Folowing on from my post about "rolling coal" and the reference to "reality TV" programs on the Discovery Channel, I wondered about the trend into trashiness of once-educational television stations like the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel (TLC), the History Channel, etc.
I remember moving to Canada in the late 80s and being blown away by my first experience of cable television, which featured, among other delights, a whole channel devoted to weather forecasts, and several channels airing high-quality documentaries on history, nature, science, etc.
When I returned to Canada innrhe late 90s, after several years in South America and Europe, these documentary channels has almost all morphed into "reality TV" purveyors, many of them actually not about reality at all, but rather faked reality. It was a blow, and I have struggled to understand it.
It seems like the mean reason is ratings and advertising dollars. Like it or not, entertainment-orientated programming (aka trash) apparently pays the bills much better than education.
The other main reason is the change in viewing habits brought about by the rise of specialized streaming services and on-demand content on the internet (although it's not clear to me quite why this necessitated a trend away from education and towards "entertainment" - there is plenty of trashy "entertainment" content on the internet too).
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