BBC history...is getting rubbish

I don't know if any of you guys have read BBC history, but many of it's readers, and me have begun to get a little bit tired of it. On the front of every single edition there is always some article on a superficial aspect of the second world war (no offense to modernists - your subject is very interesting if interesting topics are chosen) and if there is any other topic, it usually deals with a stereotype. I don't understand why it's getting so predictable and petty - it has great historians on it's board, but seems to come up with rubbish. Many of the titles of the letters sent in from the readers are stuff like "for those of us that don't suffer from an obbession with Hitler" and "monarchs and empires - is there anything else?". What are your thoughts on this and are your countries national history magazines (if any) experiencing this worrying trend?

Killed Alexander the Great, and started the Afghan wars? Persistant curse, lasted over two thousand years. And a third rate one, no help against Genghis.

Aster, you don't seriously believe it is the sole goal of BBC History to remain impartial and discover and uncover the truth about all aspects of history??

Originally posted by Dolphin Aster, you don't seriously believe it is the sole goal of BBC History to remain impartial and discover and uncover the truth about all aspects of history??   The market, despite what some more avid history buffs like yourself and the letter writers would desire, is for modern history and other, heavily studied and 'common-knowledge' subjects like Roman History etc. If the market was more interested in other topics, then it would be these topics that would be covered. Look at BBC History as pop-history, and no more. It is not something to get peeved about. You have simply moved beyond their sphere of intellectual historical evaluation!

Yes, what the hell do we need to know about history of hamburgers, or Bob Dylan for that matter? Or about every bullet fired in WWII?

The history channel? Justinian pretty much nailed it. I just wasted a couple of hours of my life yesterday watching a documentary on hippies. Why did they even bother i wonder? I already knew all that stuff. I had thought that maybe they had something new too pass on! Nah...

History, Aster, is narration and the role of the historian is to discover new insights from the unchanging detritus of time. In contrast, television being a visual medium essentially becomes eye-candy and if one is alert enough and has long experience with the pictographic record it then becomes a game for often the narrator is discussing an event and the visual is but stock footage totally disconnected to the subject under discussion. These discrepancies are quite obvious in WWII narratives, but become glaring in pictoral presentations of WWI--just how often can one look at the celebration of the Romanov tricentennial of 1913 while the narrator is discussing the Revolution of 1917. Then there is the usual theft of Eisentein 1920s film footage as illustrations of the October 1917 Bolshevik revolution!

aster, we should pool AE members resources and start a production company, making decent history programmes.

Did you see the 6 hour BBC story of India , presented by Michael Wood ?

 

 

There were no special effects or computer generated imagery, I thought it was an excellent series.

Yes - and every five seconds there are adverts. I once watched a programme with Dan Crushank about the Parthanon on that channel - he went there, stated that it actually wasn't very architecturally advanced and was about as advanced as stone henge (WHAT?!??!?!) and then said some stuff about Byron and the Romantics and their visits here. That was all he said about the Parthanon.