The rise and fall of Discovery Channel

When foreigner channels started arriving in Brazil, they were underdeveloped and small at first. They didn't seem like much of a competition to the dominant, long stabilised public access channels, but they had a powerful ace up the sleeve: they offered foreigner shows that upper and middle classes in Brazil were starving for, absent from public television. They had more variety. As so, these channels started growing with the years, getting new viewers and new sponsors. Channels like Cartoon Network and HBO even started investing in their own Brazilian shows.

Discovery Channel - the front channel of Discovery Communications - was among those foreigner channels that tried their luck in Brazil. It was very primitive and limited in its resources, but its crew was utterly dedicated in maintaining the highest standard they possibly could for its loyal audiences. It was lacking, but it was dignified.

Back in the day, to say you watched Discovery was a dead giveaway that you were not like the others. I remember that when I used to say in my classroom where else I got my information, people would immediately mock me. Watching Discovery was for nerds, as everybody else in my school was watching Rocket Power. People would go into jump conclusions about my personality - I remember even one of my teachers made fun of me.

But I couldn't help but to be fascinated with what Discovery had to offer. Every time I tuned in there, I would leave with something new about the world. Before the internet, Discovery Channel showed me how fantastic everything secretly is: from a distant supernova in a distant galaxy to the bugs crawling right around us. For several people, the world just passes by unnoticed, but thanks to these channels, I started seeing things from a whole new perspective. The pencil I hold, how was it made? The sand at the beach, how old is it? And it never made me feel small or insignificant.

But with time, Discovery Communications as a whole gradually embraced a new working model: its honchos came to realise that in our day and age, science and education could only take them so far. And to hit it big, you need some attractions for the folks who aren't so much into science - just mask it as education and you're clear to go. And so, Discovery began selling out in a cataclysmic way.

This process started taking shape somewhere in the 2000's, as the channels under Discovery Communications adopted a more commercial posture that allowed the company to grow exponentially. So things like this started showing up:



Now, I’m pretty sure Discovery is still providing quality educational content for its viewers, and that these questionable shows don't reflect the whole picture there. But what pains me so much is that education ceased of being Discovery’s main drive, the primordial goal. Discovery Channel and its sisters seem now to be whoring out for the mass audiences who couldn't care less about science, such as my classmates back in the 90's. Discovery started nodding to people uninterested in education or chemistry (other than Breaking Bad). Discovery Communications wants to further expand its empire that is already sitting at 12 billion dollars as from this writing, and it cannot achieve that just with science.



I think that the internet played a big part on this: the internet fulfils the role that used to belong to educational channels in the 90's. If you want to discover something amazing, it's so easy now. News channels have also taken a fall due to the immediacy of the internet, and as a consequence, they became flashier, more entertainment-propelled and dramatic, more pandering to political inclinations. In matter fact, the internet evolved in such a way it could completely replace television: if I want to watch a Terry Gilliam film, I don't need to wait for it on any channel, for I can just get it on Netflix, whenever I want. In face of such change, channels had to adapt to this new reality.

With the internet providing everyone all the education and curiosities (and porn) at their best convenience, executives at Discovery came to the conclusion they also had to jump into the bandwagon of mass entertainment. Everything started innocently enough, with great shows like the nostalgic Junkyard Wars and the amazing MythBusters. Both shows were very clearly mainstream-based, albeit dignified and very intelligent - the idea was that if Discovery was going to sell out, it would do it right.

But things started to go on a downhill spiral. More and more, the idea of dignity would become a weakness, a set-back. Today, Discovery Channel and its sisters are indiscriminate about what they refer to as "educational". Here Comes Honey Boo Boo - one of the most infamous television shows of our time - is in the Learning Channel; what are we even learning with this show? That there's no rock-bottom for entertainment to reach? This gets me thinking about what it will be of kids today who are growing on these channels, such as me in the 90's.

We here in Brazil still have Discovery Kids, but in America, it was replaced by the Hub - a channel partly owned by Hasbro, which uses “educational television” to push their toy lines to children, like Transformers and My Little Pony. Animal Planet now features one of those shows about "funny animal videos" with an obnoxious host, because why not?

Today, we have channels like Discovery Turbo and Investigation Discovery. Turbo includes in its programming films which no-one in their right minds would have guessed back in the 90's that one day they would be transmitted by a channel under the Discovery banner, such as Total Recall (maybe because the movie was set in Mars, it was judged as scientific enough). Meanwhile, Investigation transmits basically distasteful shows staging real crimes with the finesse of Mexican soap operas. Yep: those guys are not above being morally reprehensible to get viewership.



19 Kids and Counting is basically a shitty family sitcom that just happens to be real life (so it's claimed). By observing this show, I feel TLC isn't so much trying to educate viewers about how life is to a family that extensive, but simply aiming to adopt the Keeping Up with the Kardashians aesthetic. This show would be forgivable if it was indeed informative, but then, it would only count for a single episode - a special, perhaps. And that's not how the model works: there just needs to be a series on that. It has to keep on giving!

Animal Face-Off was a shortly lived show about building gigantic robotic replicas of selvage animals, and then pitching them against each other. Seems awesome enough? Think again: the robots themselves would never actually fight, as they would be used only to demonstrate "what they can do", a way to gather information. Because a controlled robot in a safe environment is a much more accurate mean to demonstrate what selvage animals are capable of doing than observing the actual animals in their environment: what's the fun in that? The "real" fight was some crappy CGI demonstration at the end, based on the "information gathered" from the robots. The promos would paint the show as the most awesome thing ever put into television, but in reality, the closest thing the show actually had of a real fight was when the two hosts - one supporting a different animal - would thrash-talk their opponent, UFC style. I remember one who proudly declared that her Hippopotamus is the number one cause of human deaths caused by animals in Africa. Looking at it now, I feel honestly disgusted with her mentality, as she was sitting comfortably in some studio for some bullshit show while people in Africa were losing their lives to an animal that she - for the occasion only - thinks to be awesome especially for killing those people.

And don't get me started on Shark Week. What at first was a block dedicated to educate viewers about some of the most fascinating creatures from oceanic fauna descended throughout the years into shark porn, appealing to our feelings of fear instead of wonder. And honchos are not above just fucking lying to and misinforming us, because reality is unappealing. Wow, not even the Sci-Fi channel goes this low.

Even MythBusters - a show that's been wearing out with the years - became more prone to gratuitous explosions as the years went by: sometimes, Adam and Jaime are curious about what a bomb could do to a car or airplane or doll or motorbike or whatever they can get their hands on, just because. It wouldn't be absurd at all if Discovery contacted Michael Bay for a movie, given that he’s been having a fruitful and productive relation with Hasbro already. And the absurd thing is that it's not absurd.



BBC may not a perfect company, and they have their smut just like everyone else. But when it comes to science, they don’t mess around; they don't want to make it appealing to certain audiences, but to present it for what it is, letting people who appreciate it to enjoy it. They don't go after an audience who don't want it, and they don't try to make anything stupid pass as "educational content" - I say this as a Top Gear fan.

Folks at Discovery Communications want to keep with this model because it has been giving them positive results at the only place that matters to them: the bank. There's not a chance they'll just stop doing what they've been doing out of morality, because profits will always be the most important priority, the rule zero. So about that, I think I have a solution to save their quickly fading reputation, their brand, while maintaining the profits they hold so dear and near to their hearts above anything else.

It's simple: there needs to be a proper place for the schlock, one or more channels made specifically for this trash. It would be kind of like their Touchstone Pictures, so to speak: there could be a channel or two for all that sells, for all that gives audience with little input, for all those vapid things mainstream masses want to see. But these channels would be without the Discovery banner - they would belong to Discovery Communications, but they would be as disassociated as possible from it. So now, you have Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, Discovery Life, all of these transmitting exclusively engaging content... and then, you would have Dumbass TV or something. It's profitable, but it's not a channel claiming to be educational.

And what consumes me the most about this theme is that Discovery is not the only one in this situation: History Channel and National Geographic, in a certain way, are even worst. The condition of these channels today really speaks for how bad the state of educational content is right now, and maybe also the very idea of being educated.

We may be seeing Discovery at its economical prime, but it's definitely at its moral lowest as well. And it has to get lower to get bigger.