History Channel Launches New Network
Benjamin F. Ossoff
Hoping to alleviate programming pressures, the History Channel announced yesterday that it would be starting a new TV channel, The Apocalypse Network. TAN, which promises “The End of Days, Every Day,” will take control of History’s many natural disaster, prophesy and doom-saying documentaries and play them on a 24/7 basis. This will give a full 2 hours more to Armageddon than it had on the regular History Channel.
Though some question if there is enough material to sustain such a network, spokesman Richard Snow was optimistic: “There’s plenty to be said about the end of the world, lots of viewpoints to explore. For instance, some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. This debate is the main focus of our ‘Fire v. Ice Wednesday’ programming.” Other programming to be offered will include the Early Morning Earthquake Hour, Nostradamus at Noon, and a full line-up of shows connecting biblical prophecy to geological, meteorological, and astronomical phenomena.
Snow also said that they expected TAN to quickly out-compete tele-evangelical programs and most major news networks, which though offering such doom-saying shows as “The 700 Club” and “Glenn Beck’s War Room,” have still not committed all their time to scaring people out of their minds. “People will be glued to their seats waiting for the end,” said Snow, “These programs will really have our audience wanting to do nothing else with their last hours on Earth than watch it end on TAN.”
Meanwhile, the History Channel itself will have freed up many hours for its plethora of WWII, Civil War, and paleontological programming. Some, though, think The Apocalypse Network doesn’t do enough to free programming time and have called for a “Hitler Channel” to hold all History’s material on that subject.
