Beware the tube’s tall tales

For decades, the biggest liar in your house has likely been your TV, with an increasingly ridiculous stream of scripted “reality shows” and questionable news reports beamed directly into your eyeballs 24 hours per day. And it’s only getting worse — not only is the quality of television programming increasingly questionable, but the cable channels themselves are in a downward spiral of unreliability. Stated plainly, the logos for the channels no longer match the shows they broadcast.

The so-called Learning Channel (TLC) airs a television program called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding where each week the viewer gets an insider’s look into a different gypsy family’s nuptials. We all know the viewing public loves weddings and all things big and fat, so it would follow that combining these two incredibly popular adjectives would create a truly transcendent hour-long television experience. But that doesn’t explain why it’s on a channel that’s ostensibly about learning.

While the program claims to be educating viewers about the nomadic people’s culture, in the end it’s really just another opportunity to gawk at spectacle of a totally over-the-top wedding. And TLC is a repeat offender. Amongst their other supposedly educational offerings are shows like The Little Couple, which is supposed to provide insight into life as a little person, but only demonstrates how overwhelmingly monotonous marriage can be for anyone, regardless of their placement on the vertical spectrum.

And broadcasting gypsy reality TV and marriage counselling is just the tip of this unfortunate iceberg. From MTV and Much Music not actually showing many music videos anymore to Fox News not really ever showing news, the list goes on and on.

But aren’t the network executives simply yielding to viewer demand? If this is what the people want, it’s what they ought to get. But cable channels don’t have to taunt us with their tiny yet enormously inaccurate logos. Gone are the days when false advertising was reserved for the commercials and not entire networks.

Not all is lost: some channels remain relatively faithful to their brand names. Notwithstanding a few shows, Discovery still offers some excellent science programming, and Comedy is still mostly funny. Even so, these channels have the benefit of exceptionally vague names. Discovery and Comedy are a lot more ambiguous than History and Learning.

Don’t fret, there’s still room for the History Channel, MTV and the rest of the endless televised liars to improve. All that needs to be added are a few amendments to their misleading names. The History Channel can be renamed the History and Conspiracy Theories Channel, Much Music becomes Not That Much Music Anymore, and Fox News becomes Fox Not Really News. But until some changes are made, your TV will continue to be a liar. Make sure to keep an eye on it — pun intended.

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