Science Channel Refuses To Dumb Down Science Any Further
JANUARY 26, 2010 | ISSUE 46•04
SILVER SPRING, MD—Frustrated by continued demands from viewers for more awesome and extreme programming, Science Channel president Clark Bunting told reporters Tuesday that his cable network was "completely incapable" of watering down science any further than it already had.
An ad for the Science Channel's easy-to-pronounce gourd-launching show, <i>Punkin Chunkin</i>.
"Look, we've tried, we really have, but it's simply not possible to set the bar any lower," said a visibly exhausted Bunting, adding that he "could not in good conscience" make science any more mindless or insultingly juvenile. "We already have a show called Really Big Things, which is just ridiculous if you think about it, and one called Heavy Metal Taskforce, which I guess deals with science on some distant level, though I don't know what it is. Plus, there's Punkin Chunkin."
"Punkin Chunkin, for Christ's sake," added Bunting, referring to the popular program in which contestants launch oversized pumpkins into the air using catapults. "What more do you people want?"
Along with Bunting's remarks, the Science Channel issued a statement claiming that it currently airs more than 150 programming hours that are tangentially, and often laughably, related to science, and that staff members are unable to bring themselves to make those hours even more asinine.
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Test audiences responded poorly to the show's "overly-scientific" method of dropping a bear 300 feet.
Debbie Myers, general manager of the Science Channel, said the cable station has maintained a balance of 5 percent science content and 95 percent mind-numbing drivel over the past few years, and that this was as far as they were willing to go.
"At this point, having the word 'how' in a show's title is about as close to scientific investigation as we get," Myers said. "In fact, I don't even know how we can justify airing a show like Mantracker at all. A cowboy hunts contestants down using his trailing skills? I guess you could say it makes the audience use 'observation' by watching what happens on screen."
"Observation is a part of science, right?" Myers added. "Jesus Christ."
A survey of the network's current schedule confirmed Monday that on-air demonstrations of such basic scientific principles as "inertia" and "momentum" are mostly relegated to pushing a blindfolded participant strapped to an office chair down a steep hill, while other concepts, such as "sublimation," are regularly demonstrated by strapping dynamite to a large fiberglass Big Boy statue and then watching it explode.
As evidence of their refusal to further water down programming, network sources pointed to a number of proposed shows they've abandoned in recent weeks, including an animal-based bungee-jumping program called Extreme Gravity, and Atom Smashers, a series that was was roundly rejected by focus groups as being "too technical" and "not awesome enough."
"People liked that the particle accelerators were really huge, but apparently the show didn't have enough smashing to hold their interest," said a former employee who wished to remain anonymous. "In the end, it was either add a huge monster truck for no reason whatsoever or pull the plug on the entire project. Honestly, I don't think I'd be able to face my wife and children had we gone through with it."
http://www.theonion.com/articles/science-channel-refuses-to-dumb-down-science-any-f,2897/THE ONION gets it wrong for once because now the Discovery Channel aka Science Channel
now has Palin.
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