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The History Channel stopped showing history years ago. People don't want education, they want reality shows. Albeit highly scripted and edited reality shows, but that's what the unwashed masses want. It's too bad. Real history is fascinating.
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.
I remember watching it ages ago (I still had cable, so it would have been 2007 or earlier) and watching a program about World War II (which made up half the programming then - I don't know, maybe it still does). Anyway, they showed a map of Europe with the countries Germany had conquered all of one color - except it was a modern map, with modern borders. Anyone with even a little knowledge of World War II should know that the borders of Eastern Europe changed considerably post-war (and again in the early 1990s, with Germany reunification, and the breakups of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia - the modern map anachronistically showed all of this, too).
Also, how is Ax Men history? Oh, wait - I know! The shows air months after filming. Therefore, they're depicting the past - so... history!
Or Life After People? I actually found that interesting - but it was a show that imagined (ie, it was fiction) the future (which, last I checked, isn't in the past).
Quote:
Originally Posted by SandraMoore66
I've never seen this show but Vikings to me, is one of the best shows on TV.
I plan to watch The Vikings someday, probably when the series wraps. But... it's fiction. Fiction with some historical elements, sure (but then, so was Gone With The Wind, no?).
Quote:
Originally Posted by L0ve
Personally I love the Lost Giants and other similar shows. I find alternative history fascinating.
Alternative history comprises things like this:
"What if Japanese Admiral Nagumo had launched a third wave at Pearl Harbor?", or
"What if Richard Nixon had won the 1960 election?"
Search for the Lost Giants (I had to look that up and educate myself - wish I had that three minutes of my life back) is a melding of fantasy and pseudoscience.
Simply put, to call one's product The History Channel is to suggest that said product concerns itself with the field of history, an academic domain with rigorous standards. To then put forth a bunch of fiction, pseudoscience, and hare-brained conspiracy nuttery mixed in with some shoddily-produced history-lite makes the name of the channel nothing less than false advertising.
My guess is that most people watching the History Channel don't want to learn about history - they want to be entertained. And so the channel entertains.
There really is only one obvious explanation. I can't believe no one sees it. The executives running the HISTORY CHANNEL ...
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