Vikings: thrilling viewers elsewhere but not us.
The History Channel's come up with a genius new tactic: the production of mini-series and drama series that tell grand historic stories.
Instead of only focusing on documentaries the channel's started producing historical dramas and they're creating so much buzz and acclaim that they're winning awards and record ratings.
Of course the brilliance of the tactic is that the channel has an unlimited source of hits because of how many incredible stories there are in the history books.
It's all very exciting and new age for others
BUT it sucks for us because our History Channel on DStv isn't getting any of the series. So far they haven't had one of them and the channel can't confirm that we'll be getting them in the future either.
There are three must-see shows that the channel's made most recently: Kevin Costner's Hatfields & McCoys, The Bible (by Survivor's Mark Burnett) and Vikings - which follows the adventures of famous viking hero Ragnar Lothbrok.
Neither of them are on our History Channel. Hatfields & McCoys came and went in the US and suddenly it appeared on one of the M-Net Movie channels, tucked away without anyone knowing. For starters it made no sense being on a movie channel when it's a mini-series and secondly it should have been on History.
Why wasn't it? What's going wrong? Word from an insider is that if a series is on History in the US it doesn't mean it'll automatically be on History on DStv. Apparently there are sometimes issues with the rights of a show or the local version of the channel feels that the show isn't suited to the audiences in the territory.
As a result of these sorts of issues Hatfields & McCoys didn't appear on the channel - it was put on the international market and M-Net bought it.
No matter what the reason for it it's very wrong because it means that we're getting a shoddy, dated version of what the History Channel really is and the contemporary trends it's introducing.
Come on History ...
do something to fix things - take us into the future too.