THE ONION: DEFENDERS OF SCIENCE TV?

Oh. This is funny, but my goodness, only barely satire.

I've had many conversations with colleagues over the last five years or so about this, and even made this point when I appeared on Alan Autry's radio show a while back, that the quality of science programming on cable is not what is should be.

For example, the version of 'Planet Earth' that aired on the 'Science Channel' with narration by Sigourney Weaver is full of amazing eye candy, but very little science. It seems that the cable programmers wanted to put in more commercials, and the easiest way to do that was to trim all that pesky David Attenborough narration about science that's in the original out. The 11 original BBC programs track in at 550 minutes, whereas the version American audiences saw had 7-10 minutes less per episode. What a travesty.

I can honestly say that programs on the History Channel like "How The Earth Was Made" are better than a lot of stuff on the former Discovery Channel, which routinely repackages foreign footage to make repetitive, low-content junk. Hey, watch this animation for the eighth time in an half-hour program!