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.

A&E (Arts and Entertainment) – If anyone can explain to me — TO MY SATISFACTION — what shows about crippling psychological issues and substance abuse like “Hoarders” and “Intervention” have to do with arts and/or entertainment, I will give you $100.

AMC (American Movie Classics) – Despite the word “movie” being right there in the title, AMC has become the home to a number of quality TV dramas, including “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.” I would be tempted to give them a pass for this if they didn’t also air reruns of “CSI: Miami” and classic movies like Jurassic Park III and The Sandlot: Heading Home (the direct-to-video third Sandlot film, and an absolute travesty).

Bravo – Formerly the home to a lineup of arts-based shows, centered around their staple “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” the network is now home to a menagerie of shows about hairdressers and insanely rich, drunken harpies fighting over perceived slights involving dinner reservations. The lesson here is this: between this network, A&E, and education cutbacks, the arts in this country are totally f-cked. Our entire economy will be based around getting sh-thoused and punching your friends by 2020.

MTV (Music Television) – The channel that used to air music videos and news now airs shows about pregnant teenagers and orange, roided-up millionaires traveling the world and embarrassing America at every stop.

TLC (The Learning Channel) – I think we’ve been a little unfair to TLC. I’ve learned a ton about soullessly exploiting your own children and other people’s disabilities for financial gain by watching this channel.

VH1 (Video Hits One) – Another music channel, formerly specializing in Michael Bolton and Celine Dion videos, that changed its format over the last few years. It now features a lineup full of dating shows and reality competitions based around washed up recording artists from 20 years ago courting strippers, and spinoffs about the most cartoonish competitors on those shows.

And that’s just a sampling. I’m sure if I sat around and did more research, I could find a bunch more. Feel free to add your own examples in the comments, or just silently be irritated about it for weeks, like I was before today.

"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.”

The rats really tie the room together.

“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.

This is the first promo for A&E’s “Teach: Tony Danza,” which premieres October 1st. After initially planning to teach in New York City, Danza spent last year teaching at Northeast High School in Philadelphia. Here’s the YouTube description:

After more than 30 years in entertainment as an actor, talk show host, Broadway star, cookbook author, pro boxer and song and dance man, Tony Danza faces his toughest audience to date – high school students. Long before the launch of Danza’s showbiz career, he hoped to be a teacher and even earned a degree in history to pursue that dream.

I don’t want to crap in this punch bowl, but I’m not exactly bowled over by the way the trailer portrays Danza as some kind of hero for leaving showbiz to become a teacher. I’d be more impressed with Danza becoming a teacher if it wasn’t for a reality show, and if I were going to watch a reality show about teaching, I’d prefer to see one about actual teachers.

But hey, congratulations on teaching for a single year, Tony Danza. Do it for another 20 or 30 years and you’ll be as admirable as a real teacher.

[Philly.com]

Despite how hilarious it is with a laugh track, “Intervention” tackles addiction with an unprecedented level of success: of the 161 addicts featured on the show over the last five years, an astounding 130 of them are still sober. In an article for The Daily Beast, the annoyingly talented Natasha Vargas-Cooper (author of The Footnotes of Mad Men and the new book Mad Men Unbuttoned) examines the show’s dedication to recovery:

Take into account the high recidivism of drug offenders going back to jail, the chronic relapsing of people who have passed through state-based rehab programs, and anyone who has dealt with an addict in his or her personal life, the 71 percent recovery rate [sic: it's 81%] is, by any standard, astonishingly high. It is a number the producers of the show tout, not only because it’s impressive, but because they believe it is accurate. After the participants go through the show and complete rehab, Intervention has a dedicated staff member to do check-ins with participants, put them in touch with other support groups, and send out sobriety birthday cards.

Key aspects of the success rate include a 90-day stay at a rehab facility (instead of the standard 28 days) and the interventionists educating the addicts’ family and friends about how to stop their enabling habits. If you like the show, I strongly recommend the entire article.

What I want to know is how addicts are still falling for the “documentary about addiction” premise that gets them on the show. Really, guys? No one’s picked up on the ruse? Frankly, I expected more from people with inhalant addictions that go through ten cans of computer duster a day.

Yesterday, I highlighted a GQ article in which Zach Galifianakis said that “if they put a laugh track on Intervention, it would be funny.” And then I stood atop a mountain with wi-fi and blogged, “INTERNET, MAKE IT SO!”

The gods of the Internet responded, selecting a portion of the “Intervention” episode about Corinne, a diabetic heroin addict who shoots up three to six times a day. The video’s creator, clippy2988, even added a slide whistle sound effect to Corinne snorting a line of smack. Delightful.

Things like this and the time I asked for M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” with dogs barking and cats screeching always make me feel so powerful. Part of me wants to press my luck and see just how much the Internet can deliver. “Internet, kill the hobo who asked me for change yesterday!”

A&E has ordered a show from Ryan Seacrest’s production company called “The Incurables.” I based my headline and the banner photo on the assumption that it’s about people with terminal illnesses like cancer and full-blown AIDS.

The cable network, home of such docu series about afflictions asIntervention, Obsessed and Hoarders, has ordered a pilot for The Incurables, which will offer a look into the lives of ordinary people on the verge of a personal crisis over their irrational behavior.

Each 60-minute episode would feature [British self-help guru Paul] McKenna trying to help two ‘incurable’ people with different psychological and/or physical conditions using his transformation techniques. Examples include the uncontrollable shouting and bizarre facial tics of a man suffering from Tourettes Syndrome and the shocking sight of a woman pulling out and eating her own hair (Tricotilla Mania). [Deadline]

Aw, dammit. That messes up my headline. The Incurables are actually curable? That’s crap. I want a show where the doctors come in and are like, “Well, not much we can do now but make sure he’s comfortable.” Then the last twenty minutes of the show is slow-motion shots of the family crying. Coming to ABC next fall!

Pictured: the lasting societal worth of reality television

Reality TV producers gathered in Santa Monica on Wednesday and Thursday for a conference in which they told each other how much reality TV benefits society and complained about how their genre — Factual Entertainment, they call it — is unfairly maligned. Then they finished with a big circle jerk (citation needed). From the WaPo’s Lisa de Moraes:

“I firmly believe it’s the most socially valuable product on television,” Rob Sharenow, senior vice president of nonfiction programming at A&E network told a Fairmont Hotel ballroom filled with people who nodded sympathetically…

“Who did more for a gay child struggling with their identity than Pedro did?” Sharenow asked rhetorically. He was referring to Pedro Zamora, the AIDS activist who became a pop-culture icon when he was cast on MTV’s “The Real World: San Francisco” and died not long after that edition of the reality series wrapped.

Oh, an example from 17 years ago! So timely, especially with the continuing AIDS pandemic. Hey everybody, remember when “The Real World” was about something besides people getting drunk and screwing?

“Reality TV and the documentary have always been on the front line of doing good and showing the world for what it is, and I do get frustrated with the industry’s and society’s attitude toward unscripted programs,” Sharenow added.

Hey, don’t blame society. Blame “Temptation Island.”

Asked if there was any instance in which he’d gone too far in the genre, [CAA agent Alan] Braun said it came when he sold “Who’s Your Daddy” to the Fox broadcast network.

That 2005 gem involved adult women who had been put up for adoption as infants. Each was put into a room with 25 men, one of whom was her biological father. After interviewing the men, if the woman correctly named her father, she won a measly $100,000. If the women got it wrong, the guy who’d duped her got $100,000 and the network would tell her which guy actually was her dad…

“I saw daughters meeting their dads and it was more like a dating show, and I knew at that moment it was not a good show for society,” Braun admitted Wednesday.

Asked if he returned the substantial agent’s packaging fee he’d collected on the show, he said he had not and added, “but I felt bad for a few weeks.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” he added, “I need to go meet with TLC’s midget wrangler.”