As per Habib's suggestion, how to do better dinodocs. I am mainly discussing the hour plus long primetime paleo programs intended to seen by large numbers of the not highly knowledgeable lay public that it is critically
important for paleos to reach out too via widely viewed programming. I am placing less attention to the wants of buffs who can get a lot of want they want digitally, and whose interests do not always correspond with lay folks who have a more moderate interest
in paleobeasts.
At this time the paleodoc business is in quite a bad place, with PRT being a nice exception. A lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the corrupt folks running the now degenerate Discovery Communications as
well as A&E.
Some history which is necessary to better figure out what to do about the current situation. When I was a kid in the 60s going into the 70s there simply were no dino or paleo docs. Why is not obvious because dinosaurs
have always been popular. In 68 a NatGeo network special on Reptiles started with some dinosaur animation that even to my young but disappointed eyes was like stop motion toys out of cereal boxes (was part of some project that fortunately died). This was just
when some guy at Yale was beginning to illustrate high metabolic rate dinosaurs with tails in the air dashing about ancient landscapes â not that I knew it at the time because there were no nationally broadcast dinodocs:(:(:( The first full length dinoprogram
was in 77 on PBS NOVA, The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs featuring that Bakker guy (his physical appearance was shocking), old school Ostrom (the moderate), button down Dale Russell (the reactionary) and so on. Then it was another decade plus until the next dinodoc,
the well done 1988 Dinosaur hosted by Christopher (Superman) Reeves on one of the major networks when they still ran primetime documentaries, that was the first and the last such.
With cable expanding, JP boosting dinopopularity, and the networks largely out of the primetime docbiz, Discovery started doing dino and other paleo docs on a regular basis in the 90s. Back in them thar days Disc
was taking itself seriously, producing quality one hr docs on a host of subjects. Their network host was the respected former CBS News anchor Roger Mudd to add gravitas. Ah the good old days. For some years the dinoprograms were nice enough but forgettable
shows that consisted of the usual talking heads, virtually all white (on occasion we saw Ken C.), most but not by means all males as per the paleodemographics, and with still art used to illustrate the assorted beasts. Over on PBS they did some dinostuff,
I think I recall Don Lessem doing one on Tyrannosaurus.
Then came along Walking With Dinosaurs in 1999. Cable paleoodocs were radically altered, all immediately being digital animation, the still art disappeared and talking heads took back seats if present at all.
Things started going south for a number of reasons. The CGI docs became formulaic, after awhile I who had once craved dinoshows when they were scarce or absent stopped watching them, which tells you how bad they
had become. This brings us to the issue that most paleos I know despise the documentary producers. And with good reasons. I watch a lot of docs, and although a fair # are good, much of it is schlock. Many producers are in it only for what money they can capture,
they do not care about the quality of the product they put out. Again and again watching docs on subjects I know a lot about common myths are repeated ad-nauseam, and the same file footage is used again, and again and again and again over the many decades,
often inappropriately. It's because many of the producers just don't care.
A basic problem of most documentaries is that the experts are mere consultants. They sign consulting contracts that ensure that control of the final content is in the hand of the producers, who in the end do what
they want, in pursuit of what they think will be a better story than the unmedia savvy experts can come up with. Note that NOVA is like that, personal experience. To put it another way, the people who really know the subject are mere advisors. Awhile back
I was watching a series on the rise of the Nazis. I noticed that the storyline did not repeat the usual cliches, but was in line with the professional histories I has been reading. How could that be? I eventually noted that the host was not a mere hired gun,
he was an Oxford professor who was a leading researcher on Hitler and company. The program was excellent because the lead producer was a leading expert on the subject.
That is the way it should be, it should be the norm.
Particular to the dinodocs of the 2000s, we paleos began to share the same complaints. The producers would always make their promises. Of coursethey would do what us paleos told them. They would have us
sign the contracts giving them full final say. Not to worry about that little legal item they would proclaim. Then in the process they would start to try to get us to go along with "improving" the storyline by tweaking the facts just a little, what could be
the harm? It was a bait-and-switch, almost always happened, by the end of the prject much of what the paleos had been told had been pushed aside. Thus again and again the terrible theropod approaches the herbivore in plain sight. Theropod roars at its prey,
signaling I am about the attack you. Then the battle to the death ensues. Of course that never happens in real life, predators try to hide themselves from the prey as long as they can. But the producers thought it made for better screen drama. Actually it
became a bore.
The solution is as obvious at it is critical. In the documentary business the experts should also be producers who at least partly own the production system and thereby control the content. In the 2000s I, Phil
Currie and others approached Discovery with this concept. Of course they wanted the highest quality product, right? Yeah right, they could not have cared less.
Such a scheme also has the advantage of diverting some of the income away from exploitative producers into VP, where it can be used to support the science.
In any case the problem of rising tensions between paleos and producers sort of solved itself. With the CGI product produced by the same producers stuck in their formulaic rut, ratings plummeted and Discovery will
no longer touch the genre. Instead they have shifted to the cheap to produce reality TV Dinosaur Hunters in which they avoid dealing with those pesky actual scientists while still exploiting the popularity of dinosaurs.
But the problem is worse than that. Around the turn of the century Discovery, as well as A&E, began to become deeply corrupt. They discovered the ratings lure of low production cost reality TV, in which working
class folk half of whose talk is bleeped out restore bikes, deep sea fish off of Alaska, and drive the arctic ice roads, and now rip dinobones out of the ground for the big money. Money talks. Classy Roger Mudd was dropped long ago, Discovery no longer has
any standards.
But at least RT has some connection with reality. Discovery and A&E have also gone deeply pseudoscientific, running programs on ghosts, aliens now and ancient, bigfoot, etc. They no longer give a damn.
This is a huge problem. Since the turn of the century acceptance of evolutionary science has been rising as nontheism has ballooned by about a tenth of the population per decade (http://americanhumanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/art-1-Paul-The-Great-and-Amazingly-Rapid-Secularization-of-the-Increasingly-Proevolution-United-States.pdf).
But belief in other areas of pseudoscience such as alien visitors and ghosts has remained fairly stable or even risen in some cases. Very likely all the junk programming on Discovery (incl their âScienceâ channel) and A&E (incl their âHistoryâ channel) is
behind a lot of this.
I know this from personal experience. When attending social groups folks often used to ask me the dinosaur standards â you know, was T rex only a scavenger (thanks Jack), what was the biggest dinosaur, did the
asteroid kill off the dinosaurs? Recently I have been getting a new question, Did aliens kill off the dinosaurs by causing the asteroid to hit the planet or nucking central America? (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-idiocy-fabrications-and-lies-of-ancient-aliens-86294030;
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/ancient-aliens-extraterrestrial-life-dinosaurs-17007287; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGzl7XTtDPw). When I explain no and how people who do docs are into it for the money they quickly lose interest. This is an
outrageous and scandalous situation that should not be allowed to exist.
Yet the scientific community has done nothing about this outrage as far as I know â has the AAAS taken any action? Might be a good idea to go on the offensive. Scientific organizations and societies incl SVP can
collaborate on an open letter to Disc & A&E. In it demand that they abandon all pseudoscientic programming, and that all scientists stop working with the networks until they agree to abandon junk programming. And that the experts be co-producers that have
final say on the contents of the product.
Here is a probably practical way to do this. Letters as per the one SVP sent Discovery over Dinosaur Hunters are useful but have severe limits. So what to do? The scientific community, perhaps under the aegis of
the AAAS, can establish a certification system for venues that present science based programming. Like those certificates of safety on electric appliances, or ratings of beef products. Certification would only be issued to program presenting entities that
meet high scientific standards in their programming as predetermined by scientists, plus the above contractual requirements to shift control and money more to scientists than to media producers. Scientists would be expected to work only with certified entities,
doing otherwise could shame them. At the same time cable channels who do not get certified would be publicly shamed and perhaps commercially damaged â think if Discovery Communications and A&E failed to get the blessing of the scientific community, they would
not be able to continue to claim be presenting quality product to the public. That could hurt their stocks and advertising fees:) Quallity channels that to their competitive advantage would be certified are PBS, BBC, CBC, NatGeo, Smithsonian.
Fact is folks, we have been whining and complaining about the bad side of paleodocs for a third of a century and gotten no results, because we never come close to taking the big steps needed to really take control
of the situation. Which is to basically take control of the system by formally endorsing and especially working with only those broadcasters and production companies that do the right thing, and by only working with those entities that give us experts control
of production and a cut of the financial pie, while publicly shaming the entities that are literally corrupt and damaging American society. An inexcusable situation that it is the duty of the so far slack scientific community to correct. Talking about what
kind of programming we do and do not like has its place, but is of little actual use unless we take major control of the means of production.
Scientists of the world unite and so on and so forth!
Seriously, if any reading this who publish in the technical literature, are in academe and curation, are in the positive side of science media production and such positions of practical influence wish to collaborate
on such an effort please let us know and an effort can be initiated.
This is a subject Iâve been mulling over for awhile, and had been planning to chat with others about it at the SVP meeting which is not happening, so this discussion is a good place to start. Thanks âAvivaâ â sort
of.
As for noncable venues such as social media by all means utilize them, although whether they yet have the viewership scale of cable and public television I doubt.
As for the gender and racial diversity in dinodocs, dealing with the gender issue is straightforward. Present as many women as is practical, including more frequently have hosts be female. The ethnoracial problem
is harder to address, there simply not being a lot of minority paleos to feature for possible reasons I posted concerning Emilyâs show. For now we can only work with who is on hand. Of course others, especially minority paleos, may have better thinking on
this.
GSPaul.