History International: The History Channel For Adults

Corey often gets on my case about not contributing enough, when often times, I have an idea for a story and begin brainstorming it, just so that I can log in one day and he's already written it. Such is the case here with The History Channel. While I may not have all the fancy "paragraphs" and "headers" and fancy "proper spelling and grammar" that Corey has, I still feel like I have a point to make. And while I was originally going to just post a reply in Corey's thread, I decided my perspective was at least different enough to warrant a different entry. And I checked the Official Blackenheimer rule book, and it doesn't say anything about reruns.

So anyway...what the hell DID happen to The History Channel? Their problem seems to be following in step with the downfall of The Discovery Channel, in doing away with the whole "academic" approach and instead trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Remember in school when your teacher would give you a lame assignment, but they would try to "spice" it up by masking some lame "style template" over it? Like having you do a book report by pretending the book is a movie and you get "choose the soundtrack"? As if you weren't going to notice you were still doing homework? And that somehow this would make it easier for you to learn when really it was just dumbing it down for you so that you would hopefully just do your homework, and your teacher wouldn't get in hot water over low participation?

I always seem to allude to that when watching The History Channel anymore. Maybe a month ago they were running a program about The History of Life; its possible origins, "where we're going, why we're here" kind of stuff. But at one point in this documentary it tries to help the viewer understand the basic elemental makeup of life by creating a CGI factory called 'Life, Inc." A "Life Factory" foreman - hardhat and all - arrives onscreen and informs us that the "latest shipment of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen has just arrived" and proceeds to give you a tour of the factory and the way "Life" is "processed" there.

Really?

Is this The History Channel or Osmosis Fucking Jones? I seriously felt like it was 8th Grade again, and we were watching ITV, except then I remembered that in 8th Grade, we watched more relevant films like 1776 or Glory (except it was the "ZOMG! PEPSI in teh Classroom" version where they edited out all good battle scenes).

Like I said, its all about appealing to the lowest common denominator, and The History Channel is doing anything it can to get better ratings. At some level, I can't blame them because they're just trying to appeal to the mass audience. So the ambiguity of this article being a sacking of a network who sold out their dedicated viewer-base, or an Orwellian social commentary on the sedation of society as a whole is simply just that. I'll leave it to you to decide.

There are a lot of things I like about the Discovery Channel to an extent. "Deadliest Catch" is a decent watch if you're bored. "Mythbusters" WAS cool (until they tried to "hip" it up in the second or third season by adding Fratsky McSupBro? and his college friends to boost the coveted 18-34 range). "American Chopper" or whatever it is, I never liked, but I can at least understand why some people would. All these shows were a hit because they had mass-appeal. The problem is once these shows got popular, the network began creating an entire business model around it by throwing knock-offs, spin-offs, one-offs and rip-offs against the walls and seeing what would stick, and The History Channel followed suit. Only problem was, The History Channel didn't institute this model with their OWN shows, they just did the same thing Discovery did: Carbon Copy Discovery Channel shows...many of which have NOTHING to do with things that happened in the past (also-known-as: "History").

I'll credit that the lame rehashings of The Discovery Channel at the very least, BELONG on the The Discovery Channel. Right now, as I type this, The History Channel is playing some show about the "Hunt for Bin Laden". Really more political than historical like something you'd see on CNN or MSNBC, but excusable. After that is a documentary on Nikola Tesla. Fair enough. Sounds interesting. But like the MTV that came before it, when studying the downfall of a network, the truth lies in prime-time. Beginning at 7pm (that's the start of prime-time for the CST-impaired) is two full hours of "MonsterQuest." While I'm sure there is an historical context to it, let's not kid ourselves: This is a cheap ratings ploy about crap that does NOT exist. After that 120 minutes on the history of things that never actually happened, "Ice Road Truckers" comes on at 9. Like "...Chopper" I'm not a fan, but can understand why some at least are. The problem is that this show belongs on THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL or the like. I'll even give you A&E...but it has NOTHING to do with History. See Corey's article for more detail. After that? "UFOs of the 70s." Except that neither spaceships nor aliens came to earth at anytime in the 1970s...or for that matter ANYTIME IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. After "UFOs..." the entire aforementioned prime-time block repeats itself until 3 in the morning when the infomercials take over. That's right, finally, at 3am, testimonial and narrated documentation of ACTUAL, EXISTING, TANGIBLE things.

So at whatever point the History Channel went from being documentaries aimed at legitimate history scholars, or those interested therein; to lame eye-candy appealing to Nixon-fearing conspiracy theorists who live in a shack in Idaho and wholesale to anarchist bookstores, is not exactly clear. What is clear is the direction in which they are going. High ratings yield to prime-time airing yields to an eminent saturation of the entire channel at SOME point. Luckily for now, I still have "The Travel Channel" and History Channel's sister station, "History International." "The History Channel for Adults," as I call it. It is much like the History Channel of old in airing documentaries on The First and Second World Wars, Ancient Greece, Warships & Planes, etc... The only issue I have is the "International" tag means it tends to shy away from the Western world. And while that's perfectly acceptable for the most part, it's not like I can get my fair share of that on the original History Channel who's too busy talking about how ZOMG! Nostradamus was right 99.99999% of the time while following some storm-chaser in a cheap rental van. However, maybe if I'm lucky, "International" will do like big brother and completely defy it's specification and play whatever it wants. Only, like MTV2 - once also considered a "safe-haven" for music video enthusiasts - once that move is made, it's a dark, downhill path toward more-of-the-same from there.