Science Channel Refuses To Dumb Down Science Any Further

[salm]

I don´t understand why people still have TVs. The news are available as live streams, movies are much better when not interrupted by commercials and most of the series are and "dokus" are the worst pile of bullshit that´s ever been thought up by man. Why the hell is this medium even still successful?

I mostly watch National Geographic and Discovery for documentaries, and Comedy Central for mindless entertainment (sitcoms ahoy!). Most of the time, though, my TV serves for watching DVD movies and as a computer monitor.

I actually didn´t really mean TV´s themselves because they´re usefull for watching DVDs or Consoles. I meant watching TV is what i don´t understand or even paying for the connection.

[PeZook]

Of all the regular shows presently on the Discovery Channel, only Mythbusters really qualifies as science. And even then, only barely . . . insofar as there's talk of designing experiments and collecting empirical data to either support or disprove a hypothesis. Unfortunately, that quickly gets lost in favor of showing the presenters being idiots and the required pointlessly gratuitously overkill explosion. Don't get me wrong, I like Mythbusters enough to have collected just about all the DVDs, but as far as science goes it's really watered down.

Well, yeah. Your point? It's still a show that, though watered down, is dedicated to studying the real world in an experimental fashion. The actual level of science present there is high-school level, but it's still firm within the realm of the real world, unlike a show with a title like "Pet Psychics" (which isn't shown in Poland, thank God), and it delivers ready-made ammunition when somebody tries to claim something ridiculous.

But otherwise, what's scientific or educational about watching a bunch of grown men swearing like sailors aboard a crab boat, Mike Rowe with his arm up a cow's ass, or a show about some dudes who build cars and motorcycles and whatever who wouldn't know what a formal education was if one bent them over and sodomized them with an oxy-acetylene torch?

I didn't say all the shows on Discovery here are highly rigorous and dedicated to pure science, just that I can still watch things that rise far, far above the level of Ghost Hunters or Pet Psychics (I haven't seen any of those, but the titles sound horrible enough).

Even a dumb little show like "How it's made?" is actually interesting, insofar as you can glance at the industrial processes involved in making even simple everyday things. Then I can get documentaries about the space program, etc.

I actually didn´t really mean TV´s themselves because they´re usefull for watching DVDs or Consoles. I meant watching TV is what i don´t understand or even paying for the connection.

I pay the minimum rate I can get away with and still get the above channels. There's also AXN, which sometimes has good stuff like Galactica or Third Watch.

Overall, it's just another entertainment medium. Some people overpay, yeah, getting a zillion channels they never watch anyway.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Of all the regular shows presently on the Discovery Channel, only Mythbusters really qualifies as science. And even then, only barely . . . insofar as there's talk of designing experiments and collecting empirical data to either support or disprove a hypothesis. Unfortunately, that quickly gets lost in favor of showing the presenters being idiots and the required pointlessly gratuitously overkill explosion. Don't get me wrong, I like Mythbusters enough to have collected just about all the DVDs, but as far as science goes it's really watered down.

Well, yeah. Your point? It's still a show that, though watered down, is dedicated to studying the real world in an experimental fashion. The actual level of science present there is high-school level, but it's still firm within the realm of the real world, unlike a show with a title like "Pet Psychics" (which isn't shown in Poland, thank God), and it delivers ready-made ammunition when somebody tries to claim something ridiculous.

The point is that the Discovery Channel used to be better about this sort of thing. Their signal to noise ratio used to be much, much higher. Though that may just be the nostalgia talking.

But otherwise, what's scientific or educational about watching a bunch of grown men swearing like sailors aboard a crab boat, Mike Rowe with his arm up a cow's ass, or a show about some dudes who build cars and motorcycles and whatever who wouldn't know what a formal education was if one bent them over and sodomized them with an oxy-acetylene torch?

I didn't say all the shows on Discovery here are highly rigorous and dedicated to pure science, just that I can still watch things that rise far, far above the level of Ghost Hunters or Pet Psychics (I haven't seen any of those, but the titles sound horrible enough).

Even a dumb little show like "How it's made?" is actually interesting, insofar as you can glance at the industrial processes involved in making even simple everyday things. Then I can get documentaries about the space program, etc.

How it's Made has more going for it than many of the network's other offerings. Sadly, it's mostly a Science Channel offering and only trickles down to the Discovery Channel in little bits and pieces.

[Oskuro]

I don´t understand why people still have TVs. The news are available as live streams, movies are much better when not interrupted by commercials and most of the series are and "dokus" are the worst pile of bullshit that´s ever been thought up by man. Why the hell is this medium even still successful?

I'd say it has something to do with the lack of effort. You just sit before the TV and let it hypnotize you and spoon-feed content to you. It's a very lazy type of entertainment, wich I understand can be quite attractive to people who just get back home from work and want to shut their brains off.

Incidentally, the hypnotizing effect TV has on me is one of the main reasons I hate it.

[salm]

I'd say it has something to do with the lack of effort. You just sit before the TV and let it hypnotize you and spoon-feed content to you. It's a very lazy type of entertainment, wich I understand can be quite attractive to people who just get back home from work and want to shut their brains off.

Incidentally, the hypnotizing effect TV has on me is one of the main reasons I hate it.

Oh, sure. But often these people will be same as the ones that complain about how bad TV has become. And they´ll even complain while watching an episode of "Germany´s next Superstar", completely missing the irony.

[Patrick Degan]

Over here, Discover Channel airs stupid shit like "The Nostradamus Effect" and "Ghost Hunters" and "Mystery of the Crystal Skulls". It's doubly pathetic when a show's stupidity is obvious from its name alone.

All that sort of stuff is on History Channel over here.

Thankfully my history channel shows actual history. Even if does repeat the same WW2 documentaries.

Obviously you're a little bit behind us. Just wait for a while and you'll be getting your Ice Road Logger and Nostradamus and Crystal Skull shows eventually.

[Dooey Jo]

Don't you people have national television?
Here, they are the only channels not producing only insultingly brain-damaged programmes, plus they are ad free and show the best movies. This is of course because they can afford not to pander to the dumbest common denominator. We used to have one more channel that made some watchable things (albeit often pretty dumb, but fun), but they're doing a Paradise Hotel now, so fuck 'em.


Anyway, our Discovery Channel is pretty far divorced from science. Today it shows people building big things, people fixing cars/motorcycles, people fishing crabs, people getting tattoos, and some guy apparently getting covered in shit all the time. I'm sure all of those shows are actually about people getting angry at each other. The crabs, tattoos, and motorcycles all seem to be, anyhow. Then there's Mythbusters, which is only scientific insofar as they're actually doing experiments. Occasionally. The Discovery Science Channel shows the same stuff, plus more "Machine makes candy" type shows (there are like three identical shows with different names), and the anti-science "Ghost Stories" (or whatever) and Brainiac (like it if you want, but if you actually think Brainiac has anything to do with science, I will cut you). They did have some about the history of European industrialisation, though, which was interesting.

But we have a national science channel, which has recently shown all the Egyptian shows that didn't suck that Discovery used to air. This is why all those who advocate getting rid of our national television should go fuck themselves, after being forced to watch ads for ten hours straight.

[Majin Gojira]

God, this makes me want to take inventory of the Discovery/History+ Subsidary programs I actually do watch.

The fact that I'm being driven more and more to their sister networks speaks a lot of how they're being pushed.

It reminds me what they did with Planet Earth. Sure, Sigourney Weaver has an excellent voice for that sort of program, but I have to ask why they bothered when they original had David Fucking Attenburough.

[Marcus Aurelius]

(or whatever) and Brainiac (like it if you want, but if you actually think Brainiac has anything to do with science, I will cut you). They did have some about the history of European industrialisation, though, which was interesting.

But we have a national science channel, which has recently shown all the Egyptian shows that didn't suck that Discovery used to air. This is why all those who advocate getting rid of our national television should go fuck themselves, after being forced to watch ads for ten hours straight.

I have watched a few episodes of Brainiac and it appears to be something like dumbed-down Mythbusters (yes, it can be done) for 12-year-olds.

Finland has got a national science, culture and history channel as well and most of the shows there are good or at least fair. The use of subtitles without any complaints from anyone is of course an advantage most big countries don't have, since Nordic TV channels can cherry-pick the best shows from many different language areas without expensive dubbing. The Finnish broadcasting company still overdubs the voice of the narrator in many documentaries, though, which is a strange exception to the rule of subtitling. No other voices are dubbed. I suppose they do the same in Sweden: one cable documentary channel (MTV3 Fakta) imports a large portion of its documentaries from Sweden so that they have Swedish narrator voices even if the original documantary is not Swedish at all...

[Ritterin Sophia]

Read the article, checked the link, extremely disappointed.

[[R_H]]

This effect has been bothering me for a long time. I remember seeing shows about actual science on Discovery, they then became shows about people building motorcycles which then became shows about psychics where a bunch of idiots run around with a grain night-vision camera and pretend every noise is proof of the current house being haunted. One show had the psychics going on about this throbbing and heat, it turned out to be the furnace in the next room. They then acted like finding out their super powers mistook a furnace for a ghost is a rare event and mostly they actually find ghosts not mundane things idiots would mistake for ghosts. Hell I remember when TLC had shows on science and technology rather than endless shows about fashion, cakes and midgets. The Learning Channel my ass, it's Tender Love & Care now.

I noticed that too. 8 or so years ago Discovery and TLC were ok, and then the quality of the programming just started slipping. TLC just became another fucking decorating channel, replacing much more interesting shit like Junkyard Wars with lameass regugitated shit from the Women's Channel (or whatever it was called).

[Twigler]

It's like they fired the person who used to be in charge of quality control and show anything that remotely looks like a documentary. And if you find the few gems on offer, 9 times out of 10 they were made for, or in cooperation with, another channel that has quality control.

I don't recall which of them showed it, but on one night you had Tony Robinson's well-made documentary on "the Da Vinci Code" which showed it was all a load of bullshit, and the next night there was a piece of garbage on the Templars which took all the wrong info in "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" and presented it as true.

[Darksider]

Does the History channel still show Dogfights? That was one of the few WWII shows (ok, I know they did the occasional Vietnam or Korean war dogfight, but it was mostly WWII stuff) I watched repeatedly.

[RRoan]

I think it's worth noting that the Discovery channel actually has a separate Discovery Science channel nowadays, and it has a lot more shows that are actually about, well, science. Aside from Mythbusters, I'm not really sure why people bother with the main channel any more.

[Joviwan]

I watch Discovery for 2 reason: Mythbusters, and Dirty Jobs.

No, Dirty Jobs doesn't have much to do with science, but it does have an incredibly charismatic every-man as the show host, doing a variety of jobs that, without the show, I'd often never know existed, let alone often having an impact on my McLife. The number of weird and disturbingly dirty and diffuclt jobs out there is intruiging and interesting, at least to me.

And come on. Mike Rowe. If I were forced to pick a celebrity to hang out with for a day, I'd pick Mike Rowe. He's just that interesting.

Discovery had a show that lasted, like, a whole season, called Time Warp. It was high-end Slow-motion photography porn, but some of the stuff they filmed was just so cool when slowed down by ten thousand frames a second.

[cOMPUTERmAN]

None of you are a fan of the show "The Universe"? Most of the time it's good.

'How it's made' and 'Survivorman' are other decent shows that can be quite good.

I am in complete agreement that the content quality of these channels have gone down dramatically over the past decade or so. The tendency to over dramatize along with presenting fringe and unsubstantiated ideas as fact is disturbing. Then again, the quality of TV programing on the whole appears to be following that trend.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I think it's worth noting that the Discovery channel actually has a separate Discovery Science channel nowadays, and it has a lot more shows that are actually about, well, science. Aside from Mythbusters, I'm not really sure why people bother with the main channel any more.

And what shows would these be exactly, shown during prime time? Sure COSMOS sometimes comes on late at night...

[Tanasinn]

Discovery Channel has been total fucking garbage for almost as long as I can remember here. I recall watching it as a kid and getting to see cool stuff about astronomy or what have you. Later, half the programming ended up dedicated to fucking house building shows. This infuriated me to no end. That the channel's nothing but idiotic paranormal hocus-pocus shitspew now is almost funny.

The History Channel's more recent descent was, for me, more lamented. I MISS the "Hitler Channel" days by comparison to this idiotic shit. Some wild-eyed neckbeard babbling about the Bible? Dumb hicks cutting down trees? Who gives a fuck!

Only channels I really watch with any regularity are AMC, TNT, and USA. I actually kinda like AMC, besides their baffling tendancy to show shit that no one fucking liked - Catwoman, the Halloween sequels, the most recent Superman. That shit got panned for a reason, guys.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Discovery Channel has been total fucking garbage for almost as long as I can remember here. I recall watching it as a kid and getting to see cool stuff about astronomy or what have you. Later, half the programming ended up dedicated to fucking house building shows. This infuriated me to no end. That the channel's nothing but idiotic paranormal hocus-pocus shitspew now is almost funny.

The History Channel's more recent descent was, for me, more lamented. I MISS the "Hitler Channel" days by comparison to this idiotic shit. Some wild-eyed neckbeard babbling about the Bible? Dumb hicks cutting down trees? Who gives a fuck!

Only channels I really watch with any regularity are AMC, TNT, and USA. I actually kinda like AMC, besides their baffling tendancy to show shit that no one fucking liked - Catwoman, the Halloween sequels, the most recent Superman. That shit got panned for a reason, guys.

The NatGeo and PBS channels are still pure at least.

[hongi]

Apologies if I mangle your country's channels up, but isn't Nova on PBS? I know they have a lot of science-related documentaries showing there.

[The Spartan]

Yes, NOVA is a PBS program.

[Lord Relvenous]

Discovery had a show that lasted, like, a whole season, called Time Warp. It was high-end Slow-motion photography porn, but some of the stuff they filmed was just so cool when slowed down by ten thousand frames a second.

Yeah, and it wasn't just seeing it go slow, it was seeing new effects too. The water droplet stands out in my mind where watching it at super duper slow motion revealed a lot about the process.

I gave up on the History Channel probably about two years go, maybe only a year. When I was younger I watched it all the time. Night and day, if I was watching TV, it was History. Now, I don't even bother with it. When I look at their programming schedule and they're running five hours of Monsterquest followed by two hours of UFO Files, yeah... no thanks.

[His Divine Shadow]

Don't you people have national television?

Don't watch it either. Been TV free for years, it's great. But now it looks like Yle is gonna force everyone in the country to pay a "media fee" of 200 euros every year, not just TV owners.

[Dooey Jo]

They have talked about that here too, but I don't know if it ever moved beyond just talking. The TV fee is pretty weird anyway and probably a hold-over from times when TVs were rare. They should have just replaced it with a tax in the '80s or whenever they became ubiquitous, because that's basically what it is these days. It might save a lot of paper work, too, and those inspectors would be unnecessary. Maybe people who don't use the services could claim tax deductions...

[[R_H]]

You have a TV fee as well? In addition to that, we also have a radio fee.