At the gym today I watched the History Channel while riding a recumbent bicycle. I saw the end of a show about the mystery of Oak Island in Nova Scotia where apparently buried treasure and unexplained objects have been found. One of the treasure hunters was very excited because he found the brass tip of a ship from the 1700s. It was verified by a local historian. I also saw part of a show called “American Pickers” where people try to find bargains on historical items. Two employees of the show went to an Old West town in Arizona that a man had set up to display his collections. There was a vending machine that dispensed cigarettes, but also allowed you to gamble like a slot machine and the prizes were cigarettes. They bought it plus a few other items for a few hundred dollars apiece. In addition, there was an authenticated photo of Billy the Kid, but the price was too high -- $300,000. I really prefer the documentaries that the History Channel broadcasts better e.g., “102 Minutes That Changed America” about 9/11, “Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed” about the film’s social impact or “The Century: America’s Time,” a 15-part documentary hosted by Peter Jennings about the defining events of the 20th century. History was not usually my strong suit in school, but I will have to admit that since I started writing this blog, it has sparked my interest. You understand so much more about a subject when you know the history of it. Let’s learn about the History Channel.
According to Wikipedia, History — formerly The History Channel from 1995 to 2008; stylized as HISTORY — is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney General Entertainment Content division of the Walt Disney Co.
The network was originally focused on history-based documentaries. During the late 2000s, History drifted into reality television programming. In addition to this change in format, the network has been criticized by many scientists, historians and skeptics for broadcasting pseudo-documentaries and unsubstantiated, sensational investigative programming.
As of February 2015, around 96,149,000 American households — 82.6% of households with television — receive the network's flagship channel, History. International localized versions of History are available in various forms in India, Canada, Europe, Australia, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
History
The company indicated that plans for a history channel were in the works in 1993; it purchased the Lou Reda Productions documentary library and long-term rights for the Hearst Entertainment documentaries archive. The History Channel was launched on January 1, 1995, with its UK counterpart, a partnership with British Sky Broadcasting, following on November 1, 1995. Its original format focused entirely on historical series and specials.
During the 1990s, History was jokingly referred to as "The Hitler Channel" for its extensive coverage of World War II. Since then, much of its military-themed programming has been shifted to its sister network Military History.
A&E Networks considered History to be the driver in international expansion due to a lack of international rights to A&E international co-productions. As expected, the History Channel led A&E's overseas expansion in Brazil with TVA in April 1996, the Nordic and Baltic regions with Modern Times Group in 1997 and in Canada in 1997.
History expanded in 1998 into tours of U.S. landmarks with Mayflower Tours having an affiliated website — historytravel.com, History Channel Traveler and a planned quarterly magazine. While in October, History and MSG Network teamed up to produce several short-form sports history programs. A+E spun out in November 1998 History Channel International from the History Channel.
On February 16, 2008, a new logo was launched on the U.S. network as part of a rebranding effort. While the trademark "H" was kept, the triangle shape on the left acts as a play button for animation and flyouts during commercials and shows. On March 20, 2008, as part of that same rebranding effort, The History Channel dropped "The" and "Channel" from its name to become simply "History."
The "History 100" documentary initiative was announced in March 2018 that would produce 100 documentaries covering major events and notable figures from last 100 years.
In 2021, the History network ordered a documentary series covering the history of the decades long “Star Trek” science fiction franchise. Brian Volk-Weiss is the planned director who had done documentaries for Netflix, as well as a previous History Channel special on “Star Trek” for its 50th anniversary in 2016. They planned to go over the long history of the franchise including its various television series and conduct cast interviews.
On December 8, 2021, History received a major rebrand for the first time since 2008. The logo kept the golden letter ‘H’ used since launch in 1995.
Programming
Programming on History has covered a wide range of historical periods and topics, while similar themed topics are often organized into themed weeks or daily marathons. Subjects include warfare, inventions, aviation, mechanical and civil engineering, technology, science, nature, artists, composers, authors, mythical creatures, monsters, unidentified flying objects, conspiracy theories, aliens, religious beliefs, disaster scenarios, apocalyptic "after man" scenarios, survival scenarios, alternate history, dinosaurs, doomsday, organized crime, secret societies and 2012 superstitions. Occasionally, some programs compare contemporary culture and technology with that of the past.
The channel's programming would expand into scripted dramas with the premiere of “Vikings” in 2013.
Criticism and evaluations
The network has also been criticized for having a bias towards U.S. history. Another former sister network, History International, more extensively covered history outside the U.S. until 2011, when it was rebranded as H2 and started broadcasting more material that had to do with U.S. history.
The network was also criticized by Stanley Kutner for airing the series “The Men Who Killed Kennedy” in 2003. Kutner was one of three historians commissioned to review the documentary, which the channel disavowed and never aired again. Programs such as “Modern Marvels” have been praised for their presentation of detailed information in an entertaining format.
Some of the network's series — including “Ice Road Truckers,” “Ax Men” and “Pawn Stars” — garnered increased viewership ratings in the United States, while receiving criticism over the series' nonhistorical nature. U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is a critic of the channel and its lack of historical or educational programming, showing particular disdain for the latter two programs.
In 2011, Forbes staffer Alex Knapp wrote, "ideally," "The History Channel shouldn't run stuff like this 'ancient astronaut' nonsense." Forbes contributor Brad Lockwood criticized the channel's addition of "programs devoted to monsters, aliens and conspiracies," attributing a perceived intent of boosting ratings to the network's decision to focus on pseudoarchaeology instead of documented facts. Knapp refers readers to the Bad Archaeology website's founder Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews who comments, "I find it incredible and frightening that a worldwide distributed television channel ...can broadcast such rubbish as ‘Ancient Aliens.’" Archaeologist Kenneth Feder, author of “Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology,” called the channel's hosting the ancient astronaut theory "execrable bullshit."
In his book “2012: It's Not the End of the World,” Peter Lemesurier describes the channel's “Nostradamus” series — in which he was invited to participate — as "largely fiction" and "lurid nonsense." He also lists numerous allusions made in its films to the alleged Mayan "end of the world" and the "rare" galactic alignment that was supposed by John Major Jenkins to accompany it in 2012, while Jenkins himself has described “Decoding the Past” as "45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism."
In December 2011, Politifact gave the History Channel's claim that the United States Congress stayed open on Christmas Day for most of its first 67 years of existence a "pants-on-fire" rating — the lowest of its ratings — noting that its own research showed that both the Senate and the House had only convened once in those 67 years on a Christmas Day and adding that since there is a one-in-seven chance of Christmas falling on a Sunday — when Congress did not meet in order to attend church, the claim that they would have convened almost every Christmas is "ridiculous." The claim had first been broadcast on the History Channel program “Christmas Unwrapped – The History of Christmas” before being subsequently picked up by the American Civil Liberties Union's website on the "Origins of Christmas" and by the Comedy Central series “The Daily Show.” “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart responded the next day by stating it was their fault for trusting the History Channel and satirized a clip from the History Channel about UFOs and Nazis by stating, "The next thing you know we'll all find out the Nazis did not employ alien technology in their quest for world domination."
The History Channel was also singled out in a post for Smithsonian magazine. Science writer Riley Black took issue with the show “Ancient Aliens” for postulating the "idea that aliens caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs." The online magazine Cracked also lampooned the channel for its strange definition of history. Cracked singled out the programs “UFO Hunters” and “Ancient Aliens” as being the very definition of non-history by presenting pseudoscience and pseudohistory. In 2015, skeptic Brian Dunning listed it at No. 2 on a "Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites" list.
Amelia Earhart documentary controversy
In 2017, a History Channel documentary, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” proposed that a photograph in the National Archives of Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands was actually a picture of a captured Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. The picture showed a Caucasian male on a dock who appeared to look like Noonan and a woman sitting on the dock, but facing away from the camera, who was judged to have a physique and haircut resembling Earhart's. The documentary theorizes that the photo was taken after Earhart and Noonan crashed at Mili Atoll. The documentary also said that physical evidence recovered from Mili matches pieces that could have fallen off an Electra during a crash or subsequent overland move to a barge. “The Lost Evidence” proposed that a Japanese ship seen in the photograph was the Koshu Maru, a Japanese military ship.
“The Lost Evidence” was soon discredited after Japanese blogger Kota Yamano found the original source of the photograph in the archives in the National Diet Library Digital Collection. The original source of the photo was a Japanese travel guide published in October 1935, implying that the photograph was taken in 1935 or before, thus it would be unrelated to Earhart and Noonan's 1937 disappearance. Additionally, the researcher who discovered the photo also identified the ship in the right of the photo as another ship called Koshu seized by Allied Japanese forces in World War I and not the Koshu Maru.
Researcher Ben Radford performed a detailed analysis of the mistakes made by The History Channel in building their documentary on bad photographic evidence. In his Skeptical Inquirer article "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Emmys: An Amelia Earhart Special (Non) Mystery Post-Mortem," critiquing the network's lack of professionalism, Radford said: "Given that the photograph's provenance was established and thus the key premise of the show discredited in about half an hour of Google searching, it will be interesting to see what world class expertise... the History Channel will bring to their reinvestigation of Earhart's disappearance." On episode 82 of his “Squaring the Strange” podcast, released January 4, 2019, Radford reminded listeners that in excess of 18 months had passed without an apology or explanation from the History Channel as to "how their research went so horribly wrong."
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