[78-L] History Defectives redux

[Donna Halper]

I'm not gonna defend or denigrate shows like the History Detectives-- 
having been on one of the similar shows (Modern Marvels, on the History 
Channel-- and I believe Mike Biel was on one of these shows too, as were 
several other list-members).  My own experience, after years in 
broadcasting, is these programs are often intentionally superficial and 
their narrative is always structured to create some sort of conflict, 
real or artificially designed, which then allows the narrator and 
his/her staff to solve it in a certain number of steps (was the item 
stolen? Is this some hidden fact about the story that the item's owner 
will be shocked to learn?  Will the audience be stunned to find out X 
about the item?).   After all, it is supposed to be a detective show, 
with an educational purpose.  PBS and History Channel have the same 
problems-- they rely on a small group of experts whom they regard as 
photogenic and able to speak well on TV; they set up the plot and then 
find characters to fill the narrative they've decided on.

I was on History Channel in 2001 speaking about the history of car 
radios, and was told they were gonna give all the credit to Motorola and 
Paul Galvin.  Now, I like Motorola just fine, but I had documented 
evidence of earlier (and successful) efforts to create car radios-- but 
the folks at the History Channel did not seem terribly interested.  They 
let me mention them in passing, but their narrative was set, and that's 
how they told it.  I found the segment on History Detectives last night 
to be predictable in many ways-- they set up the conflict, they followed 
the steps, the narrator was suitably surprised and/or shocked by what he 
learned (even though to experts, it all seemed rather obvious), the 
person whose item it was found the information fascinating and was 
appreciative that the mystery was solved.  These shows are, after all, 
entertainment (even on a network supposedly aimed towards an educated 
audience), so they tend not to go very deeply into the nuts and bolts of 
it all, the way we on this list would do. Network execs want the show to 
be mass-appeal, which attracts advertisers or corporate underwriters.  
But yes, if they have egregious errors, we certainly ought to let them 
know-- I doubt, however, that their focus will change much, since they 
believe that they have a winning formula.