This post was originally going to be about the History Channel paying $3.5 million to advertise their show “Swamp People” during the Super Bowl. As I was reading over the story, however, I came across this paragraph:

“Swamp People” is History’s third most-watched original series, trailing only “Pawn Stars” and “American Pickers.” “Pawn Stars” throughout 2011 averaged 7.02 million L7 viewers, making it the fifth most popular program on basic cable. “Pickers” averaged 5.78 million.

Yeah… none of those shows are about history. Not even a little bit. “Swamp People” is about Cajun dudes catching alligators or something, “Pawn Stars” is just about a fancy pawn shop, and “American Pickers” is about buying and selling antiques. To bastardize a great Mitch Hedberg joke, this would be like if the Food Network started airing a reality show about farmers. It’s ridiculous. Yes, the network’s ratings are up, but I don’t see how they can keep calling themselves “The History Channel” like they’re some beacon for educational programming when their schedule is full of shows like this. I’m on to you, History Channel! YOUR HEAD RESTS UPON A BED OF LIES!

But, the more I thought about it, I realized that the History Channel is far from the only network guilty of this. I’ve compiled a collection of other offenders after the jump.

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"Ah wish ah coult grow a beart. Durr."

NFL Football: Saints at Packers (NBC) – My cable has been going in and out all day because Eastern Pennsylvania is mostly underwater. If my viewing of this game is interrupted, Comcast will feel my wrath. (*shakes fist in general direction of Comcast’s downtown Philadelphia headquarters*)

Rookie Blue (CBS) - Fact: All police shows have been rendered inconsequential now that “Paw & Order” exists. Second fact: This one was already inconsequential.

Louie (FX) – Remember when some jamooks got all pissed because Matt mentioned he had seen screeners of a few episodes? Yeah… if I had screeners of this show, I would brag about it so much the Warming Glow readership would dwindle to just people who came by just to tell me what a putz I was. This is why I should never be in charge of anything.

Burn Notice/Suits (USA) – I covered the main points of the USA drama style guide in an Ask Me Anything post on my Tumblr, but they really, really go back to the same well a lot. Sixty percent of the network’s budget at this point must be sunglasses.

Beyond Scared Straight (A&E) – This has always bugged me, so bear with me. If you have a line that’s bent, and you bend it back “beyond straight,” isn’t it just crooked again? Which means these kids would still be criminals. Jesus, I got a C+ in geometry, and even I know that. GET YO MATH RIGHT, A&E!

LATE NIGHT GUESTS: Khloe Kardashian-Odom on Kimmel; Michael J. Fox on Letterman (with the cast of “Two and a Half Men” doing the Top 10); Tim Meadows on Ferguson; Will Arnett and the fetching Anna Kendrick on Leno; Tom Selleck, Cameron Crowe and Pearl Jam on Fallon (tangent: one of my buddies loves Pearl Jam so much — SO MUCH — and I get endless delight out of making fun of them in front of him. I call Eddie Vedder “Mumbles Larue.” It’s the little things in life, people); Marion Cotillard on Stewart; Charlie Day and the Foo Fighters on Conan.

Hey everybody! Remember when the Louisiana sheriffs kicked out A&E’s production crew for “Steven Seagal: Lawman” because Seagal allegedly kept sex slaves? Remember Seagal’s mysterious “unique physiological reaction” to sexual arousal? Well, prepare your Steven-Seagal-invented-everything memes, because “Lawman” will return with Seagal on duty in Arizona’s Maricopa County with notorious hardass Joe Arpaio.

Deputy Seagal has now landed a new beat: Phoenix, Ariz., where controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio has welcomed the actor to resume shooting. As a result, A&E has greenlit a third season of Steven Seagal Lawman, with Seagal going on patrol in Maricopa County.

“I have a lot of friends in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, so when Sheriff Joe Arpaio invited me to join them, there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation,” Seagal said. “Certain crimes in Arizona are on the rise and now that I live there, I want to help the sheriff fight it the best way I know how. It’s an honor to serve.” [Inside TV]

In case you’re not familiar with Arpaio, he’s the 78-year-old sheriff who introduced tent cities and pink underwear to Arizona jails, among countless other controversial measures. Instead of taking Viagra, he gets his dick hard by thinking about deporting illegal immigrants. Just wait ’til Seagal teaches Arpaio how to front-kick them over the border.

(If nothing here makes sense, go listen to the FilmDrunk Frotcast.)

Tonight’s season finale of “Hoarders” features a man named Glen who has a hoard of rats. From a skin-crawling press release (with bonus skin-crawling video below):

Glen has a collection of 2500 [!!!! -Ed.] free-roaming rats which have hoarded him out of his home and into a shed on his property. Originally bred as pets, the rat collection spun out of control upon the death of his wife.

Glen in a separate preview for the episode:

“I readily admit that I have way too many rats.”

Umm, yeah. That’s generally a safe statement when your rat infestation forces you to abandon your house and move into a shed. “Well, six hundred rats wasn’t too many, but ever since they took over the house, I could probably stand to get rid of a few of them.”

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“The Hasselhoffs” debuted with back-to-back episodes on Sunday, and that was enough for A&E to decide that it didn’t want to do that again, as the cable network has pulled the eight remaining episodes from its schedule. The premiere pulled a paltry 700,000 viewers, with the second falling to half a million. Haha, more like CANCELHOFF. Zing.

So why did it fail? Best Week Ever, one of the few outlets bored enough to pay attention to the show, wrote about some of the show’s weaknesses.

The episode begins with what turns about to be the first in a long series of instances involving David Hasselhoff and his two daughters, Taylor and Hayley, yelling and talking over each other.

The “second” episode, which aired immediately after the “first,” shows the younger daughter moving back in to the Hasselhoff house after she was already living in the house during the “first” episode. So unless this is a show about some very subtle Hasselhoff time travel, they are already off to a terrible, terrible start.

They’re not kidding about the yelling, either. Check out the clips below — it’s just a cacophony of incoherent people shouting over each for no reason. It would have been a much better idea to just give the Hoff a handle of El Chico and follow him around with a camera crew.

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