OT--Is it just me...

[afspret]

...or does there seem to be more non-military related shows being broadcast on The Military Channel lately?

[RevRick]

Yup!

[Terminus]

Well, duh... They took them off the Discovery Channel, they took them off the History Channel, why should they keep them on the Military Channel?

[mbar]

Can't say I've noticed that but it could be coming.

Next on Dog the Bounty Hunter.. Watch Dog and his crew look pensive, hanging onto their door handles as they drive to their next gig..I mean.. fugitive.

[Chickenboy]

I think the Military Channel is making the same mistake that the Discovery Channel and the History Channel have made in the past. Namely, 'leveraging' the very strong adult male 25-45 YO demographic into other entertainment with broader viewer base and higher revenue (read: advertisement) opportunity.

Memo to the Military Channel: We watch your channel because of military interest. Full stop. Getting away from this programming will not 'convert' us to your low budget-high profit reality tripe that you're substituting.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Well, duh... They took them off the Discovery Channel, they took them off the History Channel, why should they keep them on the Military Channel?

Yep... "Discovery Civilizations" was OK few years ago... now when it become "Discovery World" I can't even remember the last time I watched it... the "History Channel" is also declining... [:(]


Leo "Apollo11"

[Misconduct]

Military channel has been a joke lately, if they don't run the same program over and over every week, its something not even relevant to the military.
History channel few weeks ago had a week worth of crap on aliens, what or how is this tied to history? Lately I only watch history channel for Axe men - a show about logging which is not even tied to history either.

[USSAmerica]

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Well, duh... They took them off the Discovery Channel, they took them off the History Channel, why should they keep them on the Military Channel?

Yep... "Discovery Civilizations" was OK few years ago... now when it become "Discovery World" I can't even remember the last time I watched it... the "History Channel" is also declining... [:(]


Leo "Apollo11"

My lovely wife actually turns on the History Channel more than I do. I love her!!! But, both of us will race to change the channel when the stupid pawn shop show starts to come on.

[usersatch]

I like the military channel for its historical programs, but they run them wayyy too much.  I know there isnt a whole lot of mainstream stuff out there, but I know there are some really cool (=boring to most) documentaries available that they could run.  MC bugs me with all of the supercarrier, marine boot camp, ex-navy seal bald guys shooting guns.  Again, already seen it a thousand times.  It would be neat if MC could show military movies (they do rarely), but I'm sure there all sorts of $$ issues to deal with if they did that.
 
I liked Special Ops Mission, though. I hope they renew it. My Ranger buddy knows "whisky whisky" and says he is a trip.
 
Ax Men rules! I'm so glad Browning won--he's the definition of a good boss.

[Zemke]

The "history" in most of the HC's line up is sadly lacking, and seems poorly researched, and the military channel has the same poorly researched military history. I don't know how many times I have heard these statements, "If only Germany had built a 4E long range bomber.....", or "Germany used Blitzkrieg to over run _____....".
(1) German's Air Force was designed to support ground operations, it was a Tactical Air Force, and NEVER intended to do strategic bombing, part of the reason it faired so poorly in the Battle of Britain, trying to do something it was not designed to do. This is a case of super simplicity, and shows the tendency of People, (Americans, who made the show), to take the view point from their own historical background, in other words, "the US Air Corps did it, so the Germans should have done it too, and if only they had....oh my". It also ignores the fact that Germany simple could not afford to build 4E bombers and have any hope of maintaining their other units at strength, and long range heavy bombing was not part of their doctrine. It took the Allies literally thousands of bombers to have any kind of real effects on Germany and then not until late 1944. So the very idea is ridiculous in the extreme.
(2) "Blitzkrieg", is combined arms tactics, integrating close air support, with the concepts of WW I deep infiltration tactics used by the Stormtroopers in the later stages of WWI, but applied to mobile forces. Every time I hear the term blitzkrieg used on TV, it is like fingernails on a chalk board, using a term coined by the British press in 1940 to describe the synchronization of land and air units to take advantages of each strengths so the sum is greater than the whole, is very simplistic and does not lead to understanding of what the Germans were really doing. In a nut shell, the term describes nothing to the layman viewer.

[Yank]

3:30 Monday I am home sick from work - don't feel like playing AE so I check out the three channels that I always go to first. Here's what's on:

History Channel - Monster Quest
History Channel International - Haunted History
Military Channel - Futureweapons, something about a gun that can shoot around corners that's been on a million times and that I could not care less about.

Pathetic. Why do I even bother checking?

Nap time.

[YankeeAirRat]

I will say this as well. How many different shows can you make on Pearl Harbor, D-Day, SEALs, Aircraft Carriers, Battle of the Bulge, Rangers, etc. Before you just start to over cover it. How many shows can you do on the USS Iowa, SMS Bismarck, USS Enterprise, RMS Titantic, before you start getting deperate on how to cover it that you spend a whole epsoide on the arguements of how the deck chairs were arranged?
What about all those "future" shows? I mean I found online someplace that had the old documentary "In Search of..." There was one that covered about how the computers were going to evolve from full room to half room and the hope was by the 21st century they were going to be desk top sized, they talked about having self driving cars by 2000, space travel, etc. Ditto with future weapons, I mean I have some place that Clancy non-fiction that the future of the Armored Cav was going to be XM8 AGS and other air mobile armored cars. I have a book someplace written in the mid-70's that talked the future of the USAF by the mid-80's was going to be V/STOL (with a picture of an F-16 and F-15 doing the V/STOL thing) and the ATF/ATB was a picture of the sky that had a slight airplane outline to represent the totally invisiable stealth airplane.

There comes a point when these specialized channels just run out of material to cover. So how soon till they run out of material? I mean even the CSPAN has to yield to running book reviews/lectures/seminars when there isn't specialized politico things to show. Heck even main ESPN has taken at times to run some ESPN 8 level sports on slow sports days, I mean honestly do I really need to see competative eating, adult league kickball, or some high school level football game?

[USSAmerica]

YankeeAirRat, you're pretty close to the bulls eye on this one, I think.  With 500 channels to pick from, there's a lot of air time to fill up.  I'm sure lots of people would say there are too many channels, and they should eliminate some of them and condense the programming.  I'd rather go the other way, and keep the "theme" of the channel intact, even if it means repeating some programming after a few weeks/months/years.  I'd watch a show about WWII for the 5th time before I'd watch a single episode of Pawn Shop Crap.  

[Knavey]

Hmmm...never seen a show about any of the BORKED threads. Some of them would make great shows...well, except for maybe the Cheap Dunk Shoes thread. [:D]

[YankeeAirRat]

Knavey,

The problem is you have the esotric attraction to the history thing. I mean a show about the Honda Point incident would be interesting. Let alone things such as the SS Ohio's run to Malta. I would love to see a re-issue of LCDR John Morrill's book on his escape from the PI and that would make an interesting mini-series or even movie. What about the USS Edsall, the US PT boats that were in running gun battles with German E-boats and Italian MTB's in the Med, the Naval war in the Baltic during WW2. Those are interesting adventures in history and if you told people this story they would believe you were speaking about a fictional event. However as the USNI has debated over at thier blog, History and US History seems too boring and most people don't want to learn about some of these interesting stories.

[Zemke]

I agree, and more interesting as long as they tell the correct story....lol, I'll now get off my soap box.

[steamboateng]

The most interesting spot on any of the History/Discovery Channels recently, was the commercial with the young lass attached to the back of a pick-up truck, then suddenly being released, to 'sling-shot' back and forth 'tween two posts with bungi chords (?) !!
Looks like fun.
Think they were Texans? Loosianans????

[morganbj]

Actually, that's near Huntsville, Alabama. With the impending budget cuts and mission shift for NASA, they've had to resort to less costly astronaut training techniques. I just hope that the rubber band is not really the new Russian lauch vehicle NASA keeps talking about sending the astronauts up in.

[Grit]

ORIGINAL: Zemke_4

I agree, and more interesting as long as they tell the correct story....lol, I'll now get off my soap box.

What's the correct story?

History is always going to be presented with a certain bias depending on who is telling the story or presenting the facts. Ordinary people, historians, television producers, and countries (military and political leaders) are all going to have a certain agenda. No matter who is making the presentation it has to be received with a filter.

Your idea of the "correct story" may be totally different then my idea, and both may be different then what actually happened. Two people who witnessed the exact same incident may have two different versions of the correct story.

I love watching WWII military history documentaries as much as the next guy. But I always wonder what it would be like if a group sympathetic to Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan produced it instead of the BBC. I wonder too how history might be different if 10 years after the war Hitler or Tojo had been able to sit down and tell us their version of history.

[morganbj]

ORIGINAL: Grit
I wonder too how history might be different if 10 years after the war Hitler or Tojo had been able to sit down and tell us their version of history.

I would have been clueless since I don't speak Japanese. [:D]