The of Documentary Broadcasting
Nov. 11th, 2008 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinToday's discovery: There's a Smithsonian Channel.
It was on the TV in the common area, which I walked past twice today – once it was showing something about the Enola Gay with possible shots of Area 51*, and the second was a program about Kamikaze. Both of them had plain archived or recreated footage intercut with old men talking in a well-lit simple studio, not a splashy graphic or stylized video montage between them. What is this madness?
Please, Smithsonian Channel, don't tread the same path as The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel (which now, like the KFC urban legend, goes by its initials because it no longer contains actual Learning), which even PBS is tiptoeing down in an attempt to make programs it can sell on to the lowest-common-denominator cable channels. Remain a sanctuary for those refugees of the dumbing-down! You have a lofty name to live up to, don't betray it!
*It was in my professional interest for a while to know as much as I could about what the area around Area 51 looked like. I am not at liberty to discuss this.
It was on the TV in the common area, which I walked past twice today – once it was showing something about the Enola Gay with possible shots of Area 51*, and the second was a program about Kamikaze. Both of them had plain archived or recreated footage intercut with old men talking in a well-lit simple studio, not a splashy graphic or stylized video montage between them. What is this madness?
Please, Smithsonian Channel, don't tread the same path as The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel (which now, like the KFC urban legend, goes by its initials because it no longer contains actual Learning), which even PBS is tiptoeing down in an attempt to make programs it can sell on to the lowest-common-denominator cable channels. Remain a sanctuary for those refugees of the dumbing-down! You have a lofty name to live up to, don't betray it!
*It was in my professional interest for a while to know as much as I could about what the area around Area 51 looked like. I am not at liberty to discuss this.
