The History Channel’s Secret to Success: No History - Polidicks

I looooove Greatest Tank Battles so much, especially when they claim Shermans were better than Panthers and mix up any tank types that aren't American/they don't have free stock footage of, or even better, do shitty 3D renders, still of the wrong tank.

When I was a child in Asia, Discover Channel and History channel on American cable companies was like reading an encyclopedia book only in visual form. Now it's just so filled with American redneck shit. It's a trend seen in almost all channels in the USA today. A general dumbing-down of sorts. I wonder what made media and the public so stupid. I remember Discovery Channel had specials like, "The Human Body" in which they showed almost all 3D rendering of your internals and learned from them. History Channel outlined major wars and turning points in history. TechTV used to be so great until Attack of the SHITTY SHOW came up. Now it's like watching a crappy internet-meme spewing bullshit like Tosh.0. People actually watch this crap Now I turn to National Geographic for education television. At times I watch Al Jazeera or BBC for some TV shows. When I watch TV I want at least to gain something from the time wasted glued on it. Learning about wilderness survival and poisonous plants for one.

[QUOTE=Blooper Reel;33800404]Most US versions of originally British shows usually end up flopping into failure. Red Dwarf US, or as nicknamed by the fanbase, "White Dwarf", is a pretty good example of such an occurrence.[/QUOTE] I hear they are making a US version of the I.T. Crowd too Which will suck because I've been watching a few episodes of it tonight, and its one of the best sitcoms I've ever seen. The one I most recently saw was the "Countdown" episode, which was pretty much hilarious throughout the entire episode. It's basically a 21st century Seinfeld, with its own nerdy spin to it. You just know the US version will wash that down the toilet and focus on blantant "LOL GEEK CRED" nerd humor, which isn't the point of the show at all. Here's my favorite snippet btw from that episode I mentioned: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jp5OCV3E28[/media] (the episode is partly about how the guy with the milk got on a gameshow called countdown and is invitied to some exclusive "countdown winners" club for people who do good on the show - the above scene takes place in the club)

Battle 360 was pretty good too. And that Gettysburg by that famous director

[QUOTE=GlebGuy;33797188]I want to learn more about the Ancient Greek history and mythology... I don't trust the internet on this topic.[/QUOTE] Or move to Greece like I did. At least visit; seeing all this in person is something pictures or books can never give you.

I dont understand it why the Finnish TV is having such a hard time showing the ORIGINAL FUCKING Top Gear. The British one. Its either Fifth Gear or the American version. I mean come on... :suicide:

[QUOTE=sHiBaN;33805835]When I was a child in Asia, Discover Channel and History channel on American cable companies was like reading an encyclopedia book only in visual form. Now it's just so filled with American redneck shit. It's a trend seen in almost all channels in the USA today. A general dumbing-down of sorts. I wonder what made media and the public so stupid. I remember Discovery Channel had specials like, "The Human Body" in which they showed almost all 3D rendering of your internals and learned from them. History Channel outlined major wars and turning points in history. TechTV used to be so great until Attack of the SHITTY SHOW came up. Now it's like watching a crappy internet-meme spewing bullshit like Tosh.0. People actually watch this crap Now I turn to National Geographic for education television. At times I watch Al Jazeera or BBC for some TV shows. When I watch TV I want at least to gain something from the time wasted glued on it. Learning about wilderness survival and poisonous plants for one.[/QUOTE] Money and greed is to be blamed for this new trend that's infected channels that used to be great. The reality shows that plague them are cheap to make and don't take very long to film, and they attract lots of viewers. Swamp People, Ice Road Truckers, Ancient Aliens, UFO Hunters, Monster Quest, etc. They make a fortune off of them. That's why they don't show programs like Dogfights and Digging for the Truth anymore: they were expensive, they took a long time to make, and they appealed only to a very select audience- hence not much money was made off of them. A&E took the same route; they made original films like The Crossing and The Lost Battallion, but now they just show stuff like Hoarders, Intervention, Celebrity Ghost Stories... Even H2 on satellite usually only shows reruns of old programs that haven't been in production for 5 or 6 years (at least they're actually good, though). National Geographic and Discovery Channel have been afflicted, too. NatGeo's daily schedule consists of like 10 hours of Border Wars, Alaska State Troopers, stuff on gangs and criminals and the military, Locked Up Abroad, and that new dumbass jousting show. And Discovery Health? They were replaced with the Oprah Winfrey Network. I watch very little TV these days compared to what I used to. Usually, I stick to AMC, TCM, Comedy Central, and Adult Swim in the evenings. It's gotten pathetically bad. The programs are shit, there's commercials every seven fucking minutes. The Internet is an infinitely more valuable and larger source of information than TV anyway.

[QUOTE=LunchboxOfDoom;33808070]Money and greed is to be blamed for this new trend that's infected channels that used to be great. The reality shows that plague them are cheap to make and don't take very long to film, and they attract lots of viewers. Swamp People, Ice Road Truckers, Ancient Aliens, UFO Hunters, Monster Quest, etc. They make a fortune off of them. That's why they don't show programs like Dogfights and Digging for the Truth anymore: they were expensive, they took a long time to make, and they appealed only to a very select audience- hence not much money was made off of them. A&E took the same route; they made original films like The Crossing and The Lost Battallion, but now they just show stuff like Hoarders, Intervention, Celebrity Ghost Stories... Even H2 on satellite usually only shows reruns of old programs that haven't been in production for 5 or 6 years (at least they're actually good, though). National Geographic and Discovery Channel have been afflicted, too. NatGeo's daily schedule consists of like 10 hours of Border Wars, Alaska State Troopers, stuff on gangs and criminals and the military, Locked Up Abroad, and that new dumbass jousting show. And Discovery Health? They were replaced with the Oprah Winfrey Network. I watch very little TV these days compared to what I used to. Usually, I stick to AMC, TCM, Comedy Central, and Adult Swim in the evenings. It's gotten pathetically bad. The programs are shit, there's commercials every seven fucking minutes. The Internet is an infinitely more valuable and larger source of information than TV anyway.[/QUOTE] Discovery's a pretty strange case. A lot of their most popular shows sort of got famous by accident and are fairly old compared to the similar shows aired on other networks. Mythbusters in particular has been around so long that one could argue it's partially responsible for educational networks becoming oversaturated with trivial nonsense. But despite most of them having the common theme of being extremely noisy and reeking of testosterone all the time, Discovery didn't seem to really put two and two together until other networks started airing similar shows, and even now they're still slightly more intelligent than their competitors.

At least Pawn Stars is a much tolerable reality show that I can actually enjoy.

[QUOTE=LunchboxOfDoom;33808070]Money and greed is to be blamed for this new trend that's infected channels that used to be great. The reality shows that plague them are cheap to make and don't take very long to film, and they attract lots of viewers. Swamp People, Ice Road Truckers, Ancient Aliens, UFO Hunters, Monster Quest, etc. They make a fortune off of them. That's why they don't show programs like Dogfights and Digging for the Truth anymore: they were expensive, they took a long time to make, and they appealed only to a very select audience- hence not much money was made off of them. A&E took the same route; they made original films like The Crossing and The Lost Battallion, but now they just show stuff like Hoarders, Intervention, Celebrity Ghost Stories... Even H2 on satellite usually only shows reruns of old programs that haven't been in production for 5 or 6 years (at least they're actually good, though). National Geographic and Discovery Channel have been afflicted, too. NatGeo's daily schedule consists of like 10 hours of Border Wars, Alaska State Troopers, stuff on gangs and criminals and the military, Locked Up Abroad, and that new dumbass jousting show. And Discovery Health? They were replaced with the Oprah Winfrey Network. I watch very little TV these days compared to what I used to. Usually, I stick to AMC, TCM, Comedy Central, and Adult Swim in the evenings. It's gotten pathetically bad. The programs are shit, there's commercials every seven fucking minutes. The Internet is an infinitely more valuable and larger source of information than TV anyway.[/QUOTE] Didn't Nat Geo had several spin offs? Also, Discovery Science is the only good left. And now all that's left on History is hidden cities. And tons of modern marvels reruns. Can someone please make a documentaries thread on the Film and Television forum?

I think i only go on the History channel to watch all those WWII documentarys.

[QUOTE=sHiBaN;33805835]When I was a child in Asia, Discover Channel and History channel on American cable companies was like reading an encyclopedia book only in visual form. Now it's just so filled with American redneck shit. It's a trend seen in almost all channels in the USA today. A general dumbing-down of sorts. I wonder what made media and the public so stupid. I remember Discovery Channel had specials like, "The Human Body" in which they showed almost all 3D rendering of your internals and learned from them. History Channel outlined major wars and turning points in history. TechTV used to be so great until Attack of the SHITTY SHOW came up. Now it's like watching a crappy internet-meme spewing bullshit like Tosh.0. People actually watch this crap Now I turn to National Geographic for education television. At times I watch Al Jazeera or BBC for some TV shows. When I watch TV I want at least to gain something from the time wasted glued on it. Learning about wilderness survival and poisonous plants for one.[/QUOTE] I know that it was posted before in this thread but read this: [URL="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NetworkDecay"]Network Decay[/URL] It's really informative, though it makes me sad how they have to dumb things down

Discovery and NatGeo educated me better than school what have you done tv executives

[QUOTE=Ignhelper;33808885]Didn't Nat Geo had several spin offs? Also, Discovery Science is the only good left.[/QUOTE] Yeah, they did. Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Adventure, Nat Geo Junior, and Nat Geo Music. You get them if you go with one of those extended satellite programs offered by Dish or DirectTV. I've watched them a few times and the programming was pretty good, but nothing like the old NatGeo of 2001. The Military Channel sort of supplemented for me as the History Channel for a while because 92% of their programming was (and still is) nothing but stuff about World War II, with maybe 6% covering modern stuff and the remaining 2% everything else. It's interesting for a while, but after you've heard about the Anschluss for the thousandth time and the Holocaust, it quickly becomes repetitive. On the plus side, they did have a couple programs on about World War I for Armistice Day and show all kinds of awesome war films.

[QUOTE=LunchboxOfDoom;33808070]I watch very little TV these days compared to what I used to. Usually, I stick to AMC, TCM, Comedy Central, and Adult Swim in the evenings. It's gotten pathetically bad. The programs are shit, there's commercials every seven fucking minutes. The Internet is an infinitely more valuable and larger source of information than TV anyway.[/QUOTE] This is true. But gone are the days where you can just kick back and be lazy, turn on the tube and watch something useful. It's like you're forced to buy a PC to access the internet for your goodies. I guess that is the natural trend of technology today. Something like radio to TV

[QUOTE=Ignhelper;33797708]I don't think discovery is any better [video=youtube;4btttLiVHkw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4btttLiVHkw[/video][/QUOTE] I thought this was pretty good, if you ignore the fact that it is so clearly scripted. I mean the drama that has been added between the people in it is clearly scripted, it puts some soaps to shame.. [editline]20th December 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=KorJax;33805943]I hear they are making a US version of the I.T. Crowd too [/QUOTE] They made a pilot (the first episode but with US actors), it is utterly shit. You can find it on YouTube somewhere. They managed to ruin it by changing the actors and one or two jokes. I mean in one part they actually have to explain a joke :|

[QUOTE=LunchboxOfDoom;33810498]Yeah, they did. Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Adventure, Nat Geo Junior, and Nat Geo Music. You get them if you go with one of those extended satellite programs offered by Dish or DirectTV. I've watched them a few times and the programming was pretty good, but nothing like the old NatGeo of 2001. The Military Channel sort of supplemented for me as the History Channel for a while because 92% of their programming was (and still is) nothing but stuff about World War II, with maybe 6% covering modern stuff and the remaining 2% everything else. It's interesting for a while, but after you've heard about the Anschluss for the thousandth time and the Holocaust, it quickly becomes repetitive. On the plus side, they did have a couple programs on about World War I for Armistice Day and show all kinds of awesome war films.[/QUOTE] Its gay because Military Channel is US only. And Don't tell my mother is pretty good.

[QUOTE=Ignhelper;33812966]Its gay because Military Channel is US only. And Don't tell my mother is pretty good.[/QUOTE] While it mainly focuses on US military history when it comes to shows about weapons systems they're surprisingly unbiased You'd really expect them to show the US as the best most of the time

I would say the only good educational type channels are the Science Channel and the Travel Channel, Discovery and History especially have gone down the shitter, and Nat Geo only shows interesting stuff sometimes. Seriously Science Channel is great it has Firefly. I guess the one negative about the Travel Channel is that retarded ghost show but everything else is fine. Ok maybe Man v. Food is kind of dumb but people like it so whatever.

Im glad we Finns still have this channel called "YLE". It shows extremely high quality documentaries all the damn time. There even is "YLE: Theme" where the quality is even higher! The american media can suck it :v:

Who gives a fuck, American Pickers is boss.

[QUOTE=Gen;33827775]Im glad we Finns still have this channel called "YLE". It shows extremely high quality documentaries all the damn time. There even is "YLE: Theme" where the quality is even higher! The american media can suck it :v:[/QUOTE] Theme also shows some really great old flicks.

[QUOTE=JustGman;33827819]Who gives a fuck, American Pickers is boss.[/QUOTE] What's so amazing about a fat midget and a tall dude going around picking up antiques

[QUOTE=Hakita;33828145]Theme also shows some really great old flicks.[/QUOTE] True. I love YLE...

[QUOTE=JustGman;33827819]Who gives a fuck, American Pickers is boss.[/QUOTE] I disagree

I haven't had Sky for years now but I always enjoyed watching Ancient Discoveries on History, I'm not sure if it was shown in the US though Has the History channel really gone as bad as people said it has?