Has the History channel ever actually shown history?

But they DO show history.
The series ‘Ancient Aliens’ is incredibly accurate and superbly researched.

Yes, there was a day when all they would show was history. That was quite a while back. I miss those days.

Yes.

They used to! For about a month and a half after they went on air. Those were good times.

I wish they still did. They occasionally do early in the morning when you can catch shows like “The Real West” and “Civil War Journal”. It’s really a shame. TLC and Discovery have also gone down the tubes.

Everytime they air shows like Pawn Stars, Ax Men, Alligator Men and Junk Men or Whatever Men…they are showing what they’re really all about. They’re showing that their channel is now, well, history.

All of these specialty channels that were supposed to be informative gave me such hope when they started out. Now it seems they’re all converging on one design… they play the same scripted “reality” garbage. It’s so sad. I’d almost prefer to imagine that it’s a plot to dull audiences into an alpha-wave stupor, rather than believe that this is what most people want.

Yes, I do remember seeing quite a few historically accurate shows on the History channel. It was probably around 8–9 years ago that they seemed to be mostly historical, because I remember a TV series about the Roman Empire. Eventually, they took the whole warfare thing pretty far, and the channel pretty much revolved around World War II. Recently, they’ve stopped most of the historical documentary-type shows and replaced it with very cheap-to-produce programming.

The propblem with the concept is that television is voracious in its appetite for content, and only actual footag e holds attention. So it is hard to show much of anything prior to 1890, and really only after 1928 when sound films were made. Thus the focus on WWII, and an occasional peak into the Depression and the Atomic Age. Beyond that, they just don’t have usable content. People get tired of re-enactments unless there is a plausible story line.

Yes, for the first dozen years or so, they showed wonderful history shows. It is owned by A & E, which really was Arts and Entertainment for it’s first dozen years.

The History Channel used to be fantastic. Now it’s all aliens and bigfoot, pawnshops and swamp people. Sad.

Yes, I remember the days when they had actual shows on various historical subjects but then it was nonstop WW 2 stuff (when they were nicknamed only half jokingly as “The Hitler Channel” ) before devolving into the nonstop reality crap that’s now on.

Zenvelos explanation makes a lot of sense. Original dramatic content is tremendously expensive to produce ( witness the currently running series on The Bible produced by Mark Burnett and his wife, Roma Downey)

Most Reality TV costs a small fraction of that because everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame.

If you are interested in the history of mankind you should watch this! It’s just a theory of course, but it’s by far the most interesting thing I found online about the history of mankind. And they made it entertaining to watch, it’s all drawn so you have a visualization.

@whyigottajoin
Stopped at the “we don’t know how the pyramids could have been built” nonsense.

I mean, the Egyptians actually recorded how they did it.