TLC was born out of the intention to transmit helpful, educational information to the people in the Appalachian mountains.
now it exclusively does the opposite lol
Before the alien show, I remember it being colloquially known as “The Hitler Channel” because it was non-stop WW2 documentaries. As if no other history existed.
That was The History Channel, which mostly existed to monetize old documentaries and whose producers quickly realized WW2 was the most watched material.
TLC was a non profit distance learning initiative set up in 1972 by the Appalachian Regional Commission in partnership with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and NASA. It was privatized in '86, first by the Financial News Network’s $3M takeover bid and then by The Discovery Channel five years later. This second sale set of a period of reorganizing around Reality TV that would become it’s Hallmark in the '00s
For me TLC are 3 African American ladies warning people not to chase waterfalls.
I remember both of those going downhill in real time but the one that hit me the hardest was Discovery Channel. One day it was Bill Nye, Mythbusters, Shark Week, and science documentaries and the next it was Pawn Stars, Swamp Loggers, and American Chopper. At least we got a nice meme template out of that last one.
mythbuster was the last show i was addicted to discovery for, anything after that is unknown to me.
I miss the fun shark week
mythbusters was the last good show on the channel.
I think Ancient Aliens and other similar shows did much more dirty work.
Yeah. Swamp Loggers was okay (at least interesting and sort-of fit the theme of the channel) but the rest definitely were a jarring shift to lazy reality shows.
Deadliest Catch was pretty fantastic, but I don’t remember exactly when it came into the picture.
Oh man loved dirty jobs that was an excellent look into the way of the working mans world.
too bad MIKE ROWE is looney trumper after '16.
Deadliest Catch started when those other shows were still on, and the first bunch of seasons were good. In more recent years, the “will they find crab” story was getting too repetitive, so now they’re manufacturing storylines. I had to stop watching a few seasons ago because the bad acting from fishermen was just too cringy. I would lump it in with the other reality shows now.
Sounds about right. I dropped cable in 2010 or thereabouts so probably right around the time that shifted.
Lmao that show is still going?
considering crabs are suffering some population decline in recent years, i dont know how long they can keep that show up.
American Chopper … that was supposed to just be a show about building bikes, but on day one, the Pauls had one of their legendary disagreements. They didn’t have to script, the drama just wrote itself. Everyone jumped on the reality tv bandwagon to try and recreate the popularity of watching Paul Drama, Inc.
It also made for great memes.
they destroyed SYFY over this, when they added WWE to syfy channel it was over.
The SciFi channel died the day they became the Syfy channel. It may have already been dead by then.
9/11 did it.
People wanted fluff all the sudden for some reason.
I thought idiocracy was supposed to take 500 years
The board decided to roll it out early to increase shareholder value.
Yup, no science on the science channel, no history on the history, no music on music television, nothing true on true TV…
Time to make a PopcornTime-style program that recreates the channels by torrenting actual science, history, music programs?
no scifi on the scifi channel, fake wrestling and reality shows.
Is there another version of wrestling that I’m not familiar with? Is fake wrestling just normal wrestling like AEW or whatever?
Don’t tell me that you don’t consider Chanel West Coast’s dolphin laugh music to your ears
Never heard of it so I looked it up. Yeah, as I thought, completely stupid.
But Sci Fi on the Sci Fi-Channel
Eh, it’s mostly fantasy.
Keep it above the waistline.
tlc had all the og my strange addiction, before that show got all proposterous with the kind of addicitons to be real.
My girlfriend at that time called it the Hitlery channel
All Hitler, all the time
The worst part is when you do see something that seems like a legit history show, towards the end it’s like “but what if it was aliens??”
Bamboozle me once, shame on you. Bamboozle me four or more times, shame on me.
Shame me 4 times? Shame on you for picking on a vulnerable man.
😂
First it was The History Channel … then it became alien conspiracy channel … then it morphed into the War Channel.
In my day TLC was Tender Loving Care, then it was T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli warning about the dangers of chasing waterfalls.
In my day it was tables, ladders, and chairs!
Oh my!
Milf Manor
I had to look it up, it’s real. I’m not even surprised.
Not to be confused with MILF Island which was a fake show on “30 Rock” that was intended to be so over-the-top trashy no could assume it was real.
There was a time when satire was effective at mocking the world at large. Absurdism is kinda the new satire, because we need an extra dose of weird with our cultural commentary
Pretty sure this is to promote Milf Manor…
Most definitely not lol. It was just the worst semi-recent example I could think of. Is that show even still on?
There hasn’t been a third season, sadly
“Sadly” lol
(I dunno, I’ve never seen it but it just does not sound like compelling television to me)
First season was so embarrassing and cringy that I really enjoyed it
I can see that. Kinda like only enjoying the first 1/3 of each season of American Idol.
all in jest, I lol’d…
Hey they occasionaly have Nazi documentaries and sometimes even branch out into Bigfoot.
it was originally suppose to be mostly about ww2 /cold war docs and any history docs, but it quickly switched to "cryptid/extinct animals, at least that was still pretty entertaining.
Tables, Ladders, Chairs
I used to watch Connections on the Learning version.
I don’t remember that one.
Is it this one? If so, that was before my time which might explain it.
In particular I think it was Connections2 in 1994, probably some Connections3.
Triple-level cell
