Posted on 01/10/2015 10:35:42 AM PST by UnwashedPeasant
There's a new boss in charge at the Discovery Network, and he's anxious to get rid of mega-sharks, mermaids and man-eating snakes.
Rich Ross, a longtime Disney executive who began this week as president of Discovery Communications' flagship channel, said he wants to broaden its appeal to reach more women and families. He has also been quick to make clear what he doesn't want Discovery to be.
The network has been doing well financially but has been criticized, particularly by the scientific community, for some specials that have stretched the boundaries of truth.
"Brands are all about trust," said Ross, who is replacing former network head Eileen O'Neill and her interim successor Marjorie Kaplan, in an interview Thursday. "You can expand the universe of what people think you are, but there's only so much elasticity. On Discovery, that's why I talk about authenticity. Authenticity is job No. 1, 2 and 3."
Fictional documentaries, no matter their entertainment value, no longer have their place, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I hope this news means real reform is coming.
I hope so too. Gold Rush with that slob Hoffman is another fake show too.
Make it ‘global warming’ all the time. You will get respect from those you admire. Should allow you to increase your advertising rates too....
You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals
So let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel
My biggest complaint isn’t the content of some of these shows. I can change the channel if I don’t want to learn about being eaten by a snake. What I can’t stand is the format of so many of these shows. They try to end before the commercial break on some kind of phony cliff-hanger, and then start after the commercial break spending 5 minutes summarizing what has happened in the preceding 30 minutes. Each commercial break the summary takes longer. Can they just assume I have been watching the show, and I remember what happened! Arrrgggh! Annoying.
” wants to broaden its appeal to reach more women and families.”
Why am i envisioning it becoming like Lifetime?
No more “mermaids evolved from Bigfoot” documentaries?
Which one was it again used to be called the Hitler channel? History, yeah, that was it. Boy, not anymore! Just dreck like Honey Boob-ooh. Nyah!
The LED on our fat screen TaVa is red 98 percent of the time.
Wear it as badge of honer...
Some Ancient Alien theorists suggest that the Discovery Channel has made this change to avoid revealing too much of the truth surrounding our origins. </sarc off>
Good. He can start by cutting about 2/3 of the “Life in Alaska” soap operas. They are so heavily scripted as to be unbelievable probably because most of the producers of those shows are British metrosexuals.
DC is making a huge mistake, IMO. They became popular (and other cable networks like them that were stuck in bland mediocrity) by entertaining their niche.
Look at what AMC did. They used to be a bland classic movie channel that nobody watched. So they abbreviated their name, and started producing some kick-ass shows. Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead are easily the two greatest shows ever produced.
Who wants to sit around and watch a narrator drone on about the lifespan of a gorilla? I want to see those same gorillas in steel-cage matches battling lions! F YEAH!
The National Geographic Channel is another one I used to enjoy; exciting documentaries of lions on the Serengeti, leopards attacking prey, etc., but now it has turned into a reality channel with Navajo cops chasing Mexican criminals, topped off with a Global Warming message at the end of each program. Who wants to watch that?
Why not have the lions fights the gorillas in an open-air arena? Or, for more sport, we could have men fight them, hand-to-hand? Or, we could toss in people we don’t like to be eaten by the animals — particularly those who refuse to believe things they should, like settled science or how homosexuality should be celebrated or how Jesus was just a good person.
Less an extremist, than a predictable swallower of click-bait.
But Gold Rush is a huge (so to speak) gold mine for Discovery, do I don’t see it going anywhere.
That's exactly what I got out of the article also. That or more like OWN. I'm guessing some of it's better shows like Deadliest Catch will be scuttled. Discovery owns about a dozen channels any of the rest which a person can find shows he was speaking of. Discovery is about one of about a half dozen channels out of a 200 channel choice I cared to even watch.
Wonder how long it will take for that changeover, and whether we will be right?
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