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TV For Nerds: Cable Science Network?
Ridgelift writes "Wired is covering The Cable Science Network. New York Times science writer Sandra Blakeslee puts it best: "I cover a lot of meetings and I can just see things unfolding, but we can't cover it all in print media, so it would be wonderful to have things like talks and plenary sessions accessible to the public. There are a lot of C-SPAN junkies, and I think there would be a similar interest (in science TV) from the American public." There's also a home page for the network here."
Seems like only two months ago we discussed the possibility.
It's called the SciFi Channel.
Hopefully a channel like this can stick to what it was meant to show. Remember TLC? Didn't that used to stand for The Learning Channel? When did it become The Trading Spaces And Other Non Educational Crud Channel?
If they include Mr. Wizard!
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
At home, I have 293 channels of TV for dorks and boobs, why not ONE channel for nerds?
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
By focusing mainly on medical developments and boiling everything down to 30 seconds, science is often sensationalized and distorted, said Sandra Blakeslee, a science writer for The New York Times.
Of course we don't have any problems like that on Slashdot, where everything is reported accurately and with little fanfare...
Oh wait, this just in, THE MILKY WAY JUST GOT BIGGER!
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
We do have science channels on cable.
Discovery Channel (and it's numerous topic-specific offshoots) - Unfortunately, they are 33% infomercials and the remaining programming is usually uninteresting things like re-runs of rescue 911 and "rescue emergency" and other non-scientific things. At best, you'll get a piece of less-than-laymen's scientific programming.
The Learning Channel - unfortunately, this is really now The Ladies Channel, what with A Baby Story, A Dating Story, A Wedding Story, A Makeover Story, What Not To Wear, Trading Spaces and the dozens of other women-centric, non-learning, non-science shows.
It will be cancelled. You can't compete with sound bites.
Supposing even that there are plenty of people interested, showing conference proceedings C-Span style will fail. Conferences are too narrow for this to work. Even when I attend a conference in my area of expertise, I follow only about half the talks, and would need to read up a bit to follow the rest. To someone outside my field, they are all probably undecipherable. So even though I like the possibility of viewing conferences, I doubt enough viewers will follow it to be marketable.
As a Netflix subscriber I can make do without TV... most of the good shows eventually make it to DVD. Most everything else sucks.
A channel like this however could bring me back, however, especially if it were commercial-free, like C-SPAN.
When I had a TV I used to leave C-SPAN on all the time, and it was actually rather enjoyable, that is, until I figured out just how corrupt our government is. Then it became extremely aggravating.
I trust the same thing wouldn't happen here.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I can envision a Crossfire-type show about paranormal/pseudoscientific claims...
Maybe we can get James Randi and Uri Geller to cohost.
[/straight face]
Well lets see 1) Cameras in heated stem-cell debate forum 2) ?????? 3) Profit ????
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
It's called the SciFi Channel.
no, it's the Playboy Channel.
I think there would be a similar interest (in science TV) from the American public.
I think he is vastly overrating the American public. In this day and age, most people generally don't want to learn. They want to be entertained (hence gobbling down fish semen on Fear Factor). I'm not saying it's a bad idea, though. They could grab a niche market. I like the Discovery and History channels (and TLC), but too often they have "stupid" programming (weddings, babies, interior designers, etc). Also, they are not very technically oriented. You never hear anything except horsepower on most of the "good" shows. I would love it if this new deal had much more technical details in its programming, or at least went into more depth about how stuff works rather than "Look at this cool gizmo!"
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
24 hour coverage of DMCA, RIAA, MPAA and other tech rights issues - it would be cool to see news anchors talking about students being sued for holding down the shift key, keyboard manufacturers being sued for creating circumvention devices, and the rest of the fool's parade that is the entertainment industry these days. I think it would wake a lot of people up.
I mean, is this going to be like tech tv, which to me is more like a gadgets commercial. I find that appart from few shows, most science programs are sort of thin on content. I still love Nova somehow :) I just hope this is not going to be another of those channels whose documentaries are filled with goofy re-enactments bi third rate actors whose faces you rarely see ....
photoplankton
the Washington Generals of the History Channel.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Isn't this going to be just like Discovery Science channel?
That's the only channel I watch when it comes to science, (maybe a little of the Discovery Wings). TLC and the other Science channels really don't show much.
BUT even the Discovery Science channel tends to show the same documentaries and episodes of shows. I think it needs some new material, but I still watch something new every other night at least.
One last thing..
AHHHHH!!! The Atmosphere!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Causing Chaos Everywhere,
Nik J.
The strange world of a loner, in a populous city, drowning in society
Several of us posted comments pointing out that there are at least three channels that do this now. They are all run by universities and show science lectures, in depth debates, etc. These other stations, though, do also run non-science content, but they are non-commercial so you get fairly true and balanced content.
I REALLY would like to see a channel that focuses on science for the intelligent. TLC used to be nice, then they went all foo foo, so they started the Discovery Science channel. They are now starting to run non science and non educational stuff, plus they are so beholden to ratings and the sponsors that they never run any lectures or shows that actually raise debate or cover controversial subjects.
I'll give this new channel a shot as soon as it comes on my sattellite lineup, but I don't have any high hopes. The first show I see like "The science behind Microsoft Windows XP", the channel comes out of my lineup. Keep the programming more like NASA TV, CSPAN, UCTV, FSTV, Research Channel, etc and you'll keep me as a viewer.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Might be worth a look if you get the channel. I have it on Dish Network. It appears that it may be broadcast live on the web as well (sadly, in Windows Media).
Madness takes its toll. Exact change please.
Okay first of all, from the male perspective, TLC is crap because its nots about geek stuff, or science, or history, or any of those things geeks value as learning.
Now try to put yourself in the place of the average woman, stay at home or otherwise. Women learn a lot from that home decorating stuff! You might be surprised what you might learn. Also there all those medical shows which tell you about medical conditions people have and stories of what they have gone through. Your average female TV viewer, especially the stay at home mom, eats that stuff up, and its still learning!
I'm not belittling women's TV by far, I'm in fact showing that comments like the parent to this are subjective, usually based on the male or geek (or both) point of view. Learning is subjective. Just because it's not science, history, or math doesn't mean its not learning. The channel just switched tracks from men to women. Yes it was done for business reasons, switching to a better demographic, and yes I, personally, absolutely do not like, what they show now, but the discovery and history channels filled in for me quite nicely, and this science channel will help too.
I watch Queer Eye for the Straight guy (okay that's on Bravo but its the same idea), and it's decidedly a "chick show." But DAMN do you know how much stuff guys could learn from that? And I'm not talking about "learning to match clothes so you can be superficial." I'm talking about things that matter (or should matter) to geeks like:
1) Getting your house organized so you don't look like a slob and can find things.
2) Keeping and staying healthy and reasonably well groomed.
3) Learning to cook more than ramen noodles.
4) Looking and acting like a guy a woman might want to go to bed with.
5) Looking like a guy someone might want to hire.
6) keeping your girlfriend happy!!
I call that learning... maybe that's why the gender gap is still so wide, because men don't think these things that women consider learning about are learning.
Think of it this way... this is a low level sociology channel. Be fascinated by the interations of people and their living spaces!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
C-SPAN isn't about whether you want to see it.
It's about congresscritters marketing themselves to you.
It was created not because of some right to be informed, but because they want to deduct their suits and have clips of themselves being mendacious and fervent about it to show the voters back home.
Book Time is there simply because Congress forgot to allow commercial spots to be sold. Otherwise, it'd be Lifestyles of the Profligate and Incumbent.
I was just thinking the other day about how nerds don't spend nearly enough time staring at a screen!
There are a ton of very-narrowly-focused channels out there, but they are only available to small groups of people, it seems. I like cars and computers, so I would love to have Speedvision and TechTV, but of course my local cable company doesn't carry it in my area. I do, however, get such great channels as the golf channel, multiple religious channels, and the public access channel that shows powerpoint slides when it's not showing a blue screen of death.
I have blog like everyone else
Have you guys considered getting a few hours air time per week? Might be good to have SlashTV or something...
Sorry, I don't see this happening.
... I'm not going to sign this.") to "Monster Garage" is tastefully presented and very captivating to watch.
Last I checked, there were about 4 or 5 different flavors of the discovery channel on my digital cable box. The big difference between CSPAN and Discovery is that CSPAN is mostly an open feed for anything that wants a voice in Washington, such as, recently, the Ultimate Warrior talking at length (rest assured, amazing signal-to-noise ratio) about rights and freedoms to a youth conference. I could be wrong, but there are not hundreds of professional scientists gathered in one area at a time to debate issues and topics on a 9-to-5 basis. A public set of channels simply wouldn't have any continuous content to feed off of, unlike CSPAN.
Discovery makes up for this with heavily-produced and well-funded edutainment. There is no CSPAN equivalent (24-hour cable networks aren't really "heavily produced"). The quality far outshines the quantity witnessed by CSPAN, though. Almost everything from TechTV's "Big Thinkers" featuring interviews with Michio Kaku and Lessig (reading a release form...~"'I waive all right to claims I make in this interview and the ability to collect royalites from TechTV and parent companies etc. etc.'
I like what we've got, thank you.
One of my favorite channels on television is LINK TV. This is available on DirecTV satellite and it's a wonderful resource of alternative news and information.
While not specifically technical in nature, this network runs a lot of documentaries and shows that the mainstream media would never show. There was a great documentary shown recently where they placed Internet Kiosks in a middle eastern country and didn't tell anyone how to use them, and observed how quickly the children learned to use the Internet and what information they sought out (another segment of the show features the developer of the Kiosks meeting with Issac Asimov and watching 2001 with him! He likened the un-explained Internet kiosk to the monolith in the movie and discussed it with Asimov).
Another great show on this network is Mosaic which is a daily news program which features excerpts from news broadcasts throughout the middle east. The video footage is much more substantive and you can almost always see an entirely different angle on the daily news stories, as well as a lot more information (and best of all, J-Lo is never mentioned).
This network is a MUST SEE channel. And had I known about it prior, it would have easily justified switching cable/sat companies.
CSN... Fair and Balanced.
Pelé!
I got Dish Network two years ago and have been enjoying The Research Channel, UCTV, and UWTV. They've got university lectures nearly around the clock. Some of the lectures are toned down for a lay scientist (lots of annual faculty lectures), and others are broadcasts of actual university classes. CSN would be a welcome addition to these networks for me.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
We really are screwed, aren't we?
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
...or the Science Channel. The Science Channel has been airing for a few years--I believe it was formerly called the Discovery Science Channel, or maybe it was the original Discovery Channel. They have good programming--the only problem is, they rerun stuff way too much. Wayyyy too much. Alot of the programming has been broadcast for at least a year. Still, if you haven't seen it before, it's new to you...
Harold
The problem with Science on TV is they pretty much have to do it for the least common denominator, which is people who know a hell of a lot less about science than your average geek/nerd.
I don't have a T.V. and couldn't get PBS down here in Mexico anyway, so I downloaded the three part series that Nova did on String theory. While I found it mildly interesting, it was definitely dumbed down quite a bit. In fact, before I downloaded, I was thinking to myself, how could they possibly explain String theory to your average dolt. Well, they did, and because of that, I found maybe 10 minutes worth of new information in 3 hours of programming.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't and don't expect, a channel that's going to explain string theory in detail. I mean, how many people understand that level of math anyway? But I would have liked something a bit deeper.
But that is exactly my point. They can't do that because they won't get enough viewers. I've tried explaining some potential geometries of the universe to my mother, using diagrams and concepts as simple as I could figure. It went completely over her head. In fact, I think after about 30 seconds, she just stopped listening even though she looked like she was listening intently.
I thought I could explain it in a way that made sense to a lay person, but I just couldn't. And not just physics. In many topics in science, if you want to go to a depth where I'm going to learn a lot, you're not going to get a lot of viewers. Viewers = money, and folks, money is what runs TV networks. But hey, I'm curious to see what the programming is like, and I wish I could get it down here in Mexico.
...is that everyone is at a different level when it comes to science. Every show is either going to be too complex for some or too simple for others. Usually both. It is very hard to make a show that is deemed worthy science to someone with a graduate degree and still be understandable to a highschool student.
The key to entertainment through science is the idea that you are learning something new. Thus for the show to be entertaining it must be something you don't already know and actually be able to teach you it. This is very hard to do.
Discovery and TLC realized this and resorted to the lowest denomiator seeing as there are a lot more people without degrees.
All the other answers pretty much suck. I don't want to pay for 450 channels I don't watch and I can see any serious (long term) reason I should. Anyone with a server and enough bandwidth (and the proper licenses for the content) should be able to set up their own broadcast network. Period.
Quack, quack.
We have
*The Discovery Channel
*The Learning Channel
*National Geographic Channel
*about a quarter of PBS- NOVA, SciAm Frontiers, Frontiers,
*some items on the Hostory Channel
and probably others I've overlooked.
Science journalism pretty much has to follow the general rules of drama:
*You need an engaging theme/conflict to drive a story,
*It has to have a proper beginning, development, and ending,
*It needs interesting human characters.
Often these "science dramas" take the form of mysteries to be solved, races between labs or against time, quirky characters, and so on.
Maybe subscribers could go online and vote for the programming they would like to see, or even submit program ideas. You could call it "TV for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
I realize I'm a professor and very well educated, but so are you guys (after all, anyone using Linux is probably in the top 3 percentile for raw intelligence). That being said, I DON'T WATCH TV.
Hey, I am a research scientist too and I actually enjoy watching tv sometimes, especially when the programming contains useful information, whether it be about modern social relationships (E!), Hitler (THC), or coporate control of mass media (CNN).
Just because we are smart does not mean we are immune to entertainment. In fact, I have a hard time reading many scientific journals because I feel that they explicitly disregard the nature of my attentional system. The reason going to a lecture is so much better than reading is that it is a more natural and rich form of communication. The potential that film and video have for learning should not be ignored.
I agree. TechTV (channel #294 on Comcat Digital in San Francisco) is really an outstanding channel.
As you mentioned, "X-Play" (video game reviews), "Screen Savers" (kind of like the TV version of Slashdot), and "Unscrewed" (wacky tech stuff with sexual edge and a ridiculously hot co-host) are all great shows.
Other good shows are "Big Thinkers" (profiles on big people in tech), "Future Fighting Machines" (aircraft carriers, battlefield tech, etc.), and more. The occasional Robot Wars (generally minus the obnoxious audio) provides nice background video.
Overall, it's great and generally stimulating TV. That being said, this is different from the subject of this article, which is more of a CSPAN-esque channel, kind of like being at a tech conference without having to smell all the dirty nerds (you know who you are, just take a shower in the morning for crying out loud, you can still be smart for the rest of the day, and smell smart too).