![]() ![]() Scholars have argued that film and television, and by extension History and its programming, play an important role in historical knowledge production and the present shaping of collective memory, especially in relationship to how audiences engage with historical content in everyday life. As of 2020, History reached 380 million homes worldwide and much of its content is now accessible via Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and its own streaming service History Vault. We’re an entertainment brand.” 9 While History is not the only scholastic television network to move away from research-based educational programming (see Discovery Channel, formerly The Discovery Channel, and TLC, formerly The Learning Channel), its authoritative presence and substantial viewership makes this shift of pressing importance to public historians and educators. 8 As Nancy Dubuc, the former CEO of A+E Networks and the person credited with transforming the network, has stated, “at the end of the day we’re not an education resource. These programming changes have not come without criticism by scholars and media critics who have called out History’s production of inaccurate, fabricated, and purposefully ambiguous content that continues to move further away from historical scholarship and closer to conspiracy narratives and reality television. The “search for ‘niche’ audiences has shaped the requirements of history programmes in relation to choice of periods and topics considered to be attractive to these target audiences.” 5 As Brian Taves explains, “The History Channel’s bedrock support is considered to be men, middle-aged and older hence the emphasis on programming dealing with war, weapons, and technology, especially during its weekend lineup, as a counteroffering to sports broadcasting.” 6 Many of these pressures, in addition to a host of new factors, also apply to the creation of content for streaming services as well. 3 As Edgerton recently noted, historical programing is now an “entirely new and different kind of programming altogether” that comprises a spectrum of quality from “comprehensive, complex, and penetrating to trash TV.” 4 Ann Gray and Erin Bell have argued that these changes are the result of larger industry forces such as the intensification of competition, the fragmentation of the audience, branding, and celebrity culture which are driving content creation. While PBS and a few other outlets continue to produce educational programming that presents historical content rooted in archival research and scholarly expertise, such as Reconstruction: America After the Civil War (2019), other networks such as History (formerly The History Channel) have shifted to more financially profitable programming that is only loosely based on historical content and gives little regard to topical representativeness and nuanced interpretation. However, the historical programming now presented on television is no longer dominated by the “biographies and quasi-biographical documentaries” of decades past. ![]() By entangling this construction of masculinity with a nostalgic, decontextualized, and meritocratic understanding of the American Dream, History caters to an older, predominantly white male demographic and offers programming that aligns with and legitimizes their worldview. Finally, we argue that History supplements its reality television shows with conspiratorial programming that profits off of a problematic orientation to the factual and evidence-based framework that humanistic and scientific inquiry is built upon.įollowing the success of Ken Burns’ The Civil War and the subsequent boom of historical programming on cable television in the 1990s, media historian Gary Edgerton made the bold claim that “television is the principal means by which most people learn about history today.” 1 Despite the continued popularity of museums and online resources, this assertion remains largely true. This programming reproduces a narrow conception of masculinity that emphasizes whiteness, manual labor, patriotism, and the mythic frontier situated within a capitalist framework. Using distant reading and close textual analysis of thirty consecutive days of History's programming, we argue that the majority of the network's aired programming is reality television in the guise of historical content. ![]() This article explores the discursive means by which History (formerly The History Channel) assigns value to and legitimizes certain methodologies, ideas, and identities. ![]()
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