MTV is not “Music Tv,” and TLC is hardly “The Studying Channel” anymore, however of all of the examples of channel drift, Historical past Channel’s evolution appears to be essentially the most excessive. As soon as dedicated to fact-based historic documentaries, the Historical past Channel’s slate is now loaded with actuality reveals and pseudoscientific programming.
Such choices are entertaining greater than they’re instructional. For years now, the Historical past Channel has been affected by controversies, particularly as on-air inaccuracies have piled up. Jeremy Stoddard, professor of curriculum and instruction on the College of Wisconsin–Madison, wrote a 2010 article about what he referred to as the Historical past Channel Impact.
“Viewers who are suffering from the Historical past Channel Impact are unable to acknowledge the value-laden ideological views in most documentary-style movies. They imagine that every one ‘documentary’ movies are goal and impartial sources of historic data,” Stoddard wrote. “Historical past Channel-produced applications particularly … could be extraordinarily inaccurate on account of low manufacturing budgets, use of out-of-context pictures and video, little or no historic oversight, and a want to enchantment to middle-aged male audiences by emphasizing warfare and patriotism.”
Absolutely that’s not what A&E Networks had in thoughts when the corporate launched Historical past Channel on January 1, 1995. Abbe Raven, then senior vice chairman of programming for the Historical past Channel, advised the Los Angeles Occasions the next 12 months that A&E Networks execs realized “you possibly can look at any subject in historical past in a inventive means and make it thrilling and dramatic.”
However generally, as we all know now, the Historical past Channel’s creativity goes too far. Right here on the thirtieth anniversary of the channel’s debut, we’re recapping our picks for its greatest controversies thus far.
2004: Former U.S. presidents condemn The Males Who Killed Kennedy
A 2003 episode of the Historical past Channel documentary collection The Males Who Killed Kennedy implicated former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson within the assassination of predecessor John F. Kennedy.
Girl Chook Johnson, Lyndon’s widow, and former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford wrote to the chief executives of A&E Networks’ mum or dad corporations to complain in 2004, as The New York Occasions reported on the time. Ford, for one, mentioned the manufacturing lobbed “essentially the most damaging accusations ever made in opposition to a former vice chairman and president in American historical past.”
2007: Historical past Channel’s focus begins slipping with Ice Highway Truckers
With 2007’s Ice Highway Truckers, 2008’s Ax Males, 2009’s Pawn Stars, and 2010’s American Pickers, the Historical past Channel has turn out to be targeted on actuality programming extra involved with the current day than with historical past.
U.S. Senator Charles Grassley went on a multi-tweet tirade about Historical past’s case of channel drift in 2012, urging community bosses to alter the channel’s title. The animated TV present Gravity Falls mocked the channel with a pretend TV spot for “a whole 48-hour marathon of Ghost Harassers on the Used-to-Be-About-Historical past Channel.” And Reddit customers have bemoaned the transformation: “Are you able to recall the final [History Channel] collection you watched that was centered round historical past?” one particular person wrote.
2009–current: Historical Aliens presents out-of-this-world pseudoscience
On the air since 2009 — and with greater than 250 episodes to its title — Historical Aliens has been rebuked for presenting as reality the farfetched idea that extraterrestrials not solely visited Earth throughout prehistory however directed people’ improvement of civilization, structure, and know-how.
“These concepts will not be supported by scientific proof, however they’ve turn out to be so prevalent that many individuals imagine there should be one thing to them,” Matthew Peeples, affiliate professor and director of the Middle for Archaeology and Society at Arizona State College’s Faculty of Human Evolution and Social Change, defined to Phys.org.
Smithsonian Journal science correspondent Riley Black referred to as Historical Aliens “a slimy and incomprehensible combination of idle hypothesis and outright fabrications.”
And Kenneth Feder, emeritus professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State College, mentioned on a podcast that producers requested him to contribute to Historical Aliens and that he advised them their speculation was “execrable bulls***.”
2011: After criticism, Historical past Channel cancels The Kennedys earlier than its airing
Expectations had been excessive for the multi-million-dollar mission The Kennedys, which starred Greg Kinnear as John F. Kennedy and Katie Holmes as Jacqueline Kennedy and ranked as Historical past Channel’s costliest manufacturing to this point and its first main foray into scripted programming. However early script drafts angered historians, together with David Talbot, whose e-book Brothers: The Hidden Historical past of the Kennedy Years offered supply materials for the miniseries. “It’s cleaning soap opera as character assassination and an egregious distortion of the historic report,” Talbot mentioned, per The New York Occasions.
Finally, A&E Networks opted to not air The Kennedys on Historical past. (The miniseries finally ran on Reelz, as did a 2017 sequel collection.) “Whereas the movie is produced and acted with the best high quality, after viewing the ultimate product in its totality, we’ve got concluded this dramatic interpretation isn’t a match for the Historical past model,” a channel rep advised The Hollywood Reporter on the time.
2011: Historical past Channel will get a “Pants on Hearth” ranking from PolitiFact
After the Historical past Channel program Christmas Unwrapped: The Historical past of Christmas claimed that Congress “sat in session and continued to remain open on Christmas Day for many of the subsequent 67 years” — and after Jon Stewart cited that declare on The Every day Present — the fact-checking website PolitiFact dinged Historical past Channel with a “Pants on Hearth” ranking. The truth is, the location added, the Home of Representatives and the Senate met on Christmas Day simply as soon as every throughout Congress’ first 68 years.
An embarrassed Stewart later addressed the Pants on Hearth ranking on air. “Apparently the clip we confirmed was off by round 66 years!” he mentioned. “After all, it’s my fault for trusting one thing referred to as the Historical past Channel! You understand, with details about issues that occurred previously. The following factor , we’ll all discover out the Nazis didn’t make use of alien know-how of their quest for world domination. You understand what, Historical past Channel? You will have f***** me for the final time!”
2012: The Males Who Constructed America glorifies industrialists and ignores everybody else
With dramatic reenactments and commentary from modern-day businessmen like Donald Trump and Russell Simmons, Historical past Channel’s The Males Who Constructed America advised the story of how Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and Henry Ford led their enterprise empires.
And as critics identified, the four-part docudrama appeared all too able to have fun the success of wealthy white males of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “Probably the most curious issues about Historical past’s new miniseries The Males Who Constructed America are proper there within the title: the notions that males alone constructed America, that America was primarily crafted by its industrialists, and that infrastructure is ‘constructed’ by the businessmen somewhat than the employees,” wrote NPR’s Linda Holmes.
Added The Dialog’s Anjali Vats, “The present’s use of the Nice Man idea of inventorship and entrepreneurship leaves out the numerous ladies and folks of colour, together with Thomas Jennings, Elijah McCoy, Miriam E. Benjamin and Sarah E. Goode who … not solely invented and patented throughout the identical interval however … used their work to foyer for suffrage rights for girls and folks of colour.”
2013: The Bible viewers assume the miniseries’ Devil character seems to be like President Barack Obama
When Historical past Channel aired The Bible in 2013, viewers — together with Fox Information vet Glenn Beck and CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer — thought that the miniseries’ Devil character, performed by Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni, bore a hanging resemblance to then-President Barack Obama. The hashtag #ObamaIsNotSatan even trended worldwide on Twitter, per The Washington Publish.
In an announcement, Historical past Channel mentioned it had “the best respect for President Obama” and that it was “unlucky that anybody made this false connection.” Even so, Historical past Channel wiped photographs Ouazzani in character from its web site, and when producers turned The Bible right into a function movie referred to as Son of God, they left the Devil character on the chopping room flooring, per The Guardian.
2015: TV particular Breaking Historical past: Bigfoot Captured particular fools viewers
As Snopes reviews, the 2015 Historical past Channel particular Breaking Historical past: Bigfoot Captured was positioned as a documentary that, in keeping with its synopsis, “takes an surprising flip when a Sasquatch seize is caught on digicam.” Nevertheless, a short on-air disclaimer talked about the particular would function “some dramatization,” the credit listed actors as Bigfoot hunters, and, because it turned out, Idaho State College engineers created a Bigfoot skeleton for the present.
“The truth that you’ve networks equivalent to Historical past Channel, Discovery, and Animal Planet willfully and consciously planting falsehoods into the minds of their viewers is totally shameful,” Paste’s Jim Vorel wrote the night time after Bigfoot Captured’s airing. “There’s no different phrase for it. The individuals concerned must be ashamed of themselves as a result of they’re inflicting very actual, literal hurt. They’re actively performing the polemic reverse of their community’s said operate.”
2017: Historical past Channel’s Amelia Earhart documentary is discredited nearly instantly, then pulled
The Historical past Channel documentary Amelia Earhart: The Misplaced Proof claimed that Earhart had survived a crash touchdown and been captured by the Japanese army, and for proof, the present banked on a photograph purportedly displaying famed aviator Amelia Earhart after her 1937 disappearance.
Two days after the airing, nonetheless, a Japanese army historical past blogger famous that the photograph had a publication date of 1935 in Japan’s Nationwide Eating regimen Library, as NPR reported on the time.
Within the wake of that discovering, Historical past Channel vowed to research the {photograph} and determined to cancel re-airings of the particular and take away the present from on-demand and streaming platforms, Selection reported.
As researcher Ben Radford put it, “The {photograph}’s provenance was established — and thus the important thing premise of the present discredited — in about half an hour of Google looking.”