# Ancients Behaving Badly



## StreamOfTheSky (Nov 14, 2009)

Newish show on the History Channel friday nights I just discovered.  I'm mostly looking forward to 12-11-09, when my hero and role model, Genghis Khan, is featured.  Though, the next week Alexander the Great is up, which will be interesting.  In school I only learned about how genius he was and all his accomplishments and spreading of Greek culture.  Since then, I've learned he was actually quite the sick , crazily killing his best friend in a dispute,  and allegedly even enjoyed hunting down and killing defenseless enemies like they were game animals, so...I'm curious to see how they portray him.

Oh, right...about the show.  Seems the schtick of the series is evaluating if a demonized historical figure was truly evil, and if so...grading him, utilitarian style!  I like ancient/medieval history, I like evil, and I like hedonic calculus exercises to over-simplify morality, so it's a triple win in my book!  

Tonight was Attila the Hun, and he wound up (spoiler!) being rated fairly evil due to no real goal or plan other than plundering and killing as its own end.  Which led me to believe that in the creators' eyes, killing "for a purpose" makes you slightly less evil.  These guys are Machievelli fans, too?  This show must've been MADE for me!

If you've watched the more recent ancient history series on the channel, you're probably familiar with the CGI renderings of the people being covered, often portrayed as ridiculously muscular and badass.  Well, in this series it looks like they went for a more cartoony, simplistic art style which I actually enjoyed much more than the Battles B.C. alternative.  Then again, I like anime and am comfortable with cell-shaded graphics, as well as old-school 2D video games.  The visuals weren't quite like any of those per say...but they were...similar.  Hard to describe.  In any case, the show was fairly informative and entertaining, I recommend checking it out.  Anyone else seen it so far?


----------



## Orius (Nov 14, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> I'm mostly looking forward to 12-11-09, when my hero and role model, Genghis Khan, is featured.




I think I'll invite you onto my friend list for that comment.  heh.



> Though, the next week Alexander the Great is up, which will be interesting.  In school I only learned about how genius he was and all his accomplishments and spreading of Greek culture.  Since then, I've learned he was actually quite the sick , crazily killing his best friend in a dispute,  and allegedly even enjoyed hunting down and killing defenseless enemies like they were game animals, so...I'm curious to see how they portray him.




He was a nut.  Instead of going to the far end of the Earth just for the hell of it, he should have been busy making sure his empire had an heir.  But when you're crazy enough to think you're the son of Zeus, that happens.

And it don't take genius to undo a knot by chopping it up.



> Tonight was Attila the Hun, and he wound up (spoiler!) being rated fairly evil due to no real goal or plan other than plundering and killing as its own end.




How is Attila the Hun being rated evil a spoiler exactly?  You don't get called the "Scourge of God" through Lawful Good behavior you know.



> Which led me to believe that in the creators' eyes, killing "for a purpose" makes you slightly less evil.  These guys are Machievelli fans, too?  This show must've been MADE for me!




Yup.  Here's your invite.  



> In any case, the show was fairly informative and entertaining, I recommend checking it out.  Anyone else seen it so far?




No cable.  *shrug*  

Though really, Ancients Behaving Badly isn't much of a name.  The ENTIRE ANCIENT WORLD behaved badly from the moment the first Sumerian started jotting stuff down and probably before that as well.

Also, Ancients behaving badly made me think this was going to be somehow related to Stargate at first.


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Nov 14, 2009)

Orius said:


> I think I'll invite you onto my friend list for that comment.  heh.



Accepted!



Orius said:


> And it don't take genius to undo a knot by chopping it up.




Yeah, in high school my teacher spoke of that like he was clever.  I never understood that.



Orius said:


> How is Attila the Hun being rated evil a spoiler exactly?  You don't get called the "Scourge of God" through Lawful Good behavior you know.




It was sarcasm.  Note I did nothing to actually protect people from accidentally reading the "spoiler" like black text or spoiler blocks. 



Orius said:


> No cable.  *shrug*
> 
> Though really, Ancients Behaving Badly isn't much of a name.  The ENTIRE ANCIENT WORLD behaved badly from the moment the first Sumerian started jotting stuff down and probably before that as well.
> 
> Also, Ancients behaving badly made me think this was going to be somehow related to Stargate at first.




It first made me think of Men Behaving badly, even though I never watched that show.  By the title, I would have assumed it would be like the Sex in the Ancient World series, oh well.  I'm just happy GK is getting some more coverage on the WWII channel.


----------



## DreadPirateMurphy (Nov 14, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> Yeah, in high school my teacher spoke of that like he was clever.  I never understood that.




The clever part was that he was presented with a pre-defined solution to the problem (untie it), and he chose an alternate approach that was much more effective.  It is somewhat of a questionable assessment, as it can be seen as a metaphor for either thinking outside of the box or for brute force as a solution to any problem.



StreamOfTheSky said:


> It first made me think of Men Behaving badly, even though I never watched that show.  By the title, I would have assumed it would be like the Sex in the Ancient World series, oh well.  I'm just happy GK is getting some more coverage on the WWII channel.




I thought of Stargate...and then seeing "Sex in the Ancient World" made me think of Sarah Jessica Parker and friends in togas.

As for the show, do they define what they consider to be "evil?"  In a lot of ancient societies, the definition of evil would not have lined up perfectly with modern, Western ideals of good and evil.


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Nov 15, 2009)

DreadPirateMurphy said:


> As for the show, do they define what they consider to be "evil?"  In a lot of ancient societies, the definition of evil would not have lined up perfectly with modern, Western ideals of good and evil.




They try...

First off, they have a scale that they use for the grading.  All the typical things you would consider evil work against (or for?) the person, while they also try to find redeeming qualities or historical bias.  In Attila's case, redeeming qualities included being a caring family man apprently, and historical bias in the sense that only Romans -- his sworn enemy -- have written contemporary accounts of him, so it is quite reasonable to question if he was given fair treatment.

They also have a separate metric called "creativity."  Without definition, I thought creativity in the sense of "new and uniquely cruel actions done," but they defined it as what the person created, legacy left behind, etc...  Since Attila left...nothing, that probably hurt his score a lot.  The show may have been most harsh on his impaling of traitors and a few cases where he massacred innocent women and children.  I don't think that's terribly fair for as you said, the historical context.  Romans killed innocent people all the time.  They destroyed my peoples' great temple and scattered us across the known world in a little thing known as the "Diaspora."  After fighting Carthage, they were quite spiteful in how they ravaged the land.  They watched human slaves fight and die and called it amusement.  And Attila's largest slaughter of innocents was under *Rome's payroll*, and they were pleased with his work.  So yeah, they do seem to have problems occasionally with taking the times into account.  Attila seemed barely worse if at all worse than the Romans to me.



DreadPirateMurphy said:


> The clever part was that he was presented with a pre-defined solution to the problem (untie it), and he chose an alternate approach that was much more effective.  It is somewhat of a questionable assessment, as it can be seen as a metaphor for either thinking outside of the box or for brute force as a solution to any problem.




Yeah, I get that.  But over the years, I've kind of shifted more to the perspective that the story is much about overcoming a challenge with brute force than it is thinking outside the box.  But I understand the argument.

To compare, I watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon as a kid.  One of the only parts I distinctly remember to this day was one episode where their sensei was having them practice fighting against some mechanical enemy, trying to defeat it.  They were doing badly.  Then, Raphael (my favorite turtle) coems in, calmly walks around it to the power outlet it's attached to, and unplugs it.  
That's a better example of thinking outside of the box, IMHO.


----------



## Orius (Nov 15, 2009)

DreadPirateMurphy said:


> The clever part was that he was presented with a pre-defined solution to the problem (untie it), and he chose an alternate approach that was much more effective.  It is somewhat of a questionable assessment, as it can be seen as a metaphor for either thinking outside of the box or for brute force as a solution to any problem.




I get the whole thinking outside the box bit.  But if it's a case where he lost his patience, then chopped it up, then it's simply brute force and nothing clever about it at all.

And it's always fun to sit back some 23 centuries later and snark the hell out of it.  



> As for the show, do they define what they consider to be "evil?"  In a lot of ancient societies, the definition of evil would not have lined up perfectly with modern, Western ideals of good and evil.




Possibly they examine all the known records of the men in question, not just the ones written by his enemies as a way of vilifying him.  To impose order on the ancient world and even not so ancient world, one often had to be ruthless.  Is there a definite element of deliberate cruelty here, or simply expedience for the welfare of society?


----------



## shilsen (Nov 15, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> In any case, the show was fairly informative and entertaining, I recommend checking it out.  Anyone else seen it so far?




I've seen a couple of the _Ancients Behaving Badly_ episodes and I'm thoroughly disappointed in their quality, or more precisely, would have been disappointed if my expectations for the History Channel weren't fairly low at this point. 

The coverage and use of the available historical material on the individuals chosen is very mediocre, with the History Channel generally picking one source and making it sound as if that's the only or definitive one on the subject. Continuing on that trend, they also have this really bad habit of trying to present one story/interpretation about the individuals without ever even mentioning that there are a ton of divergent possibilities and material they aren't touching on. I get that it's an entertainment channel and it's trying to present an interesting story, but that still makes for pretty poor historical coverage of the subjects. And things like the arbitrary rating system and pop-psych profiling of the subjects in this series makes it look and sound even worse to me.

Still, at least this one is better than the _Clash of the Gods_ series, where they do really narrow, simplistic (and often weirdly ethnocentric) treatments of the subject, totally ignoring the fact that there are essentially always multiple variations of the myths and often competing ideas about the same subjects. 

In short, I think claiming that it's history is false advertising


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Nov 15, 2009)

Hmm...I actually didn't kow too much about Attila, so if what you say is true, then that sucks.  When they cover figures I know in more depth, like GK, I'll have a better idea just how accurate they are and if they're only using one viewpoint.



shilsen said:


> Still, at least this one is better than the _Clash of the Gods_ series, where they do really narrow, simplistic (and often weirdly ethnocentric) treatments of the subject, totally ignoring the fact that there are essentially always multiple variations of the myths and often competing ideas about the same subjects.




Oh, don't get me started!  I love mythology, and Clash of the Gods made me want to vomit.   Not only did they portray only one version of a story, and often a fringe, strange one...they also had an annoying habit of dwelling on something of minor importance for 1/3 the episode and then fast forwarding through more substantial parts.

The most annoying thing, though, was them finding some way to tie Christianity into EVERY freaking episode.  The minotaur represents the birth of jesus because there were cows/bulls in the manger?  Are you ing serious?!  The only episode that really should have been attached is the Norse one on Thor, since Ragnarok was written by / influenced by christians trying to convert them.  Hercules was not anything like jesus, Zeus was not an all-powerful monotheistic god who could do whatever he wanted even if the other gods didn't like it....   .....ARGH!  I HATE that show!


----------



## DreadPirateMurphy (Nov 15, 2009)

shilsen said:


> I've seen a couple of the _Ancients Behaving Badly_ episodes and I'm thoroughly disappointed in their quality, or more precisely, would have been disappointed if my expectations for the History Channel weren't fairly low at this point.
> 
> The coverage and use of the available historical material on the individuals chosen is very mediocre, with the History Channel generally picking one source and making it sound as if that's the only or definitive one on the subject. Continuing on that trend, they also have this really bad habit of trying to present one story/interpretation about the individuals without ever even mentioning that there are a ton of divergent possibilities and material they aren't touching on. I get that it's an entertainment channel and it's trying to present an interesting story, but that still makes for pretty poor historical coverage of the subjects. And things like the arbitrary rating system and pop-psych profiling of the subjects in this series makes it look and sound even worse to me.
> 
> ...




I haven't watched anything on the History Channel in a while, and I'm sorry to hear that they're so focused on the -tainment rather than the info-.  Folks already get too many instances of made-up history from films like _Pearl Harbor_, _The Patriot_, and _Braveheart_.


----------



## Orius (Nov 16, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> The most annoying thing, though, was them finding some way to tie Christianity into EVERY freaking episode.  The minotaur represents the birth of jesus because there were cows/bulls in the manger?  Are you ing serious?!  The only episode that really should have been attached is the Norse one on Thor, since Ragnarok was written by / influenced by christians trying to convert them.




That is pretty stupid, given that the whole story of Theseus and the minotaur predates any Christian theology by several centuries.  Unless they're trying to claim that it's some kind of weird mucked-up revelation from God to the pagans or something which needlessly and absurdly complicates things and which starts to delve into topics which are against forum rules to discuss.  

Honestly, I think a lot of historical shows and stuff like that are still done pretty well by PBS.  They've really stepped up to the competion from cable and when they air a historical program, they do it very well.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 16, 2009)

The minotaur thing was probably an (ill-presented) effort to show how early Christianity ripped off a variety of ancient religions for iconography and co-opted certain holidays with their own celebrations- like how some claim that the December 25th date for the celebration of Christmas was a co-opting of the Roman celebration of Sol Invictus.


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Dec 8, 2009)

So ummmm...what ever happened to this show?  Anyone know?

Also, never got to reply to Danny's comment:



Dannyalcatraz said:


> The minotaur thing was probably an (ill-presented) effort to show how early Christianity ripped off a variety of ancient religions for iconography and co-opted certain holidays with their own celebrations- like how some claim that the December 25th date for the celebration of Christmas was a co-opting of the Roman celebration of Sol Invictus.




I thought the Dec. 25th date WAS picked to co-opt pagan holidays / winter solstice?  At least, if you're not a Christian (believer), that was the accepted reasoning for it.  I think they even taught that in my history class.


----------



## Thunderfoot (Dec 8, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> So ummmm...what ever happened to this show?  Anyone know?
> 
> Also, never got to reply to Danny's comment:
> 
> ...



Show is still on (though it appears in re-runs more than anything else)
And yes, it was - even the Catholic Church historians have admitted as much.
BTW - Joyus Saturnalia...


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Dec 8, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> I thought the Dec. 25th date WAS picked to co-opt pagan holidays / winter solstice?  At least, if you're not a Christian (believer), that was the accepted reasoning for it.  I think they even taught that in my history class.




Speaking of poorly expressed- yes...that is the case, and I expressed it poorly.

I was trying to critique them for expressing the point poorly, and then did as much in this thread.

Irony, eh?


----------



## Thunderfoot (Dec 9, 2009)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Speaking of poorly expressed- yes...that is the case, and I expressed it poorly.
> 
> I was trying to critique them for expressing the point poorly, and then did as much in this thread.
> 
> Irony, eh?




It's the lawyer in you sneaking out....


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Dec 9, 2009)

_[kramer]_Oh, its out there, baby...its OUT THERE!_[/kramer]_


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Dec 12, 2009)

I really want to know what the hell happened here.  I did a search on the history channel website: Search Results

Are they just going to premiere a whole crap load of episodes for the first time on a random Saturday morning?  I doubt it, and I would hope not!  Which causes me to want to know...when are these episodes actually airing for the first time?

History Channel was starting to redeem itself with me lately with Warriors, Ancient Discoveries, and this.  But...Battles B.C., Clash of the Gods, and the inexplicable invisibility act this show's being put through right now...maybe History Channel still sucks after all.  Except before it was for being the 24 hour hitler channel.  Now, it's because half their prime time shows seem to be godawful reality tv history hybrids (Gangland, Pawn Stars, Ice Road Truckers, Axe Men, just to name a few...), or as Bill Maher suggested they rename themselves, "The Poor Life Choices channel."  Oh and half of the half not covered by that garbage is apocolypse/doomsday bs, UFOs, monster quest.... *sigh*


----------



## Thunderfoot (Dec 12, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> I really want to know what the hell happened here.  I did a search on the history channel website: Search Results
> 
> Are they just going to premiere a whole crap load of episodes for the first time on a random Saturday morning?  I doubt it, and I would hope not!  Which causes me to want to know...when are these episodes actually airing for the first time?
> 
> History Channel was starting to redeem itself with me lately with Warriors, Ancient Discoveries, and this.  But...Battles B.C., Clash of the Gods, and the inexplicable invisibility act this show's being put through right now...maybe History Channel still sucks after all.  Except before it was for being the 24 hour hitler channel.  Now, it's because half their prime time shows seem to be godawful reality tv history hybrids (Gangland, Pawn Stars, Ice Road Truckers, Axe Men, just to name a few...), or as Bill Maher suggested they rename themselves, "The Poor Life Choices channel."  Oh and half of the half not covered by that garbage is apocolypse/doomsday bs, UFOs, monster quest.... *sigh*



I have an answer for this, but you're not going to like it.
You see The History channel is run by Discovery Networks, and if you have been paying attention across the DSC board, all of their channels, Discovery, Discovery International, History channel, History International, Military channel, SyFy, the Science channel, etc. have all been undergoing a slight cosmetic alteration.

All of the programming on DN channels _was_ watcher/content specific, History for military historians (until they created the military channel), Science for science geek, SciFi for science fiction geeks, etc. and this was fine; except a couple years back the company underwent a changeover in their higher-up (three years I think, but I'm too lazy to check) and that's about when things started altering.  See now they are actual looking for "ratings shares" not that cable/satellite channels have ever done it in the past, but hey, why not.  So starting with Discovery, they started doing reality shows to draw in more viewers, and it worked, but then some genius decided to start moving shows to other channels to "share the wealth".  Now Ghost Hunters on SciFi made sense, Junkyard Wars on The Science Channel made sense, Special Ops on the military channel made sense, but what in any thing would a reality show on the history channel would make sense.  They only thing I see that soul have worked was what PBS did a few years ago with the "house" series (1800's House, 1900's House, 1700's Community) where modern people were put into old world situations for 30-90 days and made to live according to historical standards, but the budget for those kinds of shows are out of this world. ([seedy marketing voice] "And of course, re-enactors are just plain sad, right?" [/seedy marketing voice] *rolleyes*)

So you get Pawn Stars, yeah lots of history on that show, I mean it's about old stuff right?  And what about Ice Road Truckers, those guys are all old relics, so that fits.  And Gangland is about... umm... mobsters, yeah cause their... umm old skool... umm... yeah.
Frankly whatever marketing weenie is pulling programming dollars from good historical shows and funding this tripe should be drawn and quartered, which _IS_ historical and would be great programming for The History Channel.  I know I'd watch it.


----------



## Alt F4 (Dec 12, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> I really want to know what the hell happened here.  I did a search on the history channel website: Search Results
> 
> Are they just going to premiere a whole crap load of episodes for the first time on a random Saturday morning?  I doubt it, and I would hope not!  Which causes me to want to know...when are these episodes actually airing for the first time?
> 
> History Channel was starting to redeem itself with me lately with Warriors, Ancient Discoveries, and this.  But...Battles B.C., Clash of the Gods, and the inexplicable invisibility act this show's being put through right now...maybe History Channel still sucks after all.  Except before it was for being the 24 hour hitler channel.  Now, it's because half their prime time shows seem to be godawful reality tv history hybrids (Gangland, Pawn Stars, Ice Road Truckers, Axe Men, just to name a few...), or as Bill Maher suggested they rename themselves, "The Poor Life Choices channel."  Oh and half of the half not covered by that garbage is apocolypse/doomsday bs, UFOs, monster quest.... *sigh*




The Julius Ceasar one already aired, or at least the schedule in my cable box said it did. I missed it, and the middle of the night Sunday/early Monday repeat that let me catch the Atilla the Hun episode didn't happen for the Ceasar one. As far as I know though, none of the other episodes have aired yet. I've been trying to check my cable box every day, but I think I've missed a few times.

The thing that drives me crazy about the History Channel's current scheduling is that they seem to get caught up on one show, or one type of show, play it like crazy for anywhere from a week to a month, and then it disappears completely. Usually the next theme or show is completely different, so I can easily go from wanting to watch everything they air one week, to wanting to watch nothing the next. If the stuff I don't like goes on for too long, then I quit checking and it may be weeks, months, or longer before I wander back again.


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Dec 12, 2009)

Alt F4 said:


> The thing that drives me crazy about the History Channel's current scheduling is that they seem to get caught up on one show, or one type of show, play it like crazy for anywhere from a week to a month, and then it disappears completely. Usually the next theme or show is completely different, so I can easily go from wanting to watch everything they air one week, to wanting to watch nothing the next. If the stuff I don't like goes on for too long, then I quit checking and it may be weeks, months, or longer before I wander back again.




That's how it's been with me and History Channel, too.  Lots of wandering back and forth.  My last big migration away was when they decided Human weapon wasn't worth another season.  I had only recently been lulled back with Warriors (another excellent show that will never see a season 2) and the seeming massive sudden spat of ancient, mythological, and medieval based series, which mostly turned out to suck and are now largely gone regardless.

I did catch Caesar's episode, haven't seen anything since then, and I don't know if it's because I missed them or because it's not airing -- no set schedule and a crappy un-informative page on their website doesn't help much in trying to find airings.  It's sad, because this series is actually decent.  Not really good, but at least entertaining to watch.


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Dec 12, 2009)

Thunderfoot said:


> So you get Pawn Stars, yeah lots of history on that show, I mean it's about old stuff right?  And what about Ice Road Truckers, those guys are all old relics, so that fits.  And Gangland is about... umm... mobsters, yeah cause their... umm old skool... umm... yeah.
> Frankly whatever marketing weenie is pulling programming dollars from good historical shows and funding this tripe should be drawn and quartered, which _IS_ historical and would be great programming for The History Channel.  I know I'd watch it.




Also, I should clarify a little.  I have no problem with most of these shows.  Pawn Stars commercials show them obtaining lots of old items that surely have stories behind them, it seems like a legitimate topic for a history show, just not my thing.  Gangland is also worthy of having a show, the history of gangs is seldom explored from what I've seen.  Just again, not really my interest.  Ice Road Truckers, Axe Men, and the other shows that don't even bother *trying* to pretend they're not reality shows are the ones that are just plain unforgivable.

My problem is more that while alone, many of them have merit, the combined bulk of them all airing and taking up such a huge chunk of the broadcast time is appalling.  Possibly more appalling than the near endless WW II coverage the channel even today seems to lapse into at times.


----------



## Orius (Dec 13, 2009)

Sounds to me like Discovery overdiversified and doesn't have nearly enough watchers on all those different channels to make any money off them.  Kind of like how TSR goofed up by releasing a million and a half campaign settings and products during the days of 2e.

And how are reality shows going to make the difference?  I suspect people are watching the cable netowrks because they don't want to watch the reality crap drowing out the broadcast networks.


----------



## Thunderfoot (Dec 13, 2009)

Orius said:


> Sounds to me like Discovery overdiversified and doesn't have nearly enough watchers on all those different channels to make any money off them.  Kind of like how TSR goofed up by releasing a million and a half campaign settings and products during the days of 2e.
> 
> And how are reality shows going to make the difference?  I suspect people are watching the cable networks because they don't want to watch the reality crap drowning out the broadcast networks.



I concur for the most part.  Discovery didn't have to worry about money, the reason cable companies have it as free programming is the same reason network companies have free programming - advertisements.  They just got greedy and wanted market share - which in layman's terms means they wanted to sell out for glory instead of concentrate on putting out quality product - very much like TSR before they folded.

SotS - I would agree, except the back stories on most of the items on PS are just that - back stories....waaaaay back stories.  And some of the original Gangland stuff was informative, but the Crips and Bloods as history is just, for appropriate terminology, whack.


----------



## Alt F4 (Dec 14, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> That's how it's been with me and History Channel, too.  Lots of wandering back and forth.  My last big migration away was when they decided Human weapon wasn't worth another season.  I had only recently been lulled back with Warriors (another excellent show that will never see a season 2) and the seeming massive sudden spat of ancient, mythological, and medieval based series, which mostly turned out to suck and are now largely gone regardless.
> 
> I did catch Caesar's episode, haven't seen anything since then, and I don't know if it's because I missed them or because it's not airing -- no set schedule and a crappy un-informative page on their website doesn't help much in trying to find airings.  It's sad, because this series is actually decent.  Not really good, but at least entertaining to watch.




Sometimes I think they determine their schedule completely at random. Or else there are factions and constantly shifting alliances within the scheduling department, and whenever a new faction comes into power they junk the old faction's schedule and favored programming.

I hear you about the variable quality too. Yesterday afternoon there was some show about Stonehenge that was so bad I couldn't even tolerate it as background filler. It usually takes a lot for me to turn my nose up at anything about Stonehenge, but this show was trying to be sensationalist, but came across as dull instead. A show about the Black Plague on Friday night was even worse.

As an alternative, sometimes I can find good stuff on the National Geographic Channel, but they're also prone to doing long blocks of the same show. Strangely when I still had digital cable, I found that History International was usually better than the main History Channel.


----------



## Alt F4 (Dec 18, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> I really want to know what the hell happened here.  I did a search on the history channel website: Search Results
> 
> Are they just going to premiere a whole crap load of episodes for the first time on a random Saturday morning?  I doubt it, and I would hope not!  Which causes me to want to know...when are these episodes actually airing for the first time?




Doesn't look like those Saturday airings are happening now either.

I couldn't find anything about the show's disappearance on their messageboards, so I've submitted a question through their "contact us" page asking what happened to the show. If I hear anything back, I'll pass it along.


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Dec 19, 2009)

Alt F4 said:


> Doesn't look like those Saturday airings are happening now either.
> 
> I couldn't find anything about the show's disappearance on their messageboards, so I've submitted a question through their "contact us" page asking what happened to the show. If I hear anything back, I'll pass it along.




Thanks, I was sad to see nothing on today, too.  Not holding my breath that the show's coming back...


----------



## Alt F4 (Dec 20, 2009)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> Thanks, I was sad to see nothing on today, too.  Not holding my breath that the show's coming back...




I was just coming to ask if the episodes had aired today. My power was out all day from a snowstorm, so I couldn't check. Glad I didn't miss them, but wish they'd aired for everyone else's benefit.


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Dec 22, 2009)

So, according to my cable box, tomorrow the Cleopatra episode is airing at 11 am and 5 pm Eastern time, in each case coming on after a few hours of Ancient Discoveries (another good show still on).  For what it's worth.


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Dec 22, 2009)

Update: TV still says Cleopatra, but the show is actually a re-air of the Attila episode...


----------



## Alt F4 (Dec 22, 2009)

Thanks for the heads up. At least the show hasn't completely disappeared into a black hole.

Still no response from the History Channel to my inquiry. At this point they're probably all gone for the holidays.


----------



## StreamOfTheSky (Dec 31, 2009)

Today they aired a whole bunch of new episodes, unfortunately I didn't notice until this evening.  I managed to catch Hannibal and Genghis Khan, could have watched Cleopatra but had to go out.  Completely missed Alexander the Great and Nero, I really wanted to see the episode on the former.  At least I got to watch GK's episode, still boo on history channel just suddenly airing them all without warning like that.


----------



## Plane Sailing (Dec 31, 2009)

Thunderfoot said:


> I concur for the most part.  Discovery didn't have to worry about money, the reason cable companies have it as free programming is the same reason network companies have free programming - advertisements.  They just got greedy and wanted market share




I'm not sure how it works in the US, but presumably advertising-funded channels want market share so that they can sell advertising 'space' to the advertisers... based on the theory that an advert which is seen by a larger and wider audience is more valuable and so worth more money.

TV stations that don't have to rely on advertising (e.g. the BBC in the UK which is funded by the license fee, or some wholly subscription based channels) are free from the tyranny of chasing ratings.


----------

