Scandals And Secrets That The Discovery & History Channel Tried To Hide

There’s a good reason that 22 million people subscribe to the Discovery Channel. While it has always provided fascinating documentaries focused on science, history, and technology, in the 2010s, that changed. The channel began providing programs covering semi-scientific topics; the viewers loved it. 

It’s terrific fun watching customers try to wrangle more money out of the Pawn Stars guys. The back and forth is interesting, and while it seems sometimes the dialogue is staged, it’s definitely entertaining.  

If you watch Pawn Stars, you know cast member Austin “Chumlee” Russel. He is sometimes considered the heart of the show and is always calm and collected. However, he has managed to get himself into some serious legal trouble. You don’t hear about that on the show.  

One of the wackier shows on Discovery is Moonshiners. This one highlights people making illegal moonshine and how they avoid getting caught by the police. As a viewer, you might wonder how these guys could avoid the law for so long – especially in those episodes where they were stopped by the police and let go!  

Street Outlaws is one of those shows that makes you scratch your head and wonder how they get away with it. Street racing seems quite dangerous and risky, but it is obviously something viewers want to see, and Discovery provides it.   

If you are a fan of Moonshiners, you were a bit misled. The show apparently led viewers to believe that producing the state of Virginia was looking the other way when it came to manufacturing moonshine. In fact, the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control reported to The Associated Press that the show seriously misled viewers.

Before Jesse James became a famous Hollywood personality, he starred in Monster Garage, a show about mechanics who take old vehicles and transform them into totally new driving machines.

Jesse James has developed a persona as the all-time bad boy. He claims to be a descendant of the infamous outlaw Jesse James and is the man’s great-great grandson. This has never been proven.  

It was also reported in People that the bikes not only violated the California clean-air laws, but they weren’t even fitted with state-certified exhaust and fuel system emissions equipment. Missing this equipment meant they generated hydrocarbon emissions that were ten times the legal limit.  

The show Mythbusters is hosted by Hollywood special effects experts and uses scientific methods to test whether rumors, movie scenes, sayings, and even some internet videos, are actually true. It looks like a smooth production, but lots have gone wrong during its 19 seasons.   

Perhaps the most famous attempt gone wrong on MythBusters occurred when the staff made an error in firing a cannon beyond the bomb’s range. The cannon shot went into a California neighborhood through someone’s front door. 

This wild show covers the lives of alligator hunters in Louisiana. We guess people love watching programs about others who take their lives into their hands every day. The stars’ daily lives are not only dangerous, but they have also had lots of trouble with the law.  

In the episodes of Man vs. Wild, star Bear Grylls is left stranded somewhere, a film crew in tow. The crew follows him to document his attempt to survive and get back to civilization. In one episode, Grylls found himself confronted by a bear. This was one of the scarier scenes of the entire season.

Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot were on an around-the-world flight in 1937 when they disappeared. The mystery has never been solved. In 2017, the History Channel’s Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence claimed to have solved the mystery and showed a photo they said was evidence. 

The History Channel’s show Alone abandons contestants in remote locations, and they are supposed to find a way to survive. However, that’s not really the case.

Similar to the show Alone, in Naked and Afraid, participants are left in a remote location and have to fend for themselves for 21 days, living off the land.  

As the title implies, the contestants are all dropped off in the middle of nowhere with absolutely nothing to live on, and they are all undressed. Being without clothes is considered to be just one part of the challenge.  

It’s not surprising that the show Naked and Afraid has gotten people riled up. After all, it’s about people being stark naked, which is a pretty weird premise. An organization called One Million Moms petitioned the network to cancel the show because they considered it highly inappropriate.  

Chumlee, Corey, Rick, and The Old Man are now household names, thanks to the popularity of Pawn Stars. But if you actually visited the store, you wouldn’t find any of them. That seems a little disappointing, but these guys are busy.   

When you really like a show, you get comfortable with the cast and look forward to seeing them every episode.  But, in reality TV, cast changes seem common.

Here’s another disappointing fact about Swamp People. This show is supposed to be about alligator hunting, but there are plenty of viewers who believe that the alligators are already dead when they’re caught. 

Shark Week has been on the air since 1988, but in 2013 the Discovery Channel messed up big time. They aired a fake documentary called  Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, and the fans were terrified.

Taking advantage of the obsession with firearms in the U.S., Discovery created a show called American Guns. The show was about the Wyatt family, who owned a store called Gunsmoke Guns in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.  

Bear Grylls, the host of Man Vs. Wild, would do just about anything to survive. He even drank his urine once. But somehow he couldn’t survive his own show. He got fired from Discovery because he refused to take part in two of the channel’s planned projects.  

The show American Guns was canceled in 2013, much to the dismay of many fans. For the cast, however, things got worse immediately after the cancellation. Then, someone broke into their store Gunsmoke through a hole in the ceiling.  

American Guns star Richard Wyatt, it turns out, was not actually authorized to sell guns. This was discovered in 2012 after Wyatt lost his gun license. Apparently, he had violated federal laws. To make things worse, even after he lost his license, he kept selling guns at the store. 

Remember the robbery at the Gunsmoke Guns store? Well, in addition to that, the store got a visit from IRS agents as part of a financial investigation for tax evasion. It had begun in 2010 because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives heard that Wyatt might own illegal and fully automatic weapons. Further investigation turned up more illegal transactions.  

American Guns’ reputation worsened when it was discovered that the show contributed to the sale of a stolen weapon. Unfortunately, this happened in the very first season. In the last episode, a man named Wylie Newton came into the store to sell an antique Colt Pistol worth $20,000.

Cody Lundin of Discovery’s survival reality shows Dual Survival filed a lawsuit against the network claiming that his co-host, Joe Teti, threatened to kill him during filming. When Teli was waving an ice ax around, producers made it look like he was losing his mind, but according to Lundin, Teti was threatening him.  

The fans of Naked and Afraid were disappointed after the Season Three finale of the show. After the airing, Honora blogged that the producers wanted her to argue with another contestant to add drama to the show. Also, viewers were told she suffered from heat exhaustion and could not complete the challenge.  

The Discovery Channel’s show Alaskan Bush People has been met with fan controversy since it began. Fans doubted that the premise was even true. In fact, the people featured in the show are not even from Alaska and their home is definitely not in the bush, but close to the town.  

These stars of Alaskan Bush People really have a hard time with the truth. In 2015, the Brown family admitted that they fabricated the statement about living in Alaska to receive government checks. Two of the stars pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree unsworn falsification.

American Pickers stars Frank Fritz and Mike Wolfe go around the country hoping to find treasures that others have discarded. They literally pick through junk, then hope that they can find something really valuable. What they find is indeed junk, but what about how they find it?  

The show Pawn Stars spun off another show called Counting Cars which premiered in 2012. This one was about the stars buying unique cars and refurbishing them, then selling them. One of the Pawn Stars cast, Danny Koker, starred as the car expert.