don't know. But we can't say there were none!"
Evidence of absence (EofA) is evidence of any kind that suggests something is missing or that it does not exist. But EofA never proves absence.
In 1992 during a presentation at Caltech, skeptic James Randi said "you can't prove a negative".
I am surprised at how many people expect you to prove a negative.
These arguments are now often enshrined in legal theory using "the precautionary principle" (TPP).
TPP states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action. Or you have to prove a negative.
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