TVSquad

The History Channel is one of those destinations I never seek out, but when I'm bored and flipping through they can grab me by whatever they're programming might be. I love the straight-up historical documentaries on major figures or events. It's also one of those channels that sucks you in and suddenly you realize that the sun's gone down, you haven't eaten all day, the cats are lying in their empty water bowls and you've been strapped into a hospital bed and hooked up to a ton of machines because your wife thinks you're in a coma.

Which means I'm more than excited about The History Channel tackling a new look at American history from the pilgrims to the current President. America: The Story of Us is a twelve-part mini that will be thematically and chronologically presented, whatever that means. Which one takes precedence? Unfortunately, it won't be airing until Spring 2010 when it will have to compete against the last season of Lost, 24 and American Idol for attention.

I think Nancy Dubuc (Executive Vice President and General Manager of The History Channel) has been spying on me. The other ambitious project they're tackling is WWII in HD. Who knew that there were hi-def cameras back in the '40s and amazingly the soldiers and civilians in the thick of the war zone had them! I always knew the government was holding back technology from us. I'm still waiting for that teleportation technology, and not the Fringe teleporter that kills you slowly but the Trek one.

Actually, what they've done is track down as much of the color footage as they could find from all over the globe. They then went in and worked to upgrade those images to HD, which is ambitious indeed. This one's going to run ten episodes and doesn't have a launch date on the schedule yet, but if you're a WWII enthusiast this one may be worth making the jump to HD if you haven't already.

They announced some other shows but the rest of them sounded like those reality type of shows that are on all the networks now. Pawning History has a family of Vegas pawn shop owners looking at old stuff. How innovative. Madhouse looks at road-racing families, Nostradamus Effect looks at ancient prophecies and how they may line up with modern events. And MysteryQuest? Well that one looks at unexplained phenomena. Because we don't have any shows doing that.

You can't win them all, but damn if America: The Story of Us and WWII in HD don't sound amazing! Hopefully the rest of those cheap-to-make shows will bring in a ton of revenue so History can keep making more ambitious projects like these. I can handle a healthy schlock to shine ratio on my cable networks if the shine is bright enough.