HNN Survey: What Kind of History Does the History Channel Show?
The results of an HNN survey of three weeks of programming on the History Channel show that the channel mainly focuses on three areas: military history, technology, and religion. The survey covered the period between March 26 and April 15, 2006.
Of the programs analyzed during this period, an average of 20 percent were devoted to military history. Of the military history shows, 70 percent covered World War II, with offerings ranging from programs about specific battles or weapons to a documentary about a family of Hungarian dwarfs kept alive by Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. The remaining military topics dealt mainly with the Civil War, with thirty minutes per week spent on the war in Vietnam, part of a rebroadcast of a 1980 multipart documentary, The Ten Thousand Day War.
The “Modern Marvels” series, which takes a topic and traces its development through history, made up an average of 13 percent of all programs. These shows often cover technological wonders like modern firefighting, weaponry, or machines. Many of these programs also have a military component; for example, the program on firefighting included a segment on the oil fires that occurred during the Persian Gulf War of 1991, as well as the volunteer fire brigades of London during the Blitz. Programs on materials like steel or rubber also tended to mention the military applications of the topic at hand.
About 8 percent of the broadcasts dealt with religion in some way; some programs explored archaeological evidence of biblical events, while a surprising amount of programming was devoted to Armageddon and the book of Revelations. The number of shows increased as Easter approached, but even without a religious holiday, the average still held between 4 and 5 percent. The breakdown by week is as follows: For the week ending 4/1, religious topics comprised 2.6 percent of the programs, increasing over the next two weeks to 8.4 percent and 13.6 percent .
The channel’s website contains a discussion forum for different historical and current topics. According to the website on April 14, 2006, the “popular” topics included “History of Christianity,” “Current Events,” World War II,” “Civil War,” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The categories revealed 31,188 separate topics on war, as well as 12,319 religious topics.
The programming on the History Channel tends to follow a schedule of holidays and subjects of current interest. Along with the added religious programming for Easter, shows on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake were scheduled during the week of the 100 th anniversary of the event. Shows discussing the Da Vinci Code were scheduled to coincide with the debut of the movie.
A series of programs on UFOs, UFO Files, averaged 7 percent of the total programming for the second and third weeks of the survey. One of the programs connected UFOs to the Bible, while another discussed how much American presidents after 1940 could have known about the phenomenon. Yet another discussed unidentifiable submersible objects (USOs), and revealed the possible reports of these objects by different historical figures like Christopher Columbus and Alexander the Great.
Many have criticized the channel’s portrayal of historical events and actors. Lee Siegel, reviewing the documentary, “The Crusades: Crescent and the Cross,” in theNew Republic on October 31, 2005, noted that theories of “The Great Man” and “A Clash of Civilizations” are still prominent in the channel’s interpretation of past events. During the course of our three week survey a series on “The Presidents” demonstrated the continuing prominence of the presidential synthesis.
Others have criticized the channel's shows for a lack of context and factual inaccuracy. In 2001, Judith Klinghoffer wrote a review for HNN of the documentary, "Cover Up: Attack on the U.S.S. Liberty," the story of an Israeli attack on an American warship during the Six-Day War in 1967. Her review highlighted several instances in which the producers of the documentary took facts out of context, seriously distorting the interpretation of the event. (Siegel noted factual inaccuracies in the Crusades documentary.)
Twice in recent years the History Channel was accused of distorting the history of American presidents, in one case excusing a president's errors, in another implicating a president in a crime he didn't commit. In the spring 2005 the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies objected to a documentary that allegedly sugarcoated FDR's response to the Holocaust. One year earlier the History Channel featured a documentary accusing Lyndon Johnson of complicity in the assassination of John Kennedy. After an uproar the channel allowed a distinguished panel of historians to take the documentary to task. Stanley Kutler, a member of the panel, commended the Channel for reversing course quickly: "The History Channel has made a start in the right direction as it has totally disavowed the program and publicly promised it never will be shown again. It always is free to sell it as a hitherto-unknown episode of 'The Twilight Zone.' "
The History Channel is owned by A&E Television Networks, a joint venture of Hearst Corporation, ABC, Inc., and NBC Universal. This company also holds other properties that include A&E and the Biography Channel.