History orders Vikings scritped series

[Temis the Vorta]

Clearly, they are sending all the history to St Louis and leaving nothing over for San Francisco. Here's our lineup today:

Mudcats and Swamp People (episodes alternate all day long) plus an episode or two of Top Gear.

For some reason, tomorrow is all about the end of the world and UFOs. Do they know something we don't?

Seven Signs of the Apocalypse
Apocalypse Island (???)
Nostradamas: 500 Years Later
The Nostradamas Effect
UFO Files
UFOs on the Record
American Pickers
etc on into the night...

The one actual history program is at 7am tomorrow: Save Our History. Is that sarcasm?

 

[C.E. Evans]

Clearly, they are sending all the history to St Louis and leaving nothing over for San Francisco. Here's our lineup today:

Mudcats and Swamp People (episodes alternate all day long) plus an episode or two of Top Gear.

That's in the afternoon and primetime brackets where they get their peak viewership. The more traditional History Channel stuff is generally run in the morning. Evenings and weekends tend to be given to the reality shows that just simply perform better ratings-wise. In a way, that sober reality led to the rebranding of History International as H2, which tends to steer clear of the reality stuff.

For some reason, tomorrow is all about the end of the world and UFOs. Do they know something we don't?

They will do theme days frequently. Some have included the history of specific events, products, or industries.

Seven Signs of the Apocalypse
Apocalypse Island (???)
Nostradamas: 500 Years Later
The Nostradamas Effect
UFO Files
UFOs on the Record
American Pickers
etc on into the night...

The one actual history program is at 7am tomorrow: Save Our History. Is that sarcasm?

You may refer to that show as being the one actual history program, but I do think history is more than just classroom stuff. The other shows can be considered "historical" in the sense they do investigate old reports, some spanning decades (if not centuries with Nostradamus). With such shows, it seems not to be about trying to prove the subject matter and more about looking at the story and people behind it. Even American Pickers can be considered a historical show as it also covers the historical significance of rare items.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I'm not inclined to make excuses for the History Channel, with a lineup like that. They should be doing a lot better, and until they do, I'll continue to boycott their sorry asses.

History doesn't need to be "classroom stuff" at all. They could do documentary style history shows where a host roams around to various sites and talks about the historical aspects of things, or they could do more historical dramas from any era.

But just doing a show about old junk and calling it history is pathetic. Nostradamus, Bigfoot and UFOs have nothing to do with history. Nostradamus made BS predictions about the future, and they weren't even right. What's the lesson there, people in history were just as stupid as they are now?

They're putting crap on that's popular, that's all. Compare it to the lineup on TLC or the Discovery Channel, which is the same moronic sleaze as History shows and has about as much to do with learning or discovery as History has to do with history. They should rename them all TV For Idiots Pt I, II and III.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ I completely agree. I've practically forgotten that Discovery and TLC exist, and History Channel becomes more disappointing all the time.

H2 (the second History Channel; formerly known as History International) is even better.

This is true, too. I check out their On Demand section a lot.

 

[C.E. Evans]

History doesn't need to be "classroom stuff" at all. They could do documentary style history shows where a host roams around to various sites and talks about the historical aspects of things, or they could do more historical dramas from any era.

They did the documentary style walkabout shows, but nobody was watching. And doing historical dramas is, of course, the topic of this thread.

But just doing a show about old junk and calling it history is pathetic.

No, it's called archaeology. Not everything has to be a thousand years old.

Nostradamus, Bigfoot and UFOs have nothing to do with history. Nostradamus made BS predictions about the future, and they weren't even right. What's the lesson there, people in history were just as stupid as they are now?

Nostradamus himself is a historical figure. And the stories usually explore any real events in history that might match his predictions. It's never been about trying to prove if he could see the future, but more about real events in history that are similar to his writings. Bigfoot and UFOs fall under the exploration of old myths and legends.

They're putting crap on that's popular, that's all.

It's the name of the game. Hate the game, not the player. If more people watched their pure history shows than the reality shows, they'd be airing more of the former than the latter. They're just doing what everyone else is doing to stay alive in the ratings race.

Compare it to the lineup on TLC or the Discovery Channel, which is the same moronic sleaze as History shows and has about as much to do with learning or discovery as History has to do with history. They should rename them all TV For Idiots Pt I, II and III.

It's not your cup of tea, but you can't deny the approach works. More people watch those networks now than they ever did when they focused only on their original concepts.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I blame the audience as much as I do the media. We get garbage in TV and movies because people demand garbage in TV and movies.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I blame the audience as much as I do the media. We get garbage in TV and movies because people demand garbage in TV and movies.

I often find myself agreeing with Sir Humphrey Appleby [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNw0P5ZMbA[/yt]

 

[Nowhere Man]

I used to worship the History channel during the 90s and early 00s, but I don't watch anything they produce anymore. I watch PBS instead, it has a ton of history and Netflix has the old History channel shows, at least some of them.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I blame the audience as much as I do the media. We get garbage in TV and movies because people demand garbage in TV and movies.

I often find myself agreeing with Sir Humphrey Appleby

Same here. I've been having pretty much that same conversation with my family for forty years. Literature and sports are both just hobbies. The only difference is that sports is fun.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I blame the audience as much as I do the media. We get garbage in TV and movies because people demand garbage in TV and movies.

I often find myself agreeing with Sir Humphrey Appleby

Same here. I've been having pretty much that same conversation with my family for forty years. Literature and sports are both just hobbies. The only difference is that sports is fun.

I loved the subsidize sex line in that clip. The earlier part of the conversation between Appleby and Bernard is a riot, too.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO_vwvNK4Ic&feature=related[/yt]

 

[stj]

It is very likely to be third rate fiction, because third rate is so much easier. As to popularity and the role the idiocy of people plays in driving the system we have now? It seems to me that there is a powerful tendency to define "good" writing as including supposedly interesting characters. This seems inevitably to mean really special people who enact fantasies so that the audience can identify with them.

The prolonged trend towards dark and gritty characters, aka assholes, just comes from the increased number of assholes needing figures on TV to identify with. Social, economic and political decay turns people mean. (If oppression made people nice, we'd all have to be in favor of oppression, wouldn't we?)

The Vikings could be quite interesting. There are the episodes more like the popular image of Vikings, like the career of Eric Bloodaxe. But there's also the collapse of the Greenland community; Rollo and the creation and Normandy;
the Norman kingdom of Sicily (could you fit in the Sicilian Vespers here? Why not?!); even the Varangian guard.

The difficulty is that historical writing involves an interest in other people, increasingly rare; interest in how things were different, which seriously conflicts with the essential principle of conservatism that things don't change, that human nature and society are immutable (even though people's individual characters are wonderfully plastic, even Silly Putty-like); tolerance for exposition (which is the true test of writing skill in historical fiction/science fiction, which is why the hacks rant about bad writing instead of writing.)

Prognosis is poor, just going by cultural trends.

 

[Nowhere Man]

The thing that really gets me is that even if they get everything 100% accurate, it still will be fiction. It won't be real history, it wont be documintary style history. On a side not even when History does documentary style history, the tend to focus on either WW2 or just things that happened in the US. which has a short history. The Earth is 4.6 billion years old, why not talk about pre-history, human evolution, philosophical history, chinese and Japanne history, pre-columbian America, anything really. Just give us something that is actual history, it drives me nuts.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The thing that really gets me is that even if they get everything 100% accurate, it still will be fiction. It won't be real history, it wont be documintary style history. On a side not even when History does documentary style history, the tend to focus on either WW2 or just things that happened in the US. which has a short history. The Earth is 4.6 billion years old, why not talk about pre-history, human evolution, philosophical history, chinese and Japanne history, pre-columbian America, anything really. Just give us something that is actual history, it drives me nuts.

They do all that with their second channel, H2.

 

[Nowhere Man]

I shouldnt have to go to another channel to find history on the History channel.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Quite a few cable networks span multiple channels.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I shouldnt have to go to another channel to find history on the History channel.

That's how it goes unfortunately, and then when all that crap ends up on H2 you'll have to go to H3 to see the history programming.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I shouldnt have to go to another channel to find history on the History channel.

Why not? You have to go somewhere other than MTV to find music.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

MTV, MTV 2, VH1. Now we're on VH1 Classic and you can't even find much music there any more.

They've been re-running the same crap for years now. The only good thing is That Metal Show.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I think the only channel that actually does what it's supposed to and does it well is Turner Classic Movies.

I often find myself agreeing with Sir Humphrey Appleby

Same here. I've been having pretty much that same conversation with my family for forty years. Literature and sports are both just hobbies. The only difference is that sports is fun.

I loved the subsidize sex line in that clip. The earlier part of the conversation between Appleby and Bernard is a riot, too.

So sad, so true.