AHC: Save the History Channel

Bounce the History/Science/NatGeo/Animal Planet channels out of basic cable hell and into the Premium Package pricing stratosphere. More money for mo' better programming. If they try to slide down into the Honey BooBoo gutter to cut costs/increase their profits, it's easy for the cable customers to drop them in retaliation. :D
 
Find a POD that will result in politicians of both parties being in support of spending money on educational television. Ideally, to the point that there's no need for PBS-style pledge drives (because it's hard enough to get people to donate to one channel, let alone half a dozen or more).

Well, TLC was initially started by the Department of Health and Education and NASA. If you want to prevent it from de-evolving to what it is now, maybe they to stay invested past 1980, even if its still privitized.
 
The Hitler Channel was always beyond redemption. The very apparent lack of focus beyond the Western World was always my biggest complaint about the History Channel, and part of it seems to have been a shortage of non-white actors and extras to create accurate reenactments of history and civilizations in other parts of the world (which always struck me as laziness/cheapness on the part of the production team rather than a legitimate logistical problem). See, for example, the "Attila" miniseries starring Gerard Butler, and even more unforgivable, the four-part "Barbarians" special featuring a white actor in the role of Genghis Khan and almost zero actors of Asian heritage featured in any capacity. Nowadays, they seem to use stock footage from historical documentaries created in other countries to make up for this shortcoming (for example, borrowing reenactments from Chinese history programs to depict scenes from Chinese history).
 
The History Channel has always been something broken. There was a period, in the long ago before times of the 90s, when it was Kenny Rogers doing voiceovers of documentaries on cowboys and the Civil war and all sorts of things with footage of interviews with historians and reenactments of events filtered under something that looked like ol' timey paper, and the lettering done on a Windows 95 film editing program. That quickly gave way to Nazis, Nazis and more Nazis, till it was 90% Nazis. The History Channel was so focused on WW2 that they actually had to have people monitor to make sure they didn't reuse stock footage in programs because that became a problem. Then they jumped from the Nazis to doomsday and Nostradamus and to Aliens and conspiracies. Then came in the reality shows. Say what you will about the "Hitler Channel", at least it was history. And I like Pawns Stars and American Pickers, but everything else is not history, nor is this paranoia junk.

The problem with the History channel is the problem with every other channel: the general public is stupid and easily exploited and begging to be exploited (despite their protests that they aren't). So people may piss and moan about reality shows and space aliens and how this isn't what they want to see, and then go watch it, but the documentaries they say should be there, they don't watch. It's the driving force of Capitalism; give the people what they are really going to want, not what they think they should want. That's why all channels have lost their dedicated niche, and have gone stupid and exploitative.

There does exist a saved History Channel: it's called PBS.
 
I think the absolute nadir of History Channel off-topic programming was "Ice Road Truckers". I mean, really?
 
There does exist a saved History Channel: it's called PBS.

A good chunk of their programming is not history related. All PBS broadcasts is the occasional Ken Burns documentaries, a handful of NOVA episodes, and a handful of Frontline or Independent Lens episodes. Antiques Roadshow doesn't count :p
 
Except it will turn into Spike TV's attempt at Alternate History where the Nazis were able to take over the US following Hitler winning at D-Day.

That show was.... overly simplistic to say the least. And the less said, probably the better.
 
I think keeping the History Channel related to history based subjects, not conspiracy theories, will save the History Channel.

Seems quite obvious, doesn't it?
 
A good chunk of their programming is not history related. All PBS broadcasts is the occasional Ken Burns documentaries, a handful of NOVA episodes, and a handful of Frontline or Independent Lens episodes. Antiques Roadshow doesn't count :p
There's also American Experience in the history vein.
 
I knew I missed something. But at any rate, I think that still puts PBS's history-related programming at something like 15-20% of their total programming. I think that percentage figure is about equivalent to today's History Channel, tbh:D
 
Find some way to have History bought out by PBS, or some other public broadcasting (or just non-profit) organization.

Might not be a huge channel like History is now, but at least it will have actual history.
 
Find some way to have History bought out by PBS, or some other public broadcasting (or just non-profit) organization.

Hmmm. For that, you'd have to make THC essentially worthless; PBS or another non-profit would be unable to afford it otherwise. And the only way to do that is to destroy THC's ratings by having it ignore what people want to watch and air what it thinks people should watch.

...at which point you wouldn't need to sell it to PBS after all. :p
 
The impossibility of saving the History Channel from deteriorating into a steaming pile of shit regardless of POD is all the proof I need; there is no god.
 
I had an idea for some cheap programming for the history channel that would be interesting and fill some of the morning/early afternoon timeslots. A sort of mildly political round table in which a group of differing people talk about movies and media coverage from other countries. With this being a sort of media thing, they would have license to show whatever they want without approval (though a lawyer would probably shoot me down). They could talk about propaganda films, how media in other countries perceived events, how events were perceived by people in general and how different government reacted to these events (someone from the CIA is going to have a different perspective than someone from MI6 or the KGB or SAVAK).

Another thing History channel needs is a lecture series. Take existing college history lectures, trim them down, make them sexy and present them in a TED style format. HistoryCon!
 
Another problem with cable in general is its all owned by the big networks now anyways. They go with what is cheap to make and has a history of selling. Thus we get reality show after reality show and the niches of these channels eroding to mass sensationalized, focus group produced crap. More and more TV and cable as we've known growing up is slowly dying. The industry is already planning for the eventual merger of it all into an A la carte internet format.
 
Hmmm. For that, you'd have to make THC essentially worthless; PBS or another non-profit would be unable to afford it otherwise. And the only way to do that is to destroy THC's ratings by having it ignore what people want to watch and air what it thinks people should watch.

...at which point you wouldn't need to sell it to PBS after all. :p

This post sounds trippy without context.
 
A good chunk of their programming is not history related. All PBS broadcasts is the occasional Ken Burns documentaries, a handful of NOVA episodes, and a handful of Frontline or Independent Lens episodes. Antiques Roadshow doesn't count :p

Don't forget the James Taylor, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary concerts that the local PBSer's run during every Pledge Week.
 
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