As food for thought, history suffers from the same prickly reputation as broccoli: People avoid it, even though they know it’s supposed to be good for them.
Put history on the tube, and there’s always the danger the public will click away. After all, how many viewers would choose Andrew Jackson over Michael Jackson? Or the Battle of Bull Run over a Bulls playoff battle?
But in the crowded cable TV marketplace, one newcomer has startled industry experts, outpacing the rosiest projections of its programmers while making some history of its own.
The History Channel, which debuted in January 1995, delivers history 24 hours a day: documentaries, mini-series, movies and Saturday morning cartoons starring famous inventors. So far, the public has eaten it up. The History Channel has become a top-requested cable network and reaches more than 19 million homes, making it the most successful cable launch of the ’90s.
“People are hungry for content, and they’ve sort of overdosed on the trivial stuff that’s on television,” said Kathleen DeBoer, marketing director for Time Machine, an American history magazine for kids that premiered this month. “History has gotten a bad rap in schools because it’s been presented in boring textbooks rather than through exciting stories, which is what the History Channel is trying to do.”
Time Machine, published in conjunction with the National Museum of American History in Washington, marks another example of the history-based entertainment explosion that has hit the television, print and computer worlds.
Though history on TV is nothing new–it has long been a staple of public television–the desire for remembering things past is growing. Network executives credit this in large part to the approach of the year 2000 and the aging of the Baby Boomer generation.
“Boomers are hitting that 45-to-54 age mark and are interested in knowing where they’ve been,” said Dan Davids, The History Channel’s senior vice president and general manager. “They’re interested in their past and feel like they need to know more about it than they do.”
Statistics bear out Davids’ observations. Since its inception, The History Channel has garnered its most loyal following among male viewers aged 35 to 64.
“People like stories, they’ve enjoyed them since childhood,” Davids said. “It’s our hope that with our niche, we’ll get on people’s `short list,’ the networks they check out when they first come home from work.”
“I’m 57 and I’ve already begun to think of my life as a historical document,” said John Woods, a professor of medieval Middle Eastern history at the University of Chicago. “I’m finding when I turn the television on, The History Channel is the first thing I look at.”
As for the rest of cable, The History Channel is not alone in moving forward by looking backward.
“It’s always been a popular genre for us, and we’re going to step up our history programming,” said John Ford, senior vice president and general manager of The Learning Channel. “About 40 percent of our prime time programming is history.”
More and more history
On Monday, The Learning Channel will unveil a new prime-time series, “Real History” (8 to 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. to midnight, Monday through Friday), which will cover themes ranging from dinosaurs to the weapons of war. The network’s other history shows include “Archaeology” (Mondays, 7 to 7:30 p.m.) and “History’s Turning Points” Mondays, 7:30 to 8 p.m.).
On The Learning Channel’s sister station, the Discovery Channel, history has been a regular feature since the network was launched in 1985. The current weeknight-viewing lineup includes “Time Traveler” (10 to 11 p.m. Thursdays), and the three-part mini-series “Last of the Czars” will be rebroadcast July 8-10.
At A&E Television, The History Channel’s parent station, plans are also in motion to expand history coverage: “Biography for Kids,” based on the adult prime time series, will launch Sept. 1; and a third A&E network, The Biography Channel, is slated to go on-air next year.
Add to that A&E’s “Biography” Website, which will provide additional information on biographers and famous figures (located at www.biography.com, it is scheduled to appear on the Web July 1).
Other Websites abound–including The History Channel’s at www.historychannel.com–and CD-ROM packages have also pushed history into the computer realm.
But with the mushrooming of cyber-history and history TV, history indeed repeats itself. Who could forget the Alamo when The History Channel and Discovery Channel have competing versions of the story behind the San Antonio landmark? Discovery’s Alamo special, which aired March 3 and featured footage shot inside the mission, staked its claim as a world premiere, even though The History Channel’s ran Feb. 25.
“Egypt is also a hot topic” among the cable channels, observed Ford, a former history major. “I love Egyptian history because you’ve got the pyramids, the sphinx and 27 dynasties to deal with.”
Ford insists all the duplicate programming will not hurt the cable networks. “If we tackle a subject and find out someone else is doing it, it doesn’t bother us,” he said. “Someone could go out now and do a great history of the Civil War, even though Ken Burns did a definitive history. There are other great stories to be told.”
History with a twist
Still, that doesn’t mean all history on TV is captivating. There’s a wide swing in quality, for example, between two recent documentaries on the History Channel that cover complementary turf.
The three-hour “Jerusalem,” hosted by Martin Gilbert, was a bit of a snoozer. Originally aired April 7, “Jerusalem” had a slapdash quality, with some sequences that looked like they were shot through the lens of a tourist’s camcorder. Ancient temples and sacred sights were pointlessly interspersed with meandering scenes in Jerusalem’s outdoor cafes.
On the other end of the spectrum, “The Crusades” sparkled, thanks in large part to the irreverent wit of Monty Python alumnus Terry Jones. It was real history with a Pythonesque twist, as Jones recounted that some desperate crusaders, in their bid to keep fighting, used the dead bodies of their comrades as catapult ammo. The four-part series, which first aired in March 1995, is tentatively slated for reairing later this year, said History Channel spokeswoman LaDebra Moore.
By using period films and photos, celebrity narrators and on-site footage, TV producers have an edge over the historians. Hollywood also has a knack for telling dramatic stories of heroes and villains, something the networks use to their advantage.
“People want their history on human terms, and that’s what they’re getting from these channels, the human side,” said Ken Davis, author of “Don’t Know Much About History” and the just-released “Don’t Know Much About The Civil War.”
But there is always the risk that programmers will sacrifice historical truth for show business glitz. “Some of these stations are showing films like `Mississippi Burning,’ where Hollywood completely muddled and fabricated the story and left facts behind,” Davis said. “The movie has so much more of an impact. There are kids who use Oliver Stone’s `JFK’ as a source for term papers.”
With the History Channel’s “Movies in Time,” historical critiques are built into the broadcast (a prospect that might make Stone blush). First, the movie is shown, then experts convene a debate over the film as a historical document (recent examples include “Ghandi,” “The Blue and the Gray” and “George Washington”).
“Sander Vanocur (the host) conducts a roundtable discussion after the movie about its veracity and the accuracy of the actors,” said Abbe Raven, programming and production vice president. “People watch because they’re still intrigued by the subject, and they want to know more.”
And more they get. With the luxury to stretch out programming–cable channels use paid subscribers as a measure of their ratings and profitability–the History Channel and its ilk can take chances the major networks avoid.
Consider the old ABC mini-series “Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance.” They got a second life when History Channel ran them consecutively over a three-week span beginning in April. The prospect of 48 total viewing hours might sound eye- and brain-numbing, but Raven says, “We got a terrific response.”
Even in Hyde Park, where academics have been known to frown on TV watching, the History Channel has drawn rave reviews from the likes of Woods.
“It’s wonderful, I love it,” he said. “It came to Hyde Park on June 1st, and I watch it all the time.”
Giving life to the story
While some teachers might regard history TV as competition, Woods sees it as a complement, a tool that can help spark the love of learning in children and adults alike. “It makes the whole thing come alive, which is one of the most difficult challenges we face,” he said. “We try to teach students that these are people who really lived, who breathed.”
Woods and Davis see Ken Burns’ 1990 PBS documentary “The Civil War” as a pivotal moment in the history, if you will, of history on TV. Working over five years with 16,000 photos and 150 hours of film, Burns brought the 19th Century struggle home to viewers in a fashion never before accomplished–even though some 50,000 books and hundreds of films and TV shows had previously tackled the subject.
On camera, Burns relied not on a star-studded cast but on a half-dozen historians who acted as tour guides. Most noteworthy was Shelby Foote, a Southern novelist and historian who provided the 11-hour show’s inspiration when he told Burns, “God is the greatest dramatist–just tell the story.”
An estimated 14 million people watched “The Civil War,” the largest audience for any PBS series. In 1994, Burns’ follow-up epic “Baseball” also drew as many as 13.6 million viewers a night during its nine-evening run, proving that the public had a hankering for history that network TV was failing to fill.
About that time, A&E executives were surveying viewers for their opinions. “We learned that 50 percent of them were more interested in history than they were five years ago,” Davids said.
For Davids and his crew, part of making the past look sexy is finding the link between past and future. With 1996 as an election and Olympic year, the History Channel has slated specials examining presidential campaigns and athletic triumphs.
“With news on television, they only have a few minutes to tell a story, often devoid of context,” Woods said. “Anything that helps people to think over change in time is important.”
Or, as The Learning Channel’s Ford described it, “History is grand entertainment. I think it’s exciting history is doing so well. And if you look over the 5,000 years of recorded history, you’ve got lots of great characters. It’s like one long movie.”
THE BUSINESS OF AIRING HISTORY
Just as history is written by the winners, it can also be crafted by corporate sponsors. In a proposed History Channel series “The Spirit of Enterprise,” companies like General Motors, DuPont and AT&T were tapped to co-produce hour-long profiles of their respective companies. The corporations not only were going to fund the series and buy ad time but also would have veto power over content.
Suspecting that any unflattering views of the profiled companies–clips of striking workers, or footage from “Roger and Me,” for example–would be excluded, some observers slammed “The Spirit of Enterprise” as a one-sided, glorified informercial. Stung by the criticism, History Channel executives announced earlier this month that they would kill the proposed shows.
“Due to concerns about objectivity, we thought it was in our best interest to abandon the concept,” Davids said. “People started calling it a series and it wasn’t; it was an idea.”
NETWORKS TO THE PAST
PBS
Launched: 1969
History programming: Varies according to local market (WTTW-Ch. 11 averages three hours a week)
Featured series: “The American Experience,” documentaries profiling a person or period in U.S. history
A&E Television
Launched: 1984
History programming: 8 hours per week plus specials
Featured series: “Biography,” profiles of celebrities, newsmakers and political figures
Discovery Channel
Launched: 1985
Featured series: 17-19 hours per week plus specials
Shows include: “Time Traveller,” documentaries on major events in history
The Learning Channel
Launched: 1991
History programming: 14 hours per week plus specials
Featured series: “Real History,” documentaries on such topics as dinosaurs, weapons of war and ancient Egypt
The History Channel *
Launched: 1995
History programming: 24 hours a day
Featured series: “History Alive,” documentarieson such topics as assassinations, military history and presidential campaigns
* The History Channel is carried by 6 of 49 cable systems (including TC/Chicago Cable) in the Chicago area. In response to readers’ requests, the Tribune’s TV Week will begin listing History Channel programming June 30. To request History Channel in your area, call your local cable provider.
