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History Channel Executive Boasts: Templar and Alien Conspiracy Shows "Continually Worked for Us," Will Inspire More of the Same

12/7/2017

18 Comments

 
​Last night the History channel debuted its new series about the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail, Knightfall, a series designed to capitalize on the momentum generated by the network’s hit series Vikings and its core audience’s fascination with Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories. While critics offered mixed reviews of the series, many complained that the show was either dramatically inert or overly generic. Nevertheless, it is the first entry to build on Vikings to create a multipronged programming strategy designed to turn History into a full-service entertainment destination, where scripted shows provide an entry point for documentary features on the (quasi-) real history behind the story.
​To promote the new direction for the network, History channel Executive Vice President for Programming Eli Lehrer spoke with Deadline about the network’s new scripted series, and in doing so, he confessed that some of the scripted series they developed, including their upcoming dramatization of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigation, were intended as “brand extensions” of their popular fake history shows about aliens, conspiracies, etc.
​LEHRER: We’re open to any story that feels epic in scope and features iconic historical subject matter or characters. I think one of the nice things about History as a brand is we are able to use our unscripted track record to identify subjects and spaces that resonate with our viewers […] It’s part of what motivated Knightfall — we had seen the programming about the Knights Templar had continually worked for us.
 
DEADLINE: Was there a link between any unscripted series you’ve done about Roswell and unexplained phenomenon that led to Blue Book?
 
LEHRER: That’s absolutely part of the same thought process. We’ve seen shows about UFOs and aliens work consistently on the channel across the years. Ancient Aliens is one of our longest-running and most successful shows, just to use one example. So it did feel like the subject of the unexplained is absolutely something that resonates with our audience, and once Blue Book came to us, it felt like a very logical place for the brand to go in the scripted space.
​Much of that sounds like business drivel, buzzwords and meaningless action phrases, but beneath the bluster did you catch the cynically awful undercurrent? Lehrer noted that the History channel consistently draws a crowd for shows about fake history, and the network doesn’t much care whether the history they show is true so long as it “resonates” with the right number of demographically desirable viewers. This is particularly egregious considering he had just finished telling deadline that “We’re looking for fact-based stories that draw from history, but that’s very broad because we have the full sweep of history to draw from.”
 
So they have all of human history but consistently return to the fake stuff, including the Holy Grail (Knightfall), space aliens (Blue Book), etc.? Lehrer described such subjects as “iconic subject matter.” Lehrer ought to have the courage of his convictions and admit the obvious: History caters to people who can’t tell fantasy from reality, and they happily play to their prejudices rather than try to educate them. They endlessly recycle the familiar to avoid challenging the audience, and fail to recognize that they have themselves created the “iconic” subject matter their audience recognizes. I mean, seriously: Who three decades ago would have identified the Knights Templar’s quest for the Holy Grail and the Project Blue Book investigation as “iconic” moments in history? They were minor footnotes elevated to iconic status by endless repetition on cable TV.
 
In sum, Lehrer admits that the History channel has turned into a feedback loop where the sensationalism it promoted in the early 2000s drew viewers whose numbers then justified continued excursions into the same subject matter, garnering more ratings and more shows on the same topics. The risk, though, is that the loop will turn into a noose since you can only recycle the same ideas so many ways before they oversaturate the market. We saw that in 2014 and 2015, when unscripted Templar and UFO series overwhelmed the airwaves across cable channels, leading to a massive collapse in ratings and the cancellation of many series. The shift to scripted versions of the same material repackages old ideas, but with the added wrinkle of freeing the network from any lingering fidelity to facts.
 
And lest you think that Knightfall would at least concentrate History’s love of Templar conspiracies into the realm of fiction, Lehrer promised a raft of unscripted “Knights Templar programming to go around Knightfall in the next few months.” The tail wagged the dog. Templar conspiracy theories for everyone!
 
I kid. The network already had a Templar conspiracy show before Knightfall. It’s called Curse of Oak Island, currently the History channel’s highest-rated unscripted show, and one of the highest rated cable shows on Tuesdays, with 3.1 million viewers this past week. As of this writing, Knightfall ratings are not yet available for comparison.
18 Comments
BigNick
12/7/2017 09:50:36 am

At least it's not The Hitler Channel anymore.

Reply
E.P. Grondine
12/7/2017 10:33:47 am

Follow the money: aliens and UFOs are more entertaining than Hitler.

Reply
Joe Scales
12/7/2017 01:47:57 pm

No, that distinction belongs to the National Geographic Channel these days.

Reply
Bob Jase
12/7/2017 03:37:16 pm

No its not. Now there are two other semi-Hitler Channels - the Military History Channel which shows about six shows a day in endless loops and American Heroes Channel which shows lots of documentaries about the Mafia because who's bigger American heroes than them?


Damn, when Pawn Stars is the most educational show on your network....


I miss actual WWII documentaries.

Reply
David Bradbury
12/7/2017 05:32:17 pm

If you can ever find "Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain" it's a very worthwhile and moving series.

Joe Scales
12/7/2017 10:43:15 pm

I miss Battles BC. Though its "300" style graphics were a bit overblown, they had a great cast of professors and it just might have been the last worthwhile historic programming the History Channel featured.

Joe Scales
12/7/2017 10:09:11 am

It wasn't that long ago that the History Channel featured a mini-series portraying the early days of the Revolutionary War. In just the first couple of minutes I knew how horrendous it would be when it portrayed Sam Adams as a young, buff, pretty-boy, leaping from rooftop to rooftop escaping from British soldiers. Of course at the time, in truth he was a rather robust middle-aged politician... but there you have it. More fakery from a television network that should promptly change its name to more accurately reflect their mendacity.

Reply
Ken
12/7/2017 10:21:07 am

I'll bet a show that glorifies the Confederacy and suggests that they were on the right side of history would "resonate" with 30-40% of the public. i.e. the same people that support a certain politician.

And after that politician is gone (soon) HC can run a series on how great a visionary he was and how we made a huge mistake getting rid of him.

Reply
Bob Jase
12/7/2017 03:42:12 pm

There already is one and its on several networks.

http://www.espn.com/jayski/pages/story/_/id/18640591/nascar-television-listings

https://www.foxsports.com/nascar/schedule

https://www.nascar.com/en_us/news-media/articles/2016/8/21/nascar-tv-channel-finder-cnbc.html

http://direct-vs-dish.com/channels/speed-channel/

and more....

Reply
Riley V
12/8/2017 03:53:03 pm

Point taken, but I still love NASCAR.

MARS VLTOR
12/18/2017 11:30:02 pm

Ken,

To which Democrat politician do you refer? The Confederacy was, as you may recall, created by the Democrats. They were also the architects of odious laws and organizations/institutions like Jim Crow ordinances, KKK, Segregation, et al. Democrat governors also murderoualy set police and National Guardsmen on Civil Rights protestors.

MARS VLTOR

Reply
E.P. Grondine
12/7/2017 10:31:57 am

Hi Jason -

I am surprised to see that you expect original thought/ themes from Hollywood. They are in show business, and will go with what works: sex and violence. I'm looking forward to "Saucy Ben", and its Indian massacres.

Reply
David Bradbury
12/7/2017 05:34:24 pm

No, no! What really works is food.

Reply
Jim
12/7/2017 11:01:45 am

I would like to hear Eli Lehrer define "scripted". Most of their "unscripted" show "stars" would mutter a pile of incoherent ramblings if they were truly unscripted.

Reply
Only Me
12/7/2017 01:10:50 pm

Maybe History Channel should hire the same company that designed the 2015 Destination America logo which included images of a UFO, gray alien, Bigfoot, Goatman, werewolf and ghost.

Reply
Clete
12/7/2017 01:11:47 pm

I used to watch the History Channel because it's management, years ago, felt that Television should not only entertain, but also educate. That changed when a woman by the name of Nancy Dubac was brought in by A & E (the owner of the History Channel) to increase rating. Her way to do so was to dumb down the Channel, first with quasi-reality crap, then with fringe programming. The channel became more and more unwatchable by anyone with an I.Q. above that of a carrot. Even when the History Channel puts on a "Historical Program.", if it is produced by the History Channel it usually turns out to be total crap. The only two worth the time and effort to watch recently have been "Viking" and "The Hatfields and McCoys". Neither of which were produced by the History Channel, but instead produced by independent companies and then purchased by the History Channel.

Reply
BigNick
12/7/2017 06:47:17 pm

She didn't by chance work at Mtv before going to A&E did she?

Reply
Jim Furrer
12/10/2017 08:20:19 pm

"The channel became more and more unwatchable by anyone with an I.Q. above that of a carrot..."

So sad and yet so true ... what I appreciate about your comment is the image it evokes of a cable nerwork pandering to vegetables. Well done.

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      • Extreme History >
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        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Remarkable Discoveries Within the Sphinx (Hoax)
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • The Shaver Mystery >
          • Lovecraft and the Deros
          • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
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        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
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        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
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        • Noah's Ark Cables
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        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
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        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
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      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
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        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
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      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
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      • Defining a Zombie
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      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
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      • The Coming Race
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      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
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      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
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      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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