A few years ago I had Sky and the History had some pretty decent stuff on it. There was a lot of repeats and some poor documentaries but there was usually something worth watching.

I recently got BT Vision and the History channel is full of absolute guff.

The programs are not even about history! Storage Wars, Shipping Wars, Pawnstars and the like.

When did this happen?

A few years ago.

The history is history dude.

Ever heard the P.T. Barnum quote:

no one ever went broke overestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Thats what happened.

What you need instead is Netflix. More decent documentaries than you can shake a stick at

What you need instead is Netflix. More decent documentaries than you can shake a stick at

Didn’t know Netflix did documentaries, might have a look.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/collections

Yesterday is pretty good, has some of the old series from History (Battlefield for one). PBS has good murcan docs on.

New series just started on National Geographic, Cosmos with Neil Degrasse Tyson.

gobuchul – theres loads of ’em on there. We’ve only just discovered them. I watched this yesterday:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2YT0K2fb4E[/video]

which is a good a place as any to start. Scary stuff!!

binners – thanks for the heads up.

I had a look at the Netflix website, some pretty good stuff on there.

Ever heard the P.T. Barnum quote:

no one ever went broke overestimating the intelligence of the American people.

ROFL.

If you are going to cast aspersions about intelligence, or lack thereof, then you probably want to make make sure you get the overestimating/underestimating bit of that quote right 😀

Also, Mencken. 😉

It followed the likes of MTV which stopped playing music in favour of crap like The Valleys and all that reality sh!t, and also Discovery which decided actual science and documentaries was far too dull and filled its schedules with various idiot yanks shouting and arguing with each other about bikes and gold and crabs.

Ever heard the P.T. Barnum quote:

no one ever went broke overestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Thats what happened.

Or as Churchill said:

You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing. After they’ve tried everything else.

There’s usually some good History stuff on the Iplayer.

Lifer – Member
Yesterday is pretty good

aye can be decent.

Just signed up for Netflix, enjoyed that Dirty Wars documentary. Pretty shocking stuff!

same thing also happened to discovery and national geographic, all full of crap now, as above, cancelled cable and went internet only!

The rebranding of Discovery and (especially) History as primarily reality-TV channels is a bit odd but the “proper” documentaries are still there, just on other channels (e.g., Yesterday, Eden & Discovery History).

Pawn Stars is the only one of “those” shows I watch; there’s actually a lot of (recent) historical items on it which I find very interesting. Plus I much prefer their OTT ways to the snooze-fest stylings of Antiques Roadshow (for example). Can’t really imagine Eric Knowles et al going down the local gun range to test out an antique blunderbuss!

zilog6128 – Member
Plus I much prefer their OTT ways to the snooze-fest stylings of Antiques Roadshow (for example).

Seems we’ve found the culprit as to why thei crap is made and put on our tele’s! 😆

After watching Walking With Dinosaurs, with my then 7 year old son, we watched some American dinosaur documentary on youtube, the dinosaurs had names and anthromorphic motivations, son said, “is this for kids daddy?”, “no son, it’s for Americans” enough said….