History Channel

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1997, Salon.com writer Mark Schone described the History Channel in a headline that became a kind of shorthand: "All Hitler, all the time." He found the network broadcasting as many as 40 hours of World War II programming per week. Sometimes, it ran as many as 12 hours of that in a single day.

  That narrow focus on military history defined the channel's early character. But within a decade, the same network would pivot toward reality shows and non-historical programming. The criticism that followed came from historians, archaeologists, politicians, and researchers across multiple disciplines.

  By 2011, History was available to 99 million pay television households in the United States. That figure now stands at roughly 63 million. That decline did not happen in a single season.

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• 2. Born From Archives

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  Plans for a history-focused cable channel circulated within the company as early as 1993. That year, the company bought the Lou Reda Productions documentary library and secured long-term rights to the Hearst Entertainment documentary archive. Those two collections gave the new channel its initial programming backbone.

  When the channel launched on the 1st of January 1995, it was owned by A&E Television Networks. Libby Haight O'Connell, the channel's historical consultant, described its early operation in a publication of the American Historical Association, released about a year into the channel's run. She noted that professional historians had been enlisted to work on programs. Viewers were writing in to point out historical errors and to open discussions with the channel's creators about what was being depicted.

  The UK counterpart launched on the 1st of November 1995, in a partnership with British Sky Broadcasting. A&E Networks had chosen History as its primary vehicle for overseas expansion, partly because A&E lacked international rights to many of its own co-productions. Brazil came next, through a deal with TVA in April 1996. The Nordic and Baltic regions followed in 1997 through Modern Times Group, with Canada joining that same year.

  By 1998, the channel's reach extended beyond broadcasting. A partnership with Mayflower Tours produced an affiliated website at historytravel.com and a publication called History Channel Traveler. In October 1998, History teamed with MSG Network to produce short-form sports history programming. A&E launched History International as a spin-off in November 1998. The new channel initially broadcast some programs in French or Spanish to support the National Cable and Telecommunications Association's Cable in the Classroom initiative.

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• 3. From Tanks to Truckers

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  Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, and Pawn Stars all garnered increased viewership ratings for the channel. Ice Road Truckers followed drivers navigating frozen waterways. Ax Men centered on loggers. Pawn Stars was set in a Las Vegas pawnshop. None of the three had any connection to history, and all three drew criticism for exactly that reason.

  US Senator Chuck Grassley went on record as a critic of the channel's programming direction. He showed particular disdain for Ax Men and Pawn Stars, citing their lack of historical or educational content. The subject matter extended well beyond reality formats. The channel's schedule in this era covered conspiracy theories, mythical creatures, organized crime, secret societies, and programming tied to 2012 doomsday scenarios.

  In 2013, History premiered Vikings, a scripted drama series. The show marked the channel's first major step into narrative fiction. Modern Marvels, one of the channel's long-running documentary series, was frequently cited as an exception to the broader criticism. Critics praised it for presenting detailed information in an entertaining format.

  The shift was widely characterized as an example of channel drift and network decay. Academic researchers would give the phenomenon a more formal name.

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• 4. Pseudoscience Under Scrutiny

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  Stanley Kutner was one of three historians commissioned to review a 2003 History Channel documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. His assessment was critical, and the channel ultimately disavowed the series and never aired it again.

  By 2010, the pattern had acquired academic terminology. Professor Jeremy Stoddard gave it a name in a published article: "the History Channel effect." He described it as the tendency for documentary-style programming to present value-laden perspectives capable of misleading audiences. Stoddard argued that the channel had not created this problem alone. The deeper issue, he wrote, was a public misperception that documentaries are "objective sources of history."

  Kenneth Feder, an archaeologist, authored Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. He called the channel's embrace of ancient astronaut theory "execrable bullshit." Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, founder of the Bad Archaeology website, said he found it "incredible and frightening" that a worldwide channel could broadcast "such rubbish as Ancient Aliens." In 2011, Forbes staffer Alex Knapp wrote that the History Channel "shouldn't run stuff like this ancient astronaut nonsense."

  Peter Lemesurier appeared in the channel's Nostradamus series and afterward described it as "largely fiction" and "lurid nonsense." He catalogued the series' references to alleged Mayan end-of-world prophecies and a supposed 2012 galactic alignment. John Major Jenkins had theories about that alignment featured in a History Channel program called Decoding the Past. Jenkins himself called the network's treatment "45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism."

  In December 2011, Politifact gave a History Channel claim its lowest rating: "pants on fire." The claim aired on a program called Christmas Unwrapped - The History of Christmas. It stated that Congress had remained in session on Christmas Day for most of its first 67 years. Politifact's own research found Congress had convened on Christmas Day only once in that entire span. Daily Show host Jon Stewart responded the following day. He said it was his program's fault for having trusted the History Channel.

  In 2015, Brian Dunning ranked the channel at number two on a published list of the ten worst anti-science websites. The Smithsonian had published its own critique. Science writer Riley Black took issue with Ancient Aliens for postulating that aliens had caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. The online magazine Cracked singled out UFO Hunters and Ancient Aliens as examples of pseudoscience and pseudohistory.

  In 2017, the channel would face a fact-check that began in a digital archive.

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• 5. The Earhart Affair

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  Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, aired by the History Channel in 2017, built its entire case on a single photograph. The image, from the National Archives, showed a scene at Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The documentary proposed that two figures in the photograph were Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan. The two had been captured by the Japanese, the program argued, following their 1937 disappearance.

  One figure on the dock shared a physique and haircut the documentary said resembled Earhart's. The other was a Caucasian male identified as resembling Noonan. The program also cited physical evidence at Mili Atoll. This material, the documentary argued, could have come from an Electra aircraft during a crash or a subsequent overland move to a barge. A ship visible in the photograph was identified as the Koshu Maru, a Japanese military vessel.

  The documentary was soon discredited. Kota Yamano, a Japanese blogger, traced the photograph to the National Diet Library Digital Collection. The original source was a Japanese travel guide published in October 1935. That date placed the image at least two years before Earhart and Noonan's 1937 disappearance. Yamano also correctly identified the ship in the photograph. It was not the Koshu Maru. It was a different vessel, also named Koshu, seized by Allied Japanese forces during World War I.

  Researcher Ben Radford examined the History Channel's methods in an article for the Skeptical Inquirer. His conclusion was pointed. The photograph's provenance had been established, Radford wrote. The documentary's central premise had been discredited "in about half an hour of Google searching."

  On the 4th of January 2019, Radford returned to the subject on episode 82 of his Squaring the Strange podcast. More than 18 months had passed, he noted. The History Channel had offered no apology and no explanation for how its research had gone so wrong.

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• 6. A Branching Network

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  On the 16th of February 2008, History launched a redesigned logo. The trademark H was retained, and a triangle was added to the left, functioning as a play button for on-air animations. On the 20th of March 2008, the channel dropped "The" and "Channel" from its name, becoming simply History.

  In 2012, the Walt Disney Company purchased half of A&E Networks, with Hearst Communications taking the other half, placing History under their joint ownership. A 2015 rebrand, led by Joseph Kiely, introduced the slogan "Make Your Mark" and retained the golden letter H. In March 2018, the channel announced the History 100 initiative. The plan called for 100 documentaries covering the major events and notable figures of the previous century. On the 7th of December 2021, History undertook another significant visual rebrand, again preserving the golden H.

  History International, the spin-off launched in November 1998, began as a channel for international history and linguistic diversity. By 2010, its multilingual programming had been reduced to a single Spanish-language morning program, titled El Canal de Historia. On the 26th of September 2011, it was rebranded as H2. H2's programming focused on documentary content the main History channel had moved away from. Its schedule included exclusive new episodes of The Universe, Ancient Aliens, and Modern Marvels. Original productions included America's Book of Secrets and a special called The Universe: Beyond the Big Bang. H2 made no plans to add reality series.

  In August 2014, A&E Networks acquired a 10% stake in Vice Media. On the 3rd of November 2015, A&E announced that H2 would be replaced by Viceland, a lifestyle network programmed by Vice. H2 signed off at 6:00 a.m. Eastern on the 29th of February 2016.

  Military History, a spin-off devoted to combat history and military biography, launched on the 5th of January 2005. Demand for military programming had outpaced what the main channel could accommodate. A military-history programming block had been running on History International from the 27th of March 2004 as a precursor. Dan Davids, then president of History Channel USA, aimed to secure digital basic cable carriage. The channel's hard launch came in the second quarter of 2005. History en Español, a Spanish-language counterpart focusing on Hispanic American and world history, launched on the 24th of June 2004.

  International versions of History operate across India, Canada, Europe, Australia, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. History Television, the Canadian version, launched in 1997 independently of the US channel. It rarely shared programming with its American counterpart in its early years. Shaw Media announced a licensing agreement with A+E Networks in May 2012 and relaunched the Canadian channel on the 12th of August 2012. The UK version was renamed Sky History on the 27th of May 2020 and incorporated content from Sky Documentaries and Sky Nature.

  The South Korean version launched on the 22nd of September 2017, replacing a Southeast Asian feed. A+E Networks Korea then produced an original Korean-language series called History in the Bottle.

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