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Weekend Update: CNN Talks Ancient Aliens, Shatner Babbles about Mysteries, and More!

7/11/2020

On Thursday, CNN’s website ran an article on the ancient astronaut theory by Jen Rose Smith. The piece frames questions about the origins of UNESCO World Heritage Sites like the Giza pyramids and the Nazca lines in terms of Erich von Däniken’s version of the ancient astronaut theory. It then devotes most of the article’s space to describing how “mainstream scientists” reject the ancient astronaut hypothesis, with lengthy quotes from archaeologist Sarah Parcak.

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Review of Forbidden History S06E09 "Mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle"

6/2/2020

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The Bermuda Triangle is a hoax invented by George Sand in Fate magazine in 1952. This fact, however, is the forbidden history that Forbidden History forbids its viewers from learning. I will, however, say that I did not expect this episode to descend into the hellish depths of Ancient Aliens or for one of the stars of that show to make a guest appearance like visiting head of state. This show was always the fringe history and conspiracy theory show, not the alien one. It rarely invoked aliens and instead preferred giants, Templars, and Illuminati. I had expected a dry discussion of famous disappearances, maybe a visit to a stretch of ocean—the kind of stuff all the other Bermuda Triangle shows do all the time. But now, we went full Ancient Aliens. Suddenly, it’s like all of cable fake history is collapsing in on itself toward either a black hole or a singularity where everything becomes Ancient Aliens.

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Journalist Describes Father's Path from "Ancient Aliens" to Q-Anon Obsession

5/23/2020

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On the Narratively website, California college student and journalist Reed Ryley Grable provided a poignant and thought account of his father’s gradual slide into Q-Anon conspiracy madness. Grable describes his father’s growing paranoia and social isolation, and he talks eloquently about how his father’s strident conspiracy theory advocacy has alienated him from his family and his friends. While I am not particularly interested in Q-Anon conspiracies, I was neither shocked nor surprised to read Grable’s account of how Ancient Aliens served as a gateway drug leading his father from a nebulous interest in the mysterious and the bizarre to a raving world of online conspiracies.

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Researcher Discusses How the Media Weaponize Conspiracy Theories and Fake History

5/5/2020

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Last week I receive a request from someone who is consulting on a documentary to take a meeting with a producer who works with Netflix about adapting one of my books into a documentary or potential documentary series. Normally, I don’t let this sort of thing get very far because it is always a huge waste of time, but since I have been stuck in quarantine, I figured it would serve as a bit of a distraction. So, we set up the meeting, and before the appointed day, I suggested that the producer should probably be aware that my work is not pro-alien. Regular readers of this blog can guess the rest. There was no meeting at the appointed hour. It wasn’t unexpected, but even so, it is disconcerting.

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This Week in Paranormal TV Ratings

4/25/2020

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Ancient Aliens is not on tonight, so I am taking the day off. However, before I sign off for the day, I wanted to provide a quick overview of the week in pseudo-historical and paranormal TV. Rob Riggle: Global Investigator actually rose in the ratings for its alien-themed episode, reaching 355,000 live plus same day viewers, its highest viewer haul since moving to Thursdays. What made that more amazing is that the show rose in the ratings while airing out of prime time, in its late-night exile slot. Its total, however, was still only half of what Discovery usually pulls on Thursdays, and it still failed to outdraw the similar Forbidden History, the obscure UK import airing on the little-watched Science Channel. Its latest episode had 400,000 viewers. Curse of Oak Island was up to 3.6 million viewers this week, while Secret of Skinwalker Ranch stubbornly remained at 2.1 million. Last Saturday, Ancient Aliens clocked 1 million viewers, while The UnXplained sank to 852,000. Overall, where we should have expected to see some ratings spikes as more people are trapped indoors watching TV, instead, everything is basically the way it always is, suggesting that these shows have a relatively inelastic audience.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S15E12: "Aliens and the Presidents"

4/18/2020

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There is an amusing anecdote about the early days of television. Near the end of the Twilight Zone’s run, the series broadcast an episode about an evil ventriloquist’s dummy called “Caesar and Me.” That episode aired in 1964, and two years earlier, the show had aired a nearly identical episode, also about a living ventriloquist’s dummy, called, appropriately enough, “The Dummy.” Both episodes used the same dummy to play the dummy. (He’s in David Copperfield’s Las Vegas museum, if you want to see him sometime.) The producers that greenlit the latter episode, Bert Granet and William Froug, started producing the show in 1963 and hadn’t remembered that their predecessor, Buck Houghton, already did the same thing in 1962. Since there was no after-market for TV shows back then, no streaming and little syndication, everyone shrugged when they found out and assumed the audience would never catch on.

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Fringe History TV Ratings: Slight Viewership Declines This Week

4/16/2020

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NOTE: Due to Discovery moving the low-rated Rob Riggle: Global Investigator to an overnight time slot, my Friday blog post will be delayed until I have had a chance to watch the show sometime Friday morning.

It’s slow-going this week thanks to a dearth of interesting claims to write about, so I am going to take today off. After all, I wasted enough time this week slogging through Dark Fleet. But before I sign off for the day, I’ll report that the Nielsen figures for Saturday’s History Channel broadcasts find that the surge of audience interest in Ancient Aliens was short-lived. After a one-week hiatus, the show returned to fewer viewers, attracting just 1.08 million live plus same day viewers, down from 1.2 million for its last original episode. Similarly, The UnXplained lost about the same number as well. However, the number of younger Ancient Aliens viewers, those 18-49, continues to rise, hitting a 0.21 this past week. Older adults stopped watching, accounting for the overall decline in viewers, but young people are flocking to the show in numbers not seen since early in the show’s decade-long run. Meanwhile, The Curse of Oak Island remained steady at 3.5 million viewers, while The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch lost some ground, clocking 1.9 million viewers, the vast majority of whom were over the age of 50.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S15E11: "The Ultimate Guide to UFOs"

4/11/2020

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This week, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch gained live plus same day viewers as a growing number of quarantine orders pushed the television audience still higher. This week, 2.1 million watched, with much of its 100,000-viewer growth coming from viewers under 49. This growth came in spite of a modest decline in lead-in Curse of Oak Island’s viewership, suggesting that the new show is finding an audience and will (sadly) be with us for years to come. On the other hand, Rob Riggle: Global Investigator continued its freefall, despite increased overall TV viewership, declining to just 470,000 viewers this week. Ancient Aliens is closer to the Skinwalker than Riggle, watching its audience grow as a quarantine makes Saturday viewers desperate for new content. But this episode isn’t exactly an exciting entry in the series for those more interested in the “ancient” than the “aliens.” It’s putatively a taxonomy of UFO shapes, which makes it something of a perverted Sesame Street: Triangle! Circle!

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Wednesday Roundup: Robbie Williams Loves "Coast to Coast," "Ancient Aliens" Sees Ratings Rise, and More!

4/1/2020

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Coronavirus has blasted almost everything else out of the news, including what would otherwise be a big push to promote History’s new Secret of Skinwalker Ranch series, which aired its first episode last night. I have no interest in reviewing the show weekly since its paranormal investigation is beyond my area of interest. I will review the pilot episode and post either later today or tomorrow, since it aired too late for me to watch and review last night and still get up when my toddler wakes before 6 AM. I thought it was cute that George Knapp tried to piggyback on the show by running clips on his Mystery Wire paranormal news service from an unaired year-old interview with singer Robbie Williams in which Williams talks about loving Coast to Coast A.M. and George Knapp. Knapp also writes about Williams being a guest at Skinwalker Ranch (with Knapp, though Knapp declined to share that fact on Mystery Wire despite crowing about it in social media) to hunt for ghosts or aliens or whatever.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S15E10 "The Mystery of Skinwalker Ranch"

3/28/2020

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On Tuesday, the History Channel will launch its newest attempt to clone The Curse of Oak Island, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, which will follow Ancient Aliens talking head and former Rocket City Rednecks star Travis Taylor and a team of investigators hired by ranch owner Brandon Fugal as they attempt to probe the Utah property’s supposedly paranormal secrets. The show is the brainchild of Ancient Aliens and Curse of Oak Island executive producer Kevin Burns, and it is produced by Burns’s company, Prometheus Entertainment, which also produces the other two shows. Naturally, Burns couldn’t resist devoting this hour of Ancient Aliens to promoting the new show. However, I am not in the business of providing free advertising or celebrating a new addition the History Channel’s family of anti-science programs, especially not one from an executive who actively put his staff at risk from coronavirus to churn out more pseudohistory with the argument that his young staff shouldn’t be concerned about the disease. Therefore, as I did last week, I will only highlight the bullet points of claims I feel it is important to have a public record of.

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