Posted on 02/14/2015 10:07:55 AM PST by rickmichaels
Last month, TLC, the American cable network responsible for reality TV shows such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, My 600-lb. Life and 19 Kids and Counting, aired a new hour-long reality special called My Husband’s Not Gay, about a group of married Mormon men who are very gay indeed. The show’s stars, four Utah husbands who claim to love their heterosexual wives deeply, are openly and exclusively attracted to other men. They are also heavily steeped in the ideology of “ex-gay” conversion therapy, a contradiction they reconcile by treating their homosexuality—which they’ve labeled “SSA,” or “same sex attraction”—as an affliction rather than an identity. (On the show, we see the men frequently checking out other guys in the presence of their wives, who are under the impression that gayness is a bad habit like any other, easy enough to kick with a little willpower and familial support).
Needless to say, My Husband’s Not Gay has provoked a backlash from GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and other activist groups that argue it perpetuates the myth that a person can change his or her sexual orientation through continued restraint. If TLC is going to portray the lives of men with connections to “ex-gay” ministries, says Carlos Maza, LGBT program director for the watchdog group Media Matters for America, the network should counter that portrayal with “a mountain of empirical evidence about how this kind of therapy can be really harmful.”
Yet despite hundreds of thousands of online petition signatures demanding TLC remove the show from the air, it’s hard to imagine how My Husband’s Not Gay is harmful to many people other than its own deluded subjects. The show is, like almost everything on TLC, vapid and sensational. But it also works as a surprisingly effective warning about the miseries that befall those who aren’t true to themselves. After all, despite their constant proclamations that they are indeed very happy, none of the men on the show, or their wives, appear to be anything other than profoundly unfulfilled and confused. There is a palpable pain in the characters’ eyes—most likely the result of (by their own admission) years of awkward, passionless sex.
In fact, there’s a kind of anthropological value in watching My Husband’s Not Gay, argues Think Progress writer Zack Ford: it offers a rare glimpse into the lives of people trying to negotiate gender roles and romance in ultimately impossible relationships. “The spotlight of reality television can be very bright,” writes Ford, “and in this particular case, the farce arguably outshines any of the harmful surface-level messages.” In other words, five minutes with TLC’s ex-gays in their own habitat, unguarded, is proof enough that there are no “ex-gays” in this world: only struggling human beings lying to themselves and to their partners. Which could mean that TLC has, with this show, unwittingly fulfilled its oldest mandate: to educate the public.
Education may not be the first thing (or even the last) that comes to mind when one thinks of TLC—The Learning Channel—but the network we associate with the wildly exploitative (Toddlers in Tiaras) and the wildly unobservant (I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant) was, in its early days, more likely to increase a viewer’s IQ than to deplete it. Originally titled the Appalachian Community Service Network, TLC was established in 1972 by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and—believe it or not—NASA. Its mandate was strictly educational: it had a roster of cerebral science, wildlife, and medical shows. Even when the network was privatized in 1980 (at which point it became known as The Learning Channel), this convention didn’t change.
In fact, one of the network’s highest-rated programs was Captain’s Log with Captain Mark Gray, a show about boating safety, which ran from 1987 to 1990. Its premise was the antithesis of modern TLC: Mark Gray, a preternaturally polite sea captain, interviewed other boating enthusiasts about conducting oneself safely on the water. Now in his mid-sixties, Gray says he filmed Captain’s Log while living on his personal boat in Ventura, Calif. He remembers the TLC of the ’80s as having “a small-town feel to it. Everything we did was educational,” he says.
Once one of the network’s most familiar faces, Gray doesn’t watch TLC today (nor does his 10-year-old, who is strictly forbidden from doing so). “It used to be The Learning Channel,” he says. “Now they might as well call it the National Enquirer channel. It’s heartbreaking.”
That transformation can be tracked to the early 1990s, when the Discovery Channel, long seen as a rival, purchased TLC and changed its modus operandi. Slowly but surely, TLC’s roster of TV shows shifted to attract a wider viewership. Shows about home décor, real estate and fashion started to outnumber the drier educational content of Gray’s day—until the 2000s, when human-interest programming like A Baby Story and Jon and Kate Plus 8 began to dominate.
Finally, in 2014, TLC rebranded, changing its official slogan to “Everybody needs a little TLC.” The new slogan, general manager Nancy Daniels said in a press statement last year, gives viewers “a chance to satisfy their fascination with the unknown and understand the larger world around them.” (No one from TLC nor Discovery Channel agreed to be interviewed for this story).
Instead of in-depth explorations of science and nature, in other words, TLC now gives you in-depth explorations of human beings. Once a dull, fact-laden network, it has morphed into a modern freak show: an enormously lucrative one with ratings high enough to turn everyday eccentrics into international superstars. Emma Ashton, author of the popular Australian reality TV blog Reality Ravings, is a fan. “When I’m feeling voyeuristic I want to see someone whose family and cultural life [is] totally different from my own,” she says. “Shows like the Duggars [19 Kids and Counting], Breaking Amish, and Sister Wives are like modern-day soap operas.”
TLC’s new mandate, zeroing in on people who are either cursed with unfortunate circumstances or make terrible life choices, has led to some unique and disturbing dilemmas for the network. Last year, news broke alleging that Mama June, the mother of TLC’s most popular beauty pageant contestant, Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, had begun dating her ex-boyfriend—a man who served 10 years in prison for molesting one of her daughters. TLC cancelled Here Comes Honey Boo Boo when the allegations surfaced (although it should be noted that the show was also suffering in the ratings at the time).
By the same token, says Carlos Maza, 19 Kids and Counting—one of the network’s most successful shows, about the Duggars, a hyper-religious Christian family—isn’t harmless fun either. TLC “has contributed to the mainstreaming of this family that ascribes to a very fringe ideology, and thanks largely in part to their reality TV fame, they have become a conservative political powerhouse,” he says.
Maza is referring specifically to the Duggar matriarch, Michelle, who draws lineups at Conservative Political Action Conference events and last summer fought the passage of an Arkansas bill that would prohibit discrimination by landlords and businesses on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. She even recorded her own robocall, urging residents to vote against the bill because it would allow “males with predator convictions” to impersonate women and enter women’s bathrooms. After the bill passed, she lobbied for months to have it repealed, raising thousands of dollars and collecting hundreds of thousands of petition signatures. In December, it was. She’s not the only Duggar into politics: many of the kids are active in anti-abortion campaigns, and the whole family wore anti-abortion T-shirts in one episode (though TLC blurred out the slogan).
TLC is emerging as an influential political force, whether it wants to or not. But it is also quite possibly the most diverse network on TV today. Camille Paglia, the dissident literary critic, told Maclean’s last year she listens to American sports radio because “it is the only place in the [media] world where you can hear working-class voices.” In the same vein, TLC may be one of the only places on mainstream TV one can hear working-class voices, religious voices, and rural voices. “[Watching] Sister Wives made me more open-minded about the Mormon way of life,” says Emma Ashton.
As long as the ratings come in, it will surely continue to be. Discovery, the parent company largely responsible for TLC’s outlandish evolution, has made plans recently to clean up its own act. Criticized for producing “docufiction” about mermaids and imaginary “monster sharks,” Discovery last month announced plans to shift its tone next year. CEO Rich Ross said the type of sensational pseudo-science the channel has developed a reputation for has “run its course.” Discovery plans to pursue more traditional, fact-based programming next year. TLC’s penchant for the unusual, meanwhile, looks like it is here to stay. The nerdy, respectable parent whose trashy daughter is tarted up to attract maximum attention—it could be the plot of a highly addictive TLC show.
I guess going with straight history and biographies just aren't enough for the average viewer.
But viewers have been cheated. For example, people expecting quality shows about history on the history channel find the schedule crowded with shows not about history. The Learning Channel...what a joke. While some of the channels have some good programs, overall many have fallen afar from their original intentions.
Take the History Channel. When it came on the air, I thought it would be all shows about history. After a period of time it went the reality route. I like "Pawn Stars" (it actually has some interesting historical info on a number of pawned items), but it is not a true history show. "Axe Men" and "Swamp People" are not remotely history-centered shows.
The Travel Channel looked promising when it first came out. Now it's basically shows about people gorging themselves.
When BBC America first came on, there were lot of the old Brit comedies and msytery shows I loved. They all disappeared after a few years.
Why is this so? Why are most cable channels nothing but dreck like most network channels?
The answer is easy....like the network shows it loves to disparage, cable channels go by ratings too. And the taste of most Americans in shows is awful. Conservatives can criticize PBS as gov. programming, but it actually puts on far more interesting programs than network tv and most cable channels.
What the decline in quality of tv shows on network and cable have conclusively proved is that the great majority of Americans have lousy taste in entertainment. Back in the supposedly simpler times of fifty and sixty years ago you could regularly watch Broadway shows or theater plays on network tv along with actual interesting regular network shows. And that's with only three network channels.
Now both network tv and cable tv is mostly garbage. So much for the claimed increase in intelligence over the years for people.
Even the Food Network isn’t really about cooking anymore; it’s games shows mostly.
Reality TV, which is what they've gone over to, is cheaper to produce because they don't have to pay people. Ideology plays a role, but if they think Duck Dynasty will generate revenue they aren't going to turn it down because of politics.
It's funny to think that going all the way to Alaska, say, and filming gold miners or mountain men for months could be cheaper than staying in the city and making a historical documentary from archival sources, but I guess the people who control the archives want to be paid for the right to use their material, and the staff has to pay big city rents and other living costs. It could actually be cheaper to move everyone to the bayou and feed them sandwiches and the odd muskrat.
The Learning Channel is pure,unadulterated garbage.
A misnomer of epic proportions.
.
Plus, there may be a problem with saturation. The umpteenth show about the Civil War or the American Revolution or World War II will likely get fewer viewers and generate less enthusiasm than the first or best show. If reality programming is that much cheaper and there are people willing to watch it, that’s where the cable channels will go.
Today libs so control the tv and movie industries there's no chance of a tv show or movie being made like that today. I was surprised "Serial" actually was made.
The Discovery and History channel and the SciFi channel used to have something interesting to watch. Not anymore. Just stupid reality shows or really bad movies.
I have to agree. Celebrity 500lb polygamous wife swap makeover shows for the chicks and Alaskan swamp fishing gold loggers for guys. Pretty lousy pickings all around. I remember when the sci-fi channel actually had shows about actual sci-fi writers and books. And it wasn’t even particularly in depth or highbrow, but it was waaaay beyond most of the mouth breathers out there I guess.
Freegards
There’s nothing wrong with the occasional reality show. Per se some of them are very interesting. But it’s the whole gamut of cable shows who’ve deceived the viewers with garbage programming. I mean, what kind of person thinks “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” is a worthwhile show? That person has their taste up their wazoo.
That there is nothing worth watching on TLC?
Another aspect is that the TV market is so fragmented that you need a much smaller segment of the population to make a show a “hit.” Public taste in TV has always tended towards junk, but in the old days, broadcast networks needed to get a large chunk of the public, so programming couldn’t be complete trash. It’s unfortunate that decent scripted programming has to attract a very large audience to pay off everybody’s salary, while the worst in reality broadcasting turns a profit early on with a much smaller audience because it’s cheaper to produce.
They are being dishonest when they leave off the D in SSAD, Same Sex Attraction Disorder.
HOMOSEXUAL, because there's nothing GAY about it.
Plenty of 'em out there, riding scooter chairs around Wal-Mart.
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