| History Rocks | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Educational, Non-Fiction |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 3 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Bruce David Klein |
| Producer | Atlas Media Corporation |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | The History Channel |
| Release | December 17, 2007 |
History Rocks was a non-fictional, educational television program shown on The History Channel. Each episode explains eight historical events, arranged by decade, through multimedia presentations consisting of photographs, archival footage, popular music and pop-up trivia. Six episodes were produced, with two focusing on 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. At one time, the History Channel website discussed a fourth special on the topic of Sex, but the official History Rocks' website at the History Channel no longer mentions it.
Although the show was originally hosted by Meat Loaf, subsequent airings of the videos edited Meat Loaf out and removed his segues between videos.
Although the History Channel frequently aired the series during the summer of 2007, the official website states that there are no plan to air the episodes in the immediate future. Most of the videos are available, however, for on-demand online viewing. The full set of segments from the 1960s are currently available.[1] The shop at the History Channel's website has a section devoted to History Rocks, but the videos available for purchase are only related to the individual segments and do not contain the actual videos aired on television.
History Rocks shares many similarities with the BBC television show The Rock 'n' Roll Years aired between 1985 and 1994. The format of the programme, which was based on the BBC Radio 1 series 25 Years of Rock, was primarily of news clips with narrative subtitles set to music of the time with no presenters or voice-overs.
History Rocks is also close in format to the VH1's program Pop-up Video. Although Rocks frequently discusses more serious topics than does Video, both programs have videos with identical form and structure; both videos use "info nuggets" and popular music as their central premise. Video predates Rocks by several years. Rocks has occasionally been criticized for its similarity to Video, but many of its fans support Rocks's appeal to a wider audience than other documentary shows.
In 2007, History Rocks was awarded "Best short form audiovisual entertainment made for mobile and/or Internet lifestyle/music" at Mipcom's Mobile and Internet TV Awards [2]
