Complaining that he really didn’t have anything new to blog about, author and debunker Jason Colavito probably thought his latest note at his website was hardly worth the time it took him to write it up.
But we were kind of stunned by the observation that he made about how there just might be a fundamental shift going on right now in the speculative TV market.
We’ve explained before that we’re huge fans of Colavito and the way he expertly deflates the nonsense in shows like Ancient Aliens that have become such a staple on cable television. But it struck him, he wrote, that this should be an especially busy time of year for him as the various charlatans peddling nonsense about the ancient world and about alien visitations would be inundating the market with new books and TV shows timed for the holiday market. But that’s not the case this year, Jason says…
This year, though, it’s been unusually quiet. Inner Traditions, one of the largest purveyors of pseudohistory books, hasn’t made any ancient history titles available for review. The only books they’ve given me access to are New Age crap like The Wonder of Unicorns and Awakening the Ancient Power of Snake (yes, singular).
Well, it certainly is easier to pull that kind of crap out of thin air than to do the sort of fraudulent pseudo-investigations that at least make alternative history theories sound plausible, right? Is that it, that it’s hard work to put together yet another farcical recounting of the Templars when it’s a lot easier to focus on stuff that by it’s very nature you know you’re never going to have to produce any more evidence than the footage a jittery camera operator is going to shoot while walking through a haunted house?
“All of the energy (so to speak) in cable TV has shifted from aliens and Atlantis toward ghosts and demons,” Colavito says.
We find this really fascinating. We’ll be watching Jason’s blog to see if he finds more evidence of this. What do you think? Is the pseudohistory fad finally ebbing?
