Reality TV killed The history and discovery channel

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Either that, or TV producers are what they have mostly always been - money hungry philistines who sacrifice art, education, and good taste for money making schlock.

Animal Planet is falling into this trend too. When years ago there were good documentaries about wild animals, now there's various experts helping "naughty" pets usually same advice always so it's not that fun, or worse all day marathons of animal cruelty police shows - I can't bare to watch those because they're too heartbreaking.

Does anybody watch The Science Channel?

All that's left really is public TV channels like PBS, TVO etc. I have found decent shows on some odd channels how they are few and far between. My poor Grandpa would be horrified to see what the History channel has become if he still lived. I remember living on TLC and Discovery as a child watching science based shows and documentaries, heck even Speedvision had some really good aviation based shows in the morning. Its funny how we could get 30 cable TV stations!! ! in the 1990s and be entertained and educated all day and now we get hundreds of channels, so many that I have no idea how many and there is nothing on worth watching.

Anyone watch the NASA channel?

I haven't watched much of PBS lately but NOVA and Nature would usually get my attention.

I think most of the "history" on Pawn Stars is contrived. These are not geniuses. I don't think Rick or Pops are any more informed about most of the topics than you or I. A lot of the things the pay special attention on I think they do special research on and then insert a short segment of Rick or whoever, telling about the history of that item before the episode airs. I can tell that Chum is coached and has been educated a lot since the show aired because he is popular with a certain segment of the audience. He was dumber than a spam sandwich when this show began but it seems they are going out of their way to highlight him and make him seem more informed than he actually is.

Not entirely pertaining to the thread's topic, but thought I'd share today's SMBC:

I miss How It's Made.
is it still shown on Discovery?

They show it all the time here, but it's a Canadian show so that probably explains why. According to Wikipedia, it's still running as well. If you're in the US, you should be able to catch it on Discovery Science.

oh, that makes sense. i never knew that show was Canadian!
i don't watch much tv, only have a few channels and Discovery Science isn't one of them.

but still, a very autist friendly show IMO.

Those channels may be dead, but there is still content out there

AHC

[url=natgeotv.com]GEO[/url]

tv listings are shown on Zap2it.com I think.

I remember when Canada's History Television channel was worth watching. It made a lot of its own shows when it was owned by Alliance Atlantis but it went downhill after AA was taken over by Canwest Global.

The only show I watch on it now is "Ice Pilots NWT" and only because it's about planes. My main criticisms of it, though, is that the "history" content is marginal at best and most of the family stuff is completely unnecessary.. I mean, who cares?

A & E used to show series like "Inspector Morse" but now it seems it's has nothing but re-runs of "Criminal Minds", another show I can't stand. Canada's version of Bravo isn't much better as it shows a lot of the programming from its parent CTV channel. I mean, re-runs of "Desperate Housewives"? Are they serious? And don't get me started on the movies they show now.

I've been watching PBS since the late 1970s but my enthusiasm for it has waned significantly since then. There was a noticeable downward shift in its quality around the time when it tried to revamp "Wall Street Week" and it fired the host, Louis Rukeyser, when he damned it with faint praise. He moved to CNBC and had a similar show for about a year until he took leave because of illness. (The "revamped" WSW died a quiet death about the same time.) Sadly, "Nova", what used to be my favourite show, is more like scientific cotton candy now.

If it wasn't for the idiotic bundling of cable channels, I'd cancel most of my subscriptions. The only ones I watch now are Encore Avenue because it shows movies, AMC (though it won't be worth watching after "Mad Men" goes off the air--"Halt and Catch Fire" was quite disappointing, though I do like "Hell on Wheels"), and Turner Classic Movies.

The BBC does more actual documentaries.

Almost ever cable TV channel airs meaningless reality TV shows. Many of those shows depict people misbehaving, fighting, swearing and throwing stuff all over there place. I don't see way so many American households find them entertaining. The only reality TV shows that I find the most interesting are Fear Factor and Naked and Afraid.

Comedian Peter Cook had this to say:

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/you-know-i-go-to-the-theatre-to-be-entertained-i/348654.html