Last night I was up very late while I worked on a problem with some of my research. In order to stay awake I clicked on the television and put it on TLC-- The Learning Channel. I used to watch it more often. What I found on this channel bothered me.
What on earth happened?
Long ago I would find biographies, documentaries, destination shows exploring interesting places I might like to travel. What I found on the new TLC was reality television of the worst sort, and that is saying quite a bit.
The wife found this quite funny, since she watches TLC a lot. She likes LA Ink, which might be interesting if it were less concerned with the bickering of its employees. She enjoys Celebrity Rehab, also.
Last night The "Learning" channel featured a show about self centered women picking out over-priced wedding dresses, another show about pageants for children that can't possibly be legal, and advertisements for the couple with the octuplets who are getting divorced.
What has any of this to do with learning?
I still find some things on History and National Geographic worth watching. Even the Travel Channel, though, now has ghost shows, which have nothing to do with traveling. Ghosts can't even find the white light. I'm not taking their travel tips.
Now Sci Fi, which at least had some decent entertainment, has begun to spell itself incorrectly so that it can show fat men on steroids wrestling.
What I'd like to know is why I am paying for a thousand channels, all of which seem determined to show me reality programming with emotionally stunted adults behaving badly? It feels a great deal like false advertising all around.
Labels: awful television, learning channel, sci fi, sy fy
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