Like so many other networks today, the Discovery Channel has its own brand of reality shows, but unlike shows that rely heavily on the drama between cast members, Discovery's shows often have an educational angle. MythBusters attempts to prove or disprove common beliefs, Man vs. Wild shows you how to survive in the wilderness, and Alaskan Bush People depicts the lives of people who are tired of modern living. However, these reality shows have become quite scandalous themselves.
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00:00The Discovery Channel was once a very dry but very earnest item in the basic cable lineup.
00:06In the 80s and 90s, the cable network ran educational shows, but since every other channel
00:10decided to get into reality television in the new millennium, Discovery pivoted to a
00:14reality-heavy rotation, too.
00:17And with reality TV comes scandal.
00:20The MythBusters crew educated as they entertained, informing the masses about how the world really
00:25works and debunking widely-believed misinformation along the way.
00:29The gang also seemed to virtually always find a reason to blow something up.
00:33You know, for science.
00:34The vast majority of the time, those explosions were conducted in a controlled environment
00:39with every precaution considered ahead of time.
00:41But with explosions, you really have to get all the boxes checked, or things go sideways.
00:46After a MythBusters-created explosion knocked her off her couch and shattered a window in
00:51her house in Esparto, California in 2009, Cheryl Stephens told KCRA-TV,
00:56It was a boom that was just, I had never heard anything like that before.
01:00It was really weird."
01:02Seeing a plume of smoke and dust rise about a mile outside town, locals thought there
01:06might have been a plane crash or a building explosion.
01:09But it had merely been those pesky busters of myth attempting to see if the phrase, knock
01:13your socks off, had any basis in reality.
01:16They'd blown up 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate to remove the socks from a mannequin, but
01:21they didn't realize the explosion would be as big as it was.
01:25MythBusters paid for several broken windows in and around Esparto.
01:30In 2014, the Discovery Channel announced Eaten Alive, a two-hour special featuring Paul Rosalie,
01:35a conservation advocate and snake expert, in his quest to locate a 25-foot-long anaconda
01:41he'd seen years before in the Amazon rainforest.
01:44While wearing a protective suit covered in pig's blood, he would allow the snake to consume
01:48him and then regurgitate him.
01:50Why?
01:51To raise awareness of the need to save the rainforest, obviously.
01:54PETA condemned the televised stunt, arguing that it was cruel to provoke an animal, but
01:59the Discovery Channel argued that the snake would ultimately emerge unharmed, as would
02:03Rosalie.
02:04I know a lot about anacondas.
02:05I would never hurt one.
02:06Despite the concerns, Eaten Alive aired in December 2014.
02:10It was ultimately much ado about nothing, because Rosalie did not even get eaten alive.
02:15Worse, he didn't even find the right snake.
02:18After traipsing around the jungle, he had to settle for a 20-foot anaconda.
02:21With ten minutes left in the show, he approached it in the water and successfully provoked
02:26it.
02:27Its mouth closed around Rosalie's head and started to crush his arm, which is when Rosalie
02:30freaked out and called for his crew to shut down the stunt and pull him out of the snake's
02:34fatal clutches.
02:35In the end, those most angered by Eaten Alive were viewers who expressed their disappointment
02:40at not actually getting to see what was advertised in the show's title.
02:45For ten seasons now, armchair survivalists and people who like the idea but not the practice
02:49of camping have dutifully followed Alaskan Bush People, the Discovery Channel show about
02:54the large and extended Brown family as they try to live way off the grid and not die in
02:58the most remote parts of Alaska for months at a time.
03:02While the family is ostensibly from Alaska and certainly seem to embody the rugged Alaskan
03:06values they espouse on the show, not all of the family members actually live in Alaska
03:11all the time, which got them in trouble with the law.
03:13No, it's not illegal to stretch the truth on a reality show, but it is illegal to claim
03:18tax credits as an Alaskan resident when you don't live there.
03:22In 2014, not long after Alaskan Bush People premiered, a grand jury in Juneau issued indictments
03:28for members of the Brown family on felony charges of unsworn falsification and theft.
03:33Top Dog Billy Brown and son Joshua Brown reached a plea deal, accepting fines and 30 days in
03:38jail while admitting they had left Alaska in October 2009, stayed gone until August
03:432012, but still accepted the subsidy that full-time residents receive from state oil
03:48money.
03:50Airing on the Discovery Channel from 2011 to 2014, Sons of Guns focused on a Louisiana-based
03:56company called Red Jacket Firearms, which made and sold customized weaponry to police
04:00departments, private security companies, and gun enthusiasts.
04:04That kind of business necessarily involves dangerous and explosive equipment, including
04:08guns of course, as well as ammunition and pyrotechnics.
04:12Sons of Guns also involved a bit of travel, as Red Jacket sold to individuals and organizations
04:17all over the country.
04:18Shortly after the show's first season debuted, two crew members parked a rental truck filled
04:23with pyrotechnics and a few firearms outside Terminal B at the Dallas-Fort Worth International
04:28Airport.
04:29Then, looking for a third member of their party, they left the truck unattended.
04:33Yes, they briefly abandoned a truck loaded with explosives and guns outside an airport.
04:39Even worse, they did it on September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks
04:45of 9-11.
04:46Airport security and the FBI located the owners of the truck and grilled them.
04:50The crew members were eventually released, and the locked-down terminal reopened after
04:54a couple hours.
04:56Besides reality shows, another constant in cable TV programming is alarmist commercials
05:01for wallets that claim to block hackers' attempts to steal information from Radio Frequency
05:06Identification-Enabled, or RFID, credit cards.
05:10It turns out that techno-criminals really can do that, and in 2007, MythBusters hosts
05:15Adam Savage and Jamie Hyndman tried to prove it.
05:18CNET reports that at the 2008 Last Hacking on Planet Earth conference, Savage claimed
05:23that the experiment was scrapped mid-production due to objections from advertisers in the
05:27technology and credit card sectors in a conference call with Discovery Channel Brass.
05:32Savage described a conference call where,
05:34"...Texas Instruments comes on, along with Chief Legal Counsel for American Express,
05:39Visa, Discover."
05:43Savage went on to say Discovery was outgunned and told not to air the episode.
05:47Texas Instruments spokesperson Cindy Huff told CNET that her company just had some questions
05:52from MythBusters about how they planned to broach the topic, and said it was MythBusters
05:56who decided not to pursue the episode.
05:58After that, Savage had to retract some of his wording, saying,
06:01"...I have to admit that I got some of my facts wrong."
06:04He revealed that he hadn't actually been on the conference call.
06:07Nevertheless, MythBusters did eventually air an episode about RFID, but didn't address
06:12the technology's possible security flaws.
06:15American Casino, which aired on Discovery in 2004 before moving to sister network The
06:20Travel Channel the following year, gave viewers an inside look at the day-to-day business
06:25and operations that take place behind the scenes in one of the most secure and secretive
06:29places in the country, a Nevada gambling resort, namely the Green Valley Ranch Casino and Hotel
06:34in suburban Henderson.
06:36American Casino didn't rely much on the soap opera-like personal clashes that define most
06:40reality TV shows, but it provided for some shocking and tragic off-camera scandal.
06:45Michael Tata was featured on the show's first season, going about his job as vice president
06:49of hotel operations.
06:51In July 2004, while Discovery was in the middle of airing American Casino, Tata died at age
06:5633.
06:57A medical examiner later determined the death to be accidental, likely due to a combination
07:02of alcohol and fentanyl, an extremely powerful opiate painkiller.
07:06American Casino got bumped from Discovery's lineup due to a scheduled hiatus, but producers
07:11got back to work making more episodes less than a month after Tata's death.
07:16About the worst thing a reality show can do is fake it.
07:18It makes viewers feel silly for investing so much time and emotional bandwidth in a
07:22series only to find out that it was staged.
07:25Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild featured military-trained British survivalist Bear
07:29Grylls as he ventured into the wilderness with little more than his special set of skills.
07:34He always made it through, in part because most everything was staged.
07:38After the first season of the show aired, a crew member told the Sunday Times that Grylls
07:42wasn't always sleeping on twigs and leaves, but in a nearby hotel.
07:46On another occasion, an episode implied Grylls built himself a sturdy raft, when in fact
07:51a crew had previously built it to see if it would float, then carefully disassembled
07:55it so Grylls could put it together himself.
07:58And those wild horses Grylls encountered?
08:00They were rented.
08:01When confronted with all this, Grylls didn't deny it.
08:04He apologized.
08:05He told the BBC,
08:06"...if people felt misled on how the first series was represented, I'm really sorry for
08:10that."
08:11Meanwhile, the Discovery Channel owned up to how isolated elements had not been natural
08:15to the environment, or, you know, fake.
08:18I've been all the way around this now, and it's definitely an island."
08:23What American Chopper was to motorcycles, American Guns was to firearms.
08:27It showcased the goings-on at the Wyatt family's Gunsmoke Guns shop in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
08:33In December 2012, Discovery Channel canceled American Guns and pulled reruns, too.
08:38The network claimed it had decided weeks earlier to not renew the show, but it was only announced
08:42after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
08:46Even if that hadn't happened, Discovery likely would've distanced itself from American Guns
08:50soon anyway because a massive scandal broke out.
08:53Shortly after a 2013 break-in and robbery, the IRS closed Gunsmoke to perform a search.
08:59A month later, an affidavit related to that search was made public.
09:03It all goes back to 2010, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
09:08received a tip that Gunsmoke, under manager Rich Wyatt, possessed six illegal firearms.
09:14That prompted a closer look at Gunsmoke's records, which revealed that the Wyatts didn't
09:18actually own the store, as their show implied.
09:21Wyatt's signature appeared on sales tax returns from 2008 to 2011, but nobody's signature
09:26appeared on several other years' worth of tax returns because they weren't filed for
09:30a number of years.
09:32The government also alleged that the Wyatts under-reported their wages to steal from the
09:36business, as evidenced by multiple large real estate and car purchases.
09:40In 2018, Rich Wyatt got a 78-month prison sentence for the gun dealing and tax charges.
09:46You're taking all this money?
09:47All this money, yeah.
09:48You can't do that.
09:50Discovery Channel's motorcycle series Monster Garage followed Jesse James and a team of
09:54mechanics, fabricators, and artists as they attempted to make extreme modifications to
09:58vehicles.
09:59For example, they tried to turn a DeLorean into a hovercraft.
10:03James came to the series with solid credentials as the owner and main builder of souped-up
10:07and custom motorcycles at West Coast Choppers.
10:10James also stakes historical and familial claim to his bad-boy image.
10:14He says he's a distant descendant of Wild West scofflaw Jesse James.
10:18It would seem that the 21st century Jesse James broke the law just like his 19th century
10:22namesake.
10:23The California Air Resources Board levied a fine of more than $270,000 at James and
10:28West Coast Choppers, charging man and business with customizing and selling bikes that shattered
10:33the Golden State's clean air regulations.
10:36An investigation found that his Monsters didn't come with state-certified exhaust and
10:40fuel system emissions gear, and that they generated ten times the legal limits of hydrocarbons.
10:46James and company worked on the bikes in question between the years of 1998 and 2005, overlapping
10:51the time Monster Garage was on the air.
10:54Early one morning in December 2011, MythBusters visited a bomb range in Alameda County, California
11:00about 25 miles north of San Jose.
11:03They had been there more than 50 times already.
11:05This time, they brought along a cannon built especially for the show and tested the trajectory
11:10of a softball-sized cannonball.
11:12The projectile was intended to blast through a few barrels of water and a wall of cinder
11:16blocks, then come to rest somewhere in the protective hills around the bomb range.
11:20The cannonball missed the water barrels intended to slow its flight.
11:24It soared through the wall and bounced off one of the hills and into the nearby town
11:28of Dublin.
11:29The cannonball kept going through the door of a house, through the walls of an upstairs
11:33bedroom, and through the window of a minivan 100 feet away.
11:37That house was occupied by three people at the time, who somehow didn't even wake up.
11:42MythBusters sent a producer to the home and agreed to meet with the family's insurance
11:45companies to work everything out.
11:47Well, it radically altered our entire safety procedure, and our approach and mental approach
11:52to safety from the ground up.