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.

As we all know, I’m a big Paz de la Huerta fan — for her work on “Boardwalk Empire,” for her lingerie modeling, and most especially for her drunken physical assaults of reality TV fame whores. But a lot of that has to do with my tastes; I like a a woman who might break a beer bottle and stab me in the ribs with it during sex.

Paz was a guest on VH1′s “Big Morning Buzz Live” today, and she REALLY knows how to dress for a TV interview: thigh-highs, garters, form-fitting turtleneck. The first 30 seconds or so of the interview are GREAT.

And then Paz talks. And she. Talks. Very. Slowly. Her pauses between sentences are so long that the camera cuts over to host Carrie Keagan (no slouch herself), whose smiling nods can’t hide the desperation on her face. It’s simply an awful interview. You MUST watch it!

Video via Best Week Ever. One more screencap to help you forget about Paz’s speech patterns:

My mom has that same outfit.

According to Radar, Weston Coppola Cage and Christina Fulton — the son and ex-girlfriend of Nicolas Cage — will star in a VH1 reality series called “Uncaged.”

“Christina said the show will be like a modern-day Addams Family,” an insider told our friends at Star. “Weston just wants to show the world he’s not mentally ill.” Christina is working on an album, also titled Uncaged, in which she takes jabs at her Oscar-winning ex.

Weston, 20, made headlines in July when he was arrested twice on suspicion of domestic violence after fights with his wife, Nikki (left), and checked into rehab, as well. He gained notoriety after a Hollywood street fight he was in (with his former personal trainer) went viral.

In case you missed any of that back story, Weston went in for a mental evaluation after that fight with his trainer, then he proved his sanity by taking off his shoes and doing a whole bunch of karate kicks for paparazzi. You must see all of the photos. Also, he used to look like this.

As for Fulton, her IMDb credits include “Red Shoe Diaries” (1992), Red Shoe Diaries 3: Another Woman’s Lipstick (1993), and The Girl With the Hungry Eyes (1995). He most recent “acting” role was 2000′s Red Shoe Diaries 14: Luscious Lola. Also, she used to look like this (NSFW).

I’m sure “Uncaged” will be tastefully subdued.

You’ll have to excuse me. Because I don’t watch VH1, I had never heard of “Ton of Cash” or contestant Jonny Sarhanis, who apparently calls himself “the Greek Mystique.” Sarhanis apparently does something called “the Animal,” which involves braying and beating his chest like some kind of Australopithecine cross-bred with something dumber.

When host Dhani Jones (good to see him working!) tells Sarhanis that he has to leave the show, the Greek Mystique attempts to give the motivational speech from Rocky Balboa, then he gives up and does the Animal until he falls onto his back from exhaustion — or possibly from depriving his brain of oxygen. It must be seen to be believed (and subsequently mocked).

[Vulture]

Regular readers of Warming Glow know that I’m not one to feel nostalgic for the 1990s, and I’ll happily trash “Saved By the Bell,” “90210,” and almost every non-Radiohead album after Kurt Cobain’s death to prove it. However, I have a massive soft spot for “Pop Up Videos,” the first VH1 program that ever pulled my teenage eyes away from MTV. And now it’s coming back, with modifications made for the Internet and social media:

After a 10-year hiatus, VH1 is resurrecting Pop Up Videos with co-creator Woody Thompson (pictured) on board as executive producer. The network has ordered 60 half-hour episodes set to bow as a strip in the fall.

The reboot will remain faithful to the original concept of bubbles of true “info nuggets” strategically deployed over music videos for maximum irony. But this time Thompson and his team will also pop-up rap and hip-hop, a genre that was off limits for the original because it was the domain of sister network MTV. [THR]

Now that almost all music videos live on YouTube, I’m not sure if they can ever be successful on television again. But if they can be viable on TV, I think this is the way to do it. What with news crawls on cable channels and people using Twitter while they watch TV, the extra information and sensory stimulation is perfect for the 21st century. It’ll be the first thing I’ve watched on VH1 since “Rock of Love.”

The face of Spike TV, before reruns of CSI

Much like the claim that “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons” aren’t as good as they used to be, complaining about MTV’s transition from round-the-clock music videos to “Jersey Shore” has gone from legitimate gripe to tired cliché. Yes, it kind of sucks, but networks have to evolve, and sometimes — often, actually — that can be a good thing (it can also be terrible, but usually, good!) Below are seven examples of major American channels that began as one idea before eventually changing into something completely different.

Don’t worry, it involves communists and boobs.

Discovery Channel, without Sharks—Discovery Channel, with Sharks

Now, I’m not saying the Discovery Channel is led by communists. What I am saying, however, is that it once was. Proof: when Discovery launched in 1985, they filled a good chunk of their schedule with Soviet programming, “most of it untranslated but with explanatory textual crawls,” according to Time. “Only the nightly news show ‘Vremya’ will be delayed, subtitled and shown during the U.S. evening hours.” Three years later, they began to show some honest, wholesome, God-fearing entertainment: “World Monitor,” produced by the Christian Science Monitor. Oh, and Shark Week.

Pinwheel—Nickelodeon

Before “iCarly,” before “CatDog,” before even “Salute Your Shorts,” Nick was, well, it wasn’t Nick. The network began as Pinwheel in 1979 (the name “Nickelodeon” would come in 1981) and quickly filled its lineup with “Pop Clips,” which showed music videos even before MTV did; sketch show “You Can’t Do That on Television” (the first use of green slime on Nick); and “Livewire,” a kids talk show that also featured performances from bands before they hit it big, like Murmur-era R.E.M. in 1983. In those early years, Nick did a little bit of everything, and wouldn’t settle into a specific vision until 1985—”Double Dare” would follow a year later.

Pictured here are Ashley Dupre, Heidi Montag, and Danielle Staub, who were photographed with Jake Pavelka in Los Angeles as cameras filmed them earlier this week. The photos sparked rumors that the Four Whores of the Apocalypse would soon ride across a barren TV hellscape with a new reality show, and I’m sad to share the news that the rumors are true. Thanks for nothing, VH1.

Jake Pavelka, Danielle Staub, Heidi Montag and other reality alumni are all going into the food business together for an upcoming series that places some big personalities under heavy pressure, PEOPLE has learned.

“They are revamping a restaurant from the ground up,” says a source on the set of the new reality series, slated to air on VH1. “They started shooting this past weekend.”

Ugh, I loathe these people with every fiber of my being. The only way these moronic jackasses could possibly have a successful restaurant is if they got a nice corner location and called it The Oldest Trade. And instead of a restaurant it was a whorehouse. And even then you’d need to keep Danielle Staub hidden behind something opaque.

“Hey, you know what would have made Goodfellas better? If it had been about Karen.” — Nobody

Below is a teaser trailer for VH1′s “Mob Wives,” a reality series about awful, botoxed shrikes fighting with each other that makes “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” look like “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but what I’m trying to say is that “Mob Wives” looks like a gigantic piece of sh*t equipped with a car alarm: a huge, stinking turd that poisons the air with its stench and its blaring klaxon of shrieking haggard harpies. I absolutely cannot wait to never watch this.

[VH1]

YES. The hate that I have for all of Bravo’s “Real Housewives” is now matched by my love for VH1′s “Love and Hip Hop,” which premieres next Monday. Jezebel says:

None of the women are actually married to rappers but are in various stages of unofficial commitment and divorce. Some of the women featured on the show are Emily Bustamante, Fabolous’ stylist/baby mama, Mashonda, ex-wife of Swizz Beatz (now married to Alicia Keys), and Chrissy Lampkin, longtime girlfriend of Jim Jones.

Aw, poor Mashonda. Her ex-husband traded up for one of the hottest, most talented women in hip hop, and she’s still Mashonda.

There’s plenty to love in the trailer below: catfights galore — not those weak-ass white-girl catfights, either — big boobs, and a lot of talk about TEH HAT0RZ. It’s everything that the “Real Housewives” should be.

[via Vulture]

VH1 is presently casting for a reality series that will follow plus-sized party girls in Los Angeles. The casting agency behind it is Doron Ofir, the magnate responsible for finding the “Jersey Shore” guidos. From Pop Tarts:

VH1, in association with Doron Ofir Casting and Left Right Productions, is now casting “the hottest, most bodacious, voluptuous single women in Los Angeles” for a brand new docu-series that will show “a long-awaited glimpse into the ultra-fab world of big girls!”

Long-awaited by whom, exactly? “I love over-produced reality shows, but I’m mad there aren’t any about fat girls partying!”

“There have been shows to spotlight bigger women, but there has never been a show to celebrate being a woman in a body type that they are totally comfortable with,” casting agent Doron Ofir told us. “This is going to be the ‘Sex & the City’ from big girls’ perspectives.”

“It’s like ‘Sex and the City,’ but without a script or skinny women and set in LA instead of New York! So really, nothing like ‘Sex and the City’.”

“I would say plus-sized and up, but I’m really looking for 5-6 girls that are organically interconnected with personality and a story,” Ofir continued. “We want girls with active social lives, a sense of style, who are dating, who love to raise the roof and are unapologetic about who they are and their size.”

On that note, the show’s main aim is to glorify the fuller female frame.

“Time to show the world that big girls have more fun,” added Ofir. “Big girls don’t cry… they freakin’ party!”

Hey, it’s cool that fatties are comfortable with who they are; I appreciate confidence and individuality. But I don’t think it’s right to glorify obesity any more than it is to glorify extreme thinness. “Look at me! I make being at risk for diabetes FABULOUS!” What’s wrong with glorifying attractive people with nice, healthy bodies? That was a formula that worked just fine for me.

[original image here]