Destination: Advertising Revenue
[BPSDB] I get the sneaking suspicion that this may be it for the much laughed-at Destination Truth series. We were thinking that the show was done last season, especially after the long break between seasons, but when it mysteriously appeared out of the blue, it soon became painfully obvious that all is not well in the Destination Truth labs.
For one, barely an episode goes by without a guest shot by the Ghost Hunters guys. It really seems like they’re trying to bolster their ratings by dragging in guys from a popular show. Also, it’s become more commonplace for the Destination Truth crew to go after the paranormal than the “mythological monsters” that they’ve tackled so far. Secondly, they’re blatantly plugging their sponsors. Not a show goes by without an in-show advertisement to Orbitz and a plug for Microsoft’s Virtual World. If they went with the more common Google Earth, I’m sure they’d have to pay for the usage but with Microsoft, I have no doubt they’re making a few bucks off of the deal. Desperately trying to play on the success of other shows and using blatant in-show marketing gimmicks tells me that ratings are very poor and SciFi (I refuse to call it Syfy) is doing whatever it can to bolster sagging viewership.
Of course, what would really help is to make the show not quite so pathetic to begin with. That means that instead of using crappy camera tricks and the worst type of pseudoscientific tripe, they ought to actually check out the myths and see if there’s any basis to them at all. But instead, they tramp around in the dark (ever notice how *EVERY* episode is in the dark?) with jumpy girl team members who scream a lot, they find nothing and they act like “wow, there could be something out there!” Yes, this kind of show might fly on a science fiction (ostensibly) channel, but it’s started to bleed over onto other channels that are supposed to be scientifically credible like History Channel and Discovery. It’s disgusting to think that real science and real scholarship cannot survive without these blatantly gimmicky shows, but I guess it shows just how far the American educational system has fallen when people would rather watch things that go bump in the night than find out the actual truth.
Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about the perceived failure of the show. On the one hand, it’s nice to see something so utterly nonsensical go down in flames, on the other, I know that the only reason it’s failing is that it’s not nearly utterly nonsensical enough. Sure, it’s fun to laugh at and the fact is, I don’t think Josh Gates takes it all that seriously, he’s just doing it to get free airline tickets all over the planet and a steady paycheck, but when you realize that as bad as this show is, there are others that are far, far worse and those are the ones getting the viewership, it makes the baby Jesus cry. Not only has Ghost Hunters spawned one sequel, Ghost Hunters International, but now it’s got another one coming up, Ghost Hunters Academy. When do we get to see the serious science shows getting spinoffs?
Sometimes, I just don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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