There is some romanticisation of the past going on when you dismiss the Discovery channel as infotainment. I don't mean that it isn't infotainment, but what's wrong with that. TV has worked as an educator though it doesn't resemble University.
Ordinary TV watching people have a much broader mental scope -- spanning the globe than their ancestors did. They do better on IQ tests. The TV shows they watch are more complex than the Vauderville shows of old.
> There is some romanticisation of the past going on when you dismiss the Discovery channel as infotainment.
Today's Discovery Channel (and History Channel, and TLC, etc) - are vastly different than what they were when they started. All have definitely "dumbed down" to the LCD.
I understand that this is normal change for a business, especially one centered around TV entertainment. I also know that even in their prime, these channels were never as educational as, say, PBS and the like. But compared to today's programming, their earlier incarnation was vastly superior.
> Today's Discovery Channel (and History Channel, and TLC, etc) - are vastly different than what they were when they started. All have definitely "dumbed down" to the LCD.
While with "educational" channels it.comes off as dumbing down, there's a broader effect of appealing to narrow groups that drive popularity and then moving on to appeal to the masses. Outside of TLC/Discovery/History you can see this in Food Network (where the cooking slowly migrated to the Cooking Channel -- typically on more expensive cable tiers) while Food Network was taken over by food tourism shows, advertorial series, and reality/competition shows; MTV, where the music keot migrating to subordinate channels while the main channel was taken over by non-music reality/competition programming, and lots of other outlets.
Ordinary TV watching people have a much broader mental scope -- spanning the globe than their ancestors did. They do better on IQ tests. The TV shows they watch are more complex than the Vauderville shows of old.