It happens with disgusting regularity. You will flip through the various basic cable channels which are nominally "science oriented" (often grouped together on the dial if they feature scientific topics) and come up with nothing but junk, pseudoscience, and worse. "Reality shows" about subjects with little or no science content, tons of paranormal and pseudoscientific shows promoting ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, and creationism--all fill the airwaves for channels like Discovery, The Learning Channel, History Channel, and even the Science Channel and National Geographic Channel. We watch a few minutes of these with complaints to anyone within earshot, then (usually) move on--or occasionally we get sucked in to watch the whole thing, like gawkers at a car crash. The cartoon at the top (from the great website PhdComics) says it all: four channels that used to be largely documentaries on science and history are now dominated by guns, explosions, dangerous occupations and other "reality" TV. Their shows have buzz words in the titles like "biggest", "wildest", "monsters" or "killers", and plain old junk fill up most of their air time.
MORE: http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/01/25/science-tv-sell-out/
