Travel from the Beyond

Posted on October 28, 2005 by Gene

As always, I find that the networks of Discovery Channel tend to be less informational and more tabloid.
They’re showing a ridiculous program on Travel Channel right now, “Most Haunted Live!” from London. First question: why in the world is this on Travel Channel?
Next question: does Discovery have any credibility left? They try to position themselves as a psuedo-educational network, but their programming more often then not is about UFOs, the paranormal, and sharks. This is what’s so ridiculous about conservatives who claim that Discovery duplicates PBS programming and therefore PBS should be eliminated.
I watched a little of this silly program, where a bunch of people are sitting in the dark, videotaped by low-light cameras, using a Ouija board. Gee, the glass moved! It must be a spirit! Hmm, the spirit must be tired… ‘cos when the leader of this group took her finger off the glass, it stopped moving. Surely only a coincidence, right? They’re in Tower Bridge, and when a hanging piece of flotsam starts to slowly swing, they assume it must be a spirit… not the thousands of cars passing above them on the bascule.
I enjoy the silliness of paranormal nonsense, and the pleasing creeps it causes. But I worry when people start to think that it’s real, that it is a science of some sort. And for this program to be on a Discovery channel rather than, say, the SciFi channel is just really annoying.