Norm de Plume

I watch it mainly for the perennial reruns of old episodes of "Forensic Files", but there a few other shows of interest, such as "How It Really Happened", "Mysteries of the Abandoned", and "Vengeance".

The main reason I started this thread was to ask if anyone else is as annoyed as I am by some of these shows' pseudo-experts, some bozos who are obviously reading from a script instead of providing extemporaneous personal commentary. I am baffled why producers think audiences would want canned commentary by bad actors. This is also a conspicuous feature of the otherwise compelling show "Engineering Disasters", which doesn't air on HLN.

JeffTheAlpaca

I remember when Lynn Russell worked there and they had just news and no shows in the 90's

I did see how it really happened a show they did on Prince a couple of years ago

dvd-4-life

This should be CNN +.

TheBang

Only when it used to be actual news. I have zero interest in casually watching the true crime content that seems to be all they broadcast now.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, it's weird. Headline News was, at one a 24 hour news channel, where they ran what were basically half-hour new shows show with world/national events, sports, and entertainment/lifestyle news, every thirty minutes around the clock. So you could turn on the channel at any time and get what amounted to an up-to-date version of the evening news.

And now it's just a bunch of around-the-clock true crime/ forensic files shit. But it's still called Headline News, even though all they cover are decades old crimes that have been solved.

Kind of like how MTV is still called MTV, but all they seem to show is something called Ridiculousness. It's like, when I'm going through the guide, that thing is always on, morning, day, evening, or night. And then MTV2 just shows a bunch of marathons of old sitcoms like Martin.

RichC2

At least Headline News can get away with it since the true crime stories on there once were Headline News.

MTV doesn't have that, they show very little that has to do with music.

But I get it, it's all about ratings, and just showing Music Videos doesn't pull viewers (plus there are multiple free channels out there that do just that).

Norm de Plume

I don't remember HLN's old incarnation as an all-news channel, because we didn't get it back then. I do enjoy the true crime stuff. That's my main television entertainment. Oh, Ridiculousness is pure garbage. Some moronic b-boy introducing dumb videos, and an annoying bimbo with nothing remotely interesting to add cackling idiotically in the background.

MLBFan24

I use to watch it back in the early 2000s. For some reason, I did fan mail for Brooke Anderson (formerly hosted Showbiz Tonight). I was heavily into the fan mail hobby back then

Trevor

I used to work a lot of night shifts and odd hours, and still work 12 hour shifts, so having that 30 minutes of the quick snapshot of the news available 24/7 was great. It may have been my most watched network some months.

JeffTheAlpaca

She was a smokeshow and probably got a lot of mail

chowderhead

most people can get headline news 24/7 from yahoo/google/fox on their cell phones. So i can see why they went with forensic files. I just wish they show the newst ones since technology is miles ahead with DNA, cell phone tracking, video surveillance, etc.

MLBFan24

lol, I found the fan mail picture in my computer files (looks like I took this pic in 2005). The actual picture is probably collecting dust in my junk closet, with some other fan mail autographs.




Off topic, I still collect autographs, but mostly in-person now at comic conventions. Exclusively "24" actors now.

Norm de Plume

They have been airing episodes of Forensic Files II, which is the new version of the show. It's just that not many episodes have yet been made. FFII is not as good as the original. To me, genetic genealogy is by far the most exciting advancement to have come along in crime-solving since DNA profiling itself was first used in England 35 years ago. Thousands upon thousands of cold cases with available offender DNA can suddenly be solved using genetic genealogy.