Unwanted Programming Advice: Making Up History

Pretty sure FOX news already has the lock on counterfactual fiction.

This is a good idea james. As someone with a (completely useless) history degree I have been telling people for years that the History Channel is more Channel than History (i'm a popular guy at parties let me tell you). What kills me about Axmen and Ice Road Truckers is that the same people who own the history channel also own perfectly good venues for theses shows (TLC Discovery Channel etc) but some how came to the decision that the HC was the place for these shows. And don't even get me started on the stupidity of things like Star Trek Tech or Star Wars Tech or Modern Freaking Marvels! Why is there a show about the latest in earth moving equipment on the History Channel??!?!? Sorry.
I'd say what if the north lost the civil war would be a great show. Full of politics and intrigue, lots of costumes, and it was probably one of the nearer things in american history.

Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America imagines that Charles Lindbergh defeats Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and the country descends into antisemitism, told from the perspective of a young Roth living with his family in Newark, NJ. Could be interesting as a miniseries, but the book's unflattering portrayal of Catholics would probably prevent it from ever happening.

I'd like to see UPA as an ongoing feature. Telling people how to do their jobs -- without the pressure of actually, you know, doing them -- is one of my hobbies.

Revisionist history is a fun game.

1. What if the Black Plague, which killed roughly 60% of Europeans, had never occurred? How large would Europe's population be now? How would Europe have addressed (or failed to address) the population explosion that would have occurred? How would Europe (and the rest of the world) look today as a result?
2. What if Europe had held Jerusalem after the Crusades? What if Israel/Palestine had been remade a Christian nation in the Middle ages and continued to be through the modern era? Could it have possible survived? What would it look like now?
3. After the Holocaust, Jewish leaders came up with many ideas for a Jewish homeland before settling on Israel, including Autralia. What if they had chosen a different state/nation in which to settle? What would a Jewish homeland not emrobiled in consant dispute with its neighbors look like?
4. When wave after wave of European explorers came to America from the 15th century onwards, they found a native people unequipped to defend themselves against invaders who had access to guns, steel weapons and domesticated animals, including war horses. What if long before the 15th century the Native Americans had somehow opened up a trade route with East Asia and suddenly had access to technology on par with Europe? What if Columbus and his men arrived in the new world to find an advanced Native American empire that was more than a match for them? How would that have played out, and what would America look like now?

I could literally do this all day.

@Comment: "3. After the Holocaust, Jewish leaders came up with many ideas for a Jewish homeland before settling on Israel, including Autralia. What if they had chosen a different state/nation in which to settle?"

Someone needs to sign up Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, now.

The alternative history genre will never escape from the science fiction ghetto.

First off, how would you advertise it? "It's like Sliders, or some generic time-travel episode of Star Trek/Outer Limits/etc., but instead of being interesting for nerds, it's interesting for history geeks!" Yeah, the advertisers are lining up for that one.

Second, once you start playing with real life events, you open yourself up to value judgment criticisms.
Air your "South wins the Civil War" series and the southerners complain that "No, we wouldn't have kept blacks in slavery for a hundred years, they would have been freed voluntarily! We aren't monsters!"
And I can't even imagine the trouble you'd get into with your Battle of Tours example. Have a "decent" present and the establishment accuses you of buckling to Islamic extremists and surrendering. Raise the likely possibility that class /ownership conflicts would have lead to a Lutheran-style conflict in Europe regardless of the prevailing religion and Muslims complain that "Westerners only think the Muslim faith results in war". It's a no-win.

Essentially, the only way any episode works is if it involves parties that are dead or so discredited that no one realistically thinks you are promoting their views (such as your Nazis win WWII scenario). And I'm guessing that practically no one is eager to watch a series where the Baalites defeat the pre-Israelites.

@James: "Someone needs to sign up Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, now."

Man, that was a great read! A film adaptation of that woud be simply awesome. Of course, I have been waiting years for the film version of Kavalier and Clay, and that hasn't materialized yet, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

I'm a History Channel junkie. It is usually one of the first channels I switch to when I turn on the TV or if I can't find anything else on. I then progress thru National Geographic, the Science Channel and Discovery. I too have noticed the non-history programming, but it is interesting regardless. I believe Ice Road Truckers was snapped up by THC to bolster its ratings after the success of The Deadliest Catch on Discovery. It is obviously produced by the same folks. My biggest issue with Ice Road Truckers was that they were a bunch of immature, loud mouthed, obnoxious people hamming for the camera. Ax Men is much better in that respect. A piece of trivia, THC did do a program at one time about the old (read historical) ice road truckers which I believe gave someone the idea to make a reality series out of it.

Modern Marvels? It does have a historical aspect to it as it does go from the beginnings of its subject matter up thru the present.

The same argument can be made by asking why Survivorman plays on The Science Channel or National Geographic does all of the prison shows?

Ratings and the advertisment dollars they bring.

There's a whole genre of novels dedicated to alternate history. Many of them are really good, and I think it would make some damn good television.

Some of it is subtle. In one story in a short story collection, they basically asked what would have happened if the nazi's had had a more progressive general in charge of the luftwaffe, instead of canning him early on and putting in someone who was more conventional. (It ended with berlin being nuked in 1946 to end the stalemate because he'd been successful in holding off the allied air raids)

It also had a lot of transplanting. Rommel as a roman general, for example.(which would be an interesting series in it's own right)

Or how about the 'hard' questions; what if douglas mcarther had been allowed to nuke the border of china and north korea during the korean war if he'd wanted.

Or what the battle and occupation would have been like if we'd invaded Japan instead of dropped the nukes.

James, you shouldn't be looking for a good concept for a counter-history show, the show itself should be counter-history! Each episode would be a different "what if?" -- I'd watch religiously!

Hell, you could just use Harry Turtledove novels as the basis for the first 3 seasons.

What if the US government had actually tried to win the Vietnam war?

I imagine that 30 or 40 years from now someone will propose a program revolving around what if Bush had actually tried to bring the Iraq war to a conclusion. The 2048 troops in Baghdad will get a kick out of it.

@Matt: Although I don't have the info handy--and let's be honest, am probably not going to rouse myself to research it--I'm pretty sure that at some point in the past few years History Channel has done some what-if "documentaries." I don't believe they've ever tried it as a series, though.

I think the key to success of a lot of these things is that it has to frame a relevant discussion of actual present day events. Thats what made Jericho so interesting is that it asked the question of what would American life be like if Halliburton and Blackwater were really in charge. How would Americans respond to UN peacekeepers in America. Another good example that nobody's mentioned is Red Dawn which for all its 80's cheesy-ness did some similar things to Jericho but explored it more as how would Americans respond to events that were occurring in say Afghanistan at the time, would we become rebel guerillas like the mujahdeen? Not that I don't love alternate history, but to connect with the audience I think its important to not just have a show based around "wouldn't it be interesting if ___ happened." Also James I don't know if you noticed but there was an article elsewhere on your esteemed website about Hitler's plans for Berlin post-WWII, which was talked about in Fatherland.

Also a question about History Channel programming - why isn't the History Channel jumping all over projects like HBO's John Adams??? Isn't that tailormade for the history channel? They should be lining up at David Mccullough's doorstep to get the rights to 1776 or Truman

Canadian tangent: History Television here was airing reruns of JAG and CSI: NY as a large part of their programming. When our version of the FCC took them to task for not living up to the mandate for which they were licensed, they said CSI: NY was history because it was set in post 9/11 New York, which is a, um, historical time. No joke. They lost, though, and had to pull it from their lineup. They're still airing JAG.

And also DEADWOOD and ROME! I'm sure that's appreciated, even by the CRTC!

Someone needs to sign up Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, now.

On looking this up (hadn't heard of it), I see that the film version is in pre-production with the Coen brothers attached, supposedly. (My admittedly shallow knowledge of the film industry indicates that it may still never be made, but someone's trying, at least.)

I'm all about the scripted television, so either historical fiction or counter-factual fiction would make me watch History (they dropped the "The" and the "Channel" just last week) for probably the first time.

I've seen Planet of the Apes listed on the History Channel, which I found...disturbing.

IFC ran CSA: Confederate States of America (partly financed by Spike Lee) a while back. It was fascinating, including the fake commericials from the modern-day "CSA", including products to combat a peculiar dysfunction of some slaves in which they attempt to run away. ("Draeptomania", a real-life "diagnosis" of the 19th century.)

My idea is much more contemporary history...what if there had been a rebellion of some kind during the 2000 election recount?

James, this is fun! Thanks for letting us do this on your blog!

i think the problem with television now is that too much of it is based on quasi-reality programming. I miss the old history channel when it was just that. Kind of like the good ole' days when MTV was simply music television. The more HC moves into the realm of so-called "reality" or your concept of "counterhistory" the more phony our general knowledge of the world becomes (unfortunatley it seems more common that people get their imformation from TV rather than actual books, think: theDailyShow). Its no wonder people are so stupid these days... maybe if the HC concentrated more on strickly fact-based history people would be more aware of the world and how it became what it is today. Instead they eat up air time with dumb-ass shows about hunting UFO's and dissecting the DaVinci Code. It almost seems as if everything and anything from the news to scripted programming is a lie drapped in the facade of realism. Call it "counterhistory" or "reality" if you will, but to me its the destruction of truth and history that continues to push the evolution of misinformation to that ever-expanding "gray" line between black and white. Till a moment when we can no longer decipher between what is factual and what is false.