I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I just completely canceled my cable (today is my last day with cable TV) as 50% of what I normally watch is the History Channel and, in the last couple of years, it’s been trash.

I’m no longer willing to pay for it. Bye bye to the trash, History Channel. You’re done :)

Here is the e-mail of Nancy Dubuc Executive Vice-President and General Manager of The History Channel.
She was also in charge of the USA and Syfy networks. I’m beginning to see a pattern here. I’ve written to her of my displeasure, please join me.
contact@mediavillage.com

First of all, I’m a blue collar worker. Having said that, I most adamantly agree, even if I don’t fit the stereotype presented (that is the only flaw with your editorial). The History channel is pandering to society’s weak link. The Ice Road, Gangland, paranormal and other tabloid-like crap being aired on the History Channel is an absolute outrage. As it is, our entertainment culture as a whole, has sold out to gangsta’ rap, reality TV, sexploitation, trashy celebrity idols and felonious athletes. This is reflected in our society, with cuts in education and increases in youth crime and dysfunction. What’s even worse, the early morning hours are completely filled with infomercials. Cable channels like THC are not freely aired, we pay for them with our subscriptions. We, the consumers, are being sold shoddy merchandise. The mentality behind reality based entertainment, is it’s low cost to produce. This makes the product even more shoddy and of much lesser value. The practice of dumbing down for the ignorant masses makes them even more ignorant. Other cable channels have become just as bad if not worse. TVLand, once a refuge from trashy, trendy shows with it’s classic sit-coms is now dominated nightly by Rosanne (for 2 hours every night) and 80s and 90s shows. The Cartoon Network, has an endless slew of homemade, badly drawn garbage that has little entertainment value. Because of this our children don’t have heroes, they have anti-heroes, women are seduced by criminal types and men are encouraged to be smelly buffoons who can’t even dress themselves. As Americans we didn’t decide to become this way, we have been misled and encouraged to become ignorant and dull-witted by an ever cheapening end exploitive entertainment industry whose motivation is easy money for a low quality product that exploits people’s gullibility.

@Alex Cook: Of course it doesn’t – I never said it id. Especially when all they are showing Ax-Men, It’s Tougher in Alaska, Ice Road Truckers and Sand Hogs. Watching these channels certainly won’t make you smarter or more “sophisticating”.

It’s just that we smart people, got together at some point and decided that stuff history, science, science fiction (and for some reason internet memes) are awesome and we will collectively like them from that point on. Sorry you didn’t get the memo – maybe it got lost in the mail. I’m pretty sure we sent it out to all the smart people out there.

Seriously though – I’m just making a simple observation here: shows about history and science usually tend to draw certain kind of audience – ie. people who are passionate about these subjects and like to learn random useless bit of historical trivia or interesting scientific factoids.

Reality shows draw other kind of audience – usually people who just want to sit on the couch, switch their brain off and look at bunch of crazy people fight, cheat, plot, scheme and talk shit about each other for an hour.

I mean, I’m sure there is some overlap between these two groups (some people enjoy both) but if I had to guess, I’d say that smarter people would be more drawn to history/science rather than to reality TV drama.

So these channels/shows don’t make them smarter – but being smarter is sort of a prerequisite for enjoying them more. Unfortunately I have no evidence to back it up. Just a hunch.

Sophisticating? Really? If you are going to insult someone, make sure you don’t come across like an idiot.

While I agree with the whole wishing crap like Ax-Men would leave the History Channel…this whole “letter” is just filled with psuedo-intellectual patting yourself on the back. Watching the History and Discovery Channels doesn’t make you any more sophisticating or intelligent than the majority of people…

@Blackjack: Well, it was sort of interesting at first. You know, like the first episode when I went “oh wow, I didn’t know ice roads even existed”. It did get old for me real quick tough to the point I could not stand it anymore.

As a linux engineer / trucker, I will object to the Ice Road Truckers being idiot-fodder. But the rest of the crap being, well, crap – I will certainly concede. IRT was fascinating to me, and I did find a certain empathy for the men, but they shot themselves in the foot – Season 2 had to be moved to another Ice Road because they wore out their welcome on the Southern roads with tomfoolery like leaving the wheel unattended while pouring a cup of coffee and other such nonsense.

Generally, we torrent the shows we like and don’t even bother with a “real” TV in the house – the closest to it is an xbox 360 hooked up to a 22″ LCD monitor over HDMI, to which we stream our commercial-free “TV” over TVersity.

I think that we should create a virtual society of people interested in fair content, intelligent programming, good games and cool TV shows and movies. We would call it along the lines of “The Dead Poets Society” and we would fund it by canceling our registration to our current TV providers and creating the programs ourselves. It would be cheap because nobody buys that kind of program anyway.

By the way, my gf and myself have found a great use of digital TV. We begin watching a show at the pre-generic. We pause for 30 minutes and eat, browse internet or read something intellectual. Then we put play again. Every commercial we pass in x16 speed. It makes the viewing experience so much better.

Hear hear! It would be so cool if History Channel actually listened. But of course, you know they won’t.

Anyway, it seems like all forms of entertainment are going down this process of “dumbening” for the masses. Games too, are progressing this way, which is why I’m not really raving about any new games, but instead keep replaying golden oldies. And I can’t wait for Good Old Games, a distribution plaform for old games, to go live.

Even though I have cable, I rarely sit in front of the TV now, except to catch up on sports (ie. soccer). All my entertainment comes through my PC. I just discovered Miro too, which is a cool way to aggregate video feeds, and it will mean even more time away from the cable box.

Those documentaries on the torrent cloud look mighty fine now…