Decreasing standard of Science Channels.

AI Thread Summary
The discussion highlights a perceived decline in the quality of science programming on channels like Animal Planet and National Geographic, with a shift towards sensationalism and entertainment over educational content. Viewers express frustration over the repetitive focus on dramatic wildlife scenes, particularly in the African savanna, and the prevalence of reality-style shows that lack scientific rigor. There is a nostalgic longing for the informative documentaries of the past, such as those by Sir David Attenborough, contrasting them with today's programming that often features pseudo-science and superficial content. Participants also note the impact of consumerism on television, leading to a proliferation of low-quality shows that prioritize ratings over educational value. Overall, there is a strong sentiment that current science channels have strayed from their original purpose of educating the public.
mishrashubham
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I remember many years ago, as a little kid, I used to watch a hell lot of National Geographic and Animal Planet. Those were some excellent documentaries and watching them was what got me interested in science and especially life sciences. But for the past few years I have been observing a steady decline in the quality of these shows, especially Animal Planet.

Almost all that ever comes on Animal Planet these days is the African Savanna. And that too mainly lions, cheetahs or crocodiles. Even among lions it is mostly scenes from their hunting and dinner time. It feels like an entertainment show these days. Is it because people enjoy watching hunting and and biting and fighting and gory things like that.

And why only the African savanna? There are thousands of places where you could find interesting animals. The problem is that it is difficult to capture animals on camera in such places. In Africa you could see miles away and easily photograph animals once you spot them while in the jungle, you may pass by a tiger a metre away and you won't have a clue.

This is what the people there say-

The goal is to move from being perceived by viewers as paternalistic, preachy, and observation-based to being seen as active, entertaining and edgy. That means targeting adults 25-49, rather than full families, with less voice-of-God narration and more visceral imagery and sounds. Think of it as swapping a drab narrator saying that a lion is about to kill its prey for the blood-curdling scream of the doomed creature as it meets its demise.
—Anne Becker, Broadcasting & Cable
*source-wikipedia


And that is their new motto. I really miss Sir Attenborough's documentaries. Anybody else also laments this loss?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
I don't have a TV anymore, but before I ditched it I was amazed at what passes as "science" shows these days. Nostradamus, "famous" haunted houses, prophesies from the Mayan calendar...sigh.
 
TV these days is popular consumerist crap. It would take three monkeys with a broken typewriter ten minutes to come up with most of the stuff today.
 
I am annoyed at the state of current television.

As Lisa said, 2012 crap on the history channel! I don't want to see a moron with a modified Oscilloscope probing a well on a "haunted" cemetery. "Oh, did you feel that cold chill?"

Another annoyance is the need for reality style shows based on menial jobs. I don't want to see another season of "guy surviving in wild/people fishing/guys digging for gold" for god sakes!

While not a "science" channel per se., why is the SyFy channel playing wrestling?


I find better programming on PBS, my local university channel, Discovery (at like 4am), and on NOVA's website (They stream all of their shows).
 
Ancient Aliens, Armageddon Week, Haunted animals, hunting chupacabra, sasquatch, etc...,

Oprah bought Discovery health channel.
 
magazine_dispatch_1020_jpg_445x1000_upscale_q85.jpg


Couldn't find a higher res...
 
  • #10
Ugh, I couldn't agree more!
From time to time, a Science/Discovery/History Channel show title catches my eye.
But after 5 minutes I can't stand it anymore, so I fast forward through the whole thing, screaming profanities at the top of my lungs.
Really, it's my own fault for repeating this mistake.
 
  • #11
I do like Morgan Freeman's "Through the wormhole". Though I am not sure if it's the show that catches my attention or if I just like listening to his voice. I think that is a good example of a science show done right, while remaining in "laymans" terms. Similarly, I like the show that Hawking did a while back, covering the universe in a broad, general sense.

More like that, less "Junkyard Wars!™". As if I believe that blue team was lucky enough to find 10 perfectly functional induction fans in a junkyard for their hovercraft...
 
  • #12
Quality programming costs money to produce. Crap is cheap, and the cable channels seem to want to take that road.

I let my neighbors borrow my Planet Earth DVD set, and the little grand-daughters loved it. Every night after school, they'd do their homework and then could watch an episode before bed-time. I should lend them the set again, since they are now a year older.
 
  • #13
Planet Earth was awesome. These channels (Disc. Science. Hist) do have some good programming. It's the stuff that leaks into syndication that is bothersome. Discovery has a test run of "Guys crab fishing", and for reasons unknown to me, people watch it. So, discovery buys up "Guys crab fishing 2: Electric Boogaloo" and syndicates season 1 to Science, TLC, and such. Next thing you know, every channel is populated with "Guys crab fishing" and "Guys <other sea creature> fishing".

I simply don't understand how these shows keep making money? My thought is that perhaps parents home in the afternoon put the television on something "educational" while their children play.
 
  • #14
Go to the nearest shopping location and look at the people there. You will have your answer.
 
  • #15
I've watched one 'science' programme in the last year and I gave up after ten minutes when they stated "an aircraft descending quickly cancels out gravity allowing the occupants to feel weightless."

I was literally shouting at the TV "it's free fall you morons if it wasn't for gravity you wouldn't get it!".

They take an event that has absolutely no effect on gravity and suddenly it's cancelling it out. No wonder people are so stupid.

Is there a reason they can't describe what is actually happening or are people really so clueless they need to think gravity buggers off every time a plane descends?
 
  • #16
JaredJames said:
... "an aircraft descending quickly cancels out gravity allowing the occupants to feel weightless."...



I bet they think that air has to go faster over the upper surface of an airfoil so that the air over the lower surface meets up with the air over the upper surface at the trailing edge. :rolleyes:
 
  • #17
JaredJames said:
I've watched one 'science' programme in the last year and I gave up after ten minutes when they stated "an aircraft descending quickly cancels out gravity allowing the occupants to feel weightless."

I was literally shouting at the TV "it's free fall you morons if it wasn't for gravity you wouldn't get it!".

They take an event that has absolutely no effect on gravity and suddenly it's cancelling it out. No wonder people are so stupid.

Is there a reason they can't describe what is actually happening or are people really so clueless they need to think gravity buggers off every time a plane descends?

it seems to be a statement about the illusion of weightlessnes relative to the plane. if we made a giant sling shot you could get the same "feeling" at the apex. note the "feel" part. i doubt they were actually trying to imply gravity no longer exists.
 
  • #18
Darken-Sol said:
it seems to be a statement about the illusion of weightlessnes relative to the plane. if we made a giant sling shot you could get the same "feeling" at the apex. note the "feel" part. i doubt they were actually trying to imply gravity no longer exists.

If the public are too thick to understand the concept of free fall, the last thing you want to do is tell them how to cancel out gravity. See what I'm saying.

You certainly aren't cancelling out gravity. You're using it to produce the feeling.
 
  • #19
JaredJames said:
If the public are too thick to understand the concept of free fall, the last thing you want to do is tell them how to cancel out gravity. See what I'm saying.

You certainly aren't cancelling out gravity. You're using it to produce the feeling.

i feel you. this maybe off what were talking about, but even at the tensor point gravity is still not canceled it is more balanced, correct?
 
  • #20
About that picture, here's a higher resolution:

onionmagazine_1020article.jpg
 
  • #21
  • #23
Anyone remember when "The Learning Channel" was about learning? Now that it's "TLC" aka "Total Lack of Content", it's filled with shows like "Say yes to the dress", "What not to wear" and "Cake Boss: Baby Special".

A&E "Arts and Entertainment" started as a network for the classics in literature and film, now it's "Dog, the bounty hunter" and reruns of "CSI: Miami".
 
  • #24
Well Discovery now shows nothing but Future Weapons, Tank / Aircraft Battles, combined with a seemingly endless supply on how bad the Nazi's were. There's "new evidence" coming out every week.
 
  • #25
JaredJames said:
Well Discovery now shows nothing but Future Weapons, Tank / Aircraft Battles, combined with a seemingly endless supply on how bad the Nazi's were. There's "new evidence" coming out every week.

Exactly. It was interesting when they aired "Dogfights" on The History Channel, but after that every other show was all about weapons and frontline machines etc.
 
  • #27
QuarkCharmer said:
IAs Lisa said, 2012 crap on the history channel!.

I stopped watching the History Channel in around 2000 when "Biography" did one hour on The Virgin Mary. There were supposedly two tenuous "facts" known and they made the thing last an hour.
 
  • #28
whatever happened to bill nye the science guy? science rules
 
  • #29
Darken-Sol said:
whatever happened to bill nye the science guy? science rules

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.

Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.

This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarrassment.

http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content...acbillnye.html
 
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  • #30
then what he became a leper?
 
  • #31
Darken-Sol said:
whatever happened to bill nye the science guy? science rules

I hear him quite a lot, he does radio commercials here in the Seattle area.
 
  • #32
Alfi said:
Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.

Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.

This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarrassment.

http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content...acbillnye.html
To put that in some context, he was specifically criticizing Genesis 1:16, which is no doubt what the audience members were reacting to. It wasn't the fact that the moon reflects light that they objected to, but that he claimed this was a contradiction of the Bible.
http://digg.com/news/story/Bill_Nye_Booed_in_Waco_for_pointing_out_Moon_reflects_the_Sun
 
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  • #33
Galteeth said:
To put that in some context, he was specifically criticizing Genesis 1:16, which is no doubt what the audience members were reacting to. It wasn't the fact that the moon reflects light that they objected to, but that he claimed this was a contradiction of the Bible.
It is a contradiction/correction.
 
  • #34
Really, it doesn't contradict the Bible at all unless every verse is taken literally. The moon, as essentially a giant mirror, could be considered a secondary source of light.
 
  • #35
Char. Limit said:
Really, it doesn't contradict the Bible at all unless every verse is taken literally. The moon, as essentially a giant mirror, could be considered a secondary source of light.

Exactly that's the point. Ancient texts are not meant to be taken literally. You are supposed to interpret it metaphorically.
 
  • #36
But the people that take offense do take the bible literally.
 
  • #37
Evo said:
But the people that take offense do take the bible literally.

And that is what is causing the science-religion incompatibility.
 
  • #38
I wonder if they weren't offended by his claims about the Moon and light so much as they were offended by his invoking the Bible.

In a sense, he's kind of doing the very thing we science-peeps always scream bloody murder about: mixing science and belief.

They may have been perfectly happy to follow his science lesson if he hadn't tried to tie it to the Bible, which they may well have interpreted as an attempt to discredit it. One wonders what, if not a shot at the bible, his intentions were in bringing it up.
 
  • #39
DaveC426913 said:
I wonder if they weren't offended by his claims about the Moon and light so much as they were offended by his invoking the Bible.

In a sense, he's kind of doing the very thing we science-peeps always scream bloody murder about: mixing science and belief.

They may have been perfectly happy to follow his science lesson if he hadn't tried to tie it to the Bible, which they may well have interpreted as an attempt to discredit it. One wonders what, if not a shot at the bible, his intentions were in bringing it up.

I agree. It was unnecessary and, frankly, he should have known better.
 
  • #40
(*ignoring bible discussion*)

I never enjoyed Bill Nye. I prefer serious documentaries (i.e. not targeted for children).

I really used to love Lonely Planet by Ian Wright on Discovery (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDn-cDm3kUk&feature=relmfu, ), Animal documentaries on Discovery, and Cultural documentaries on Nat Geo.

Few of things I hate about current shows are that hosts come out as quite arrogant and self-experts (this is also the reason I don't like American movies).
 
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  • #41
The great thing about watching Bill Nye in grade school was that you just had to fill in an easy worksheet on the video, and not do any real work. :-p
 
  • #42
jhae2.718 said:
The great thing about watching Bill Nye in grade school was that you just had to fill in an easy worksheet on the video, and not do any real work. :-p

I also had to do that, it was a torture!
 
  • #43
rootX said:
I also had to do that, it was a torture!

It beat doing vocabulary definitions, as if mindlessly copying down the glossary taught something...

I hated the stupid music videos in Bill Nye's show. And the stupid, stereotypical portrayal of scientists.
 
  • #44
jhae2.718 said:
It beat doing vocabulary definitions, as if mindlessly copying down the glossary taught something...

I hated the stupid music videos in Bill Nye's show. And the stupid, stereotypical portrayal of scientists.

Well, it was on TV. What did you expect? Realistic portrayals? No one would watch it.
 
  • #45
rootX said:
(*ignoring bible discussion*)

I never enjoyed Bill Nye. I prefer serious documentaries (i.e. not targeted for children).

I really used to love Lonely Planet by Ian Wright on Discovery (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDn-cDm3kUk&feature=relmfu, ), Animal documentaries on Discovery, and Cultural documentaries on Nat Geo.


The only recent documentaries worthy of being watched would be the "Life" Series by BBC.
 
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  • #46
Drakkith said:
Well, it was on TV. What did you expect? Realistic portrayals? No one would watch it.

Touché.
 
  • #47
Drakkith said:
Well, it was on TV..
.. in the physics classes!

mishrashubham said:
The only recent documentaries worthy of being watched would be the "Life" Series by BBC.
BBC does a phenomenal job on everything. I don't have a TV but I love clips of many BBC documentaries.
 
  • #48
I hate how science documentaries sensualize everything! I mean pointing out the epicness is something but to do it just for the money sucks, they actually show the Hutchinson effect as a real thing!
 
  • #49
Bill Nye goes swing dancing almost every Thursday night in Pasadena. :)
 
  • #50
Superposed_Cat said:
I hate how science documentaries sensualize everything! I mean pointing out the epicness is something but to do it just for the money sucks, they actually show the Hutchinson effect as a real thing!

I think you mean 'sensationalize'. If the sci channels 'sensualized' everything, there would be more nekkid people on these programs.
 

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