The beginning is a horror film, the middle is a suspenseful film, and the ending is a funny film, the past when CCTV's "Approaching Science" stopped broadcasting

"Approaching Science", a popular science program on CCTV 23 years ago, first aired in 1998 and quickly became one of the most popular programs among viewers.

In 2019, "Approaching Science" was suspended.

In the past few decades, it has become a topic of conversation among those born in the 1970s after dinner, a topic discussed in class by those born in the 1980s, and a nightmare in the childhood of those born in the 1990s.

The program team of "Access to Science" made this popular science program into a model of "a horror film at the beginning, a suspense film at the middle, and a comedy film at the end", which caused a lot of controversy.

"People's Daily" once published an article saying: "Approaching Science" is "a banner of the media's pretentiousness."

People's Daily Online pointed out: It is very shameful to turn a public welfare science column into a curiosity program.

But when "Access to Science" stopped airing, the audience began to miss this program that had accompanied them for decades.

“Getting close to science is my source of happiness.”

“Although it is quite messy, I still don’t want it to stop broadcasting.”

“ In fact, it is quite good. It makes me, a person who dare not watch horror movies, feel that some things are not so scary. Dripping with joy.

It must be said that this is a strange program with a strange audience. Even though "Access to Science" has been suspended, its past is still vivid in our minds.

Just like Zhang Tengyue, the host of "Approaching Science", once again said the familiar sentence in the "Tucao Conference": "How come we are pseudo-scientific?"

01

On June 1, 1998, CCTV produced a popular science program "Approaching Science".

In the beginning, this program was very normal, popularizing science knowledge and introducing major scientific and technological events, policies and achievements.

But the knowledge point is too hard for the audience to chew.

In 2003, "Approaching Science" received a yellow card warning due to poor ratings, and the survival of the column was once threatened.

So there was a major revision of this column in 2004.

After this revision, "Approaching Science" began to look strange.

In order to increase the ratings and ensure the survival of the column, the program team chose a path that relies on suspense, weirdness, and eye-catching.

They often use mystifying techniques, using terrifying pictures and sound effects, and mysterious explanations to firmly grab the audience's attention, and then in the last 2 minutes, they come up with an inexplicable answer that makes the audience laugh. It makes people laugh and cry.

The audience watched attentively for a long time, and finally realized that they had been fooled.

There is a program that is quite impressive.

One day in June 2010, a villager in a county in Hebei Province heard a plane flying overhead. When he looked up, he found a dazzling spherical object falling down and hitting the ground. On the wasteland not far away.

Later, a group of villagers went to find out.

When I took a closer look, it turned out that what fell were two balls of ice.

Miraculously, the ice ball was light blue, beautiful and mysterious, with a diameter of about 40 centimeters and a weight of 50 kilograms. A big hole was made in the ground.

What the hell is this?

The villagers first eliminated the hail, and the weather was sunny and cloudless.

Superstitious old people say this is a warning from God.

Young students who have been in middle school for a few years said it was a meteorite from outer space.

Finally, we invited a respected local elder. After looking at it carefully, the elder said with a thoughtful expression: "This is rootless water. If you take a bite every day, it can cure all diseases." ."

A brave villager took a bite of the blue ice ball on the spot and said after licking it: "It tastes good, salty."

In the end, the village party secretary decided to take the ice balls back and freeze them until he contacted experts for identification.

Before leaving, the elder also broke down a few pieces of crushed ice and took it home to prepare for cooking.

The program team of "Approaching Science" received a call from the village party secretary and immediately contacted the Beijing Planetarium. The director was unambiguous and followed the program team directly to the village to investigate.

Experts from the Observatory believe that these substances may come from outer space.

However, experts from the laboratory rejected this speculation, and the identification results showed that the material did not come from outer space.

Some people speculated whether it was an undiscovered element from an alien planet, but tests revealed that the components of the substance were water and common inorganic substances.

For a time, the experts and the program team were at an impasse.

While everyone was racking their brains, an expert who had worked at the airport suddenly remembered that the excrement of passengers on the plane would turn into ice cubes and appear blue after processing.

The final identification result showed that this was the excrement of a person who fell from the plane.

But many villagers do not believe this result. They prefer to believe that this is "rootless water", especially the villager who licked the ice cubes and the old man who used the ice cubes to cook. "Water" is something I firmly believe in.

At the end of the program, it was said that because the volume difference between the two ice balls and the excrement ice cubes at the airport was too large, it still needed to be studied. Later, the planetarium specially preserved these ice cubes and prepared to continue research.

After watching this program, the audience who was eating had mixed feelings in their hearts.

I wanted to laugh at the villager who licked the ice, but found that I was also being teased by the program crew for a long time. I could only curse in my heart, what are these things?

There are many similar stories. For example, in a certain village, there was "electricity leakage" everywhere. Every voltage was 220V. Even the air was charged, and the villagers began to suffer from dizziness.

Experts investigated to no avail, and finally accidentally discovered that the test pen was broken, and it showed 220V everywhere. Because the villagers were afraid of electric shock and were highly nervous, their blood pressure increased, causing dizziness and dizziness.

02

If there were only these "unsolved mysteries", many children would not be so scared that they dare not sleep after watching them. "Approaching Science" once published a The program of the series "Weird Powers and Chaotic Gods".

For example:

Every night in a village, there will be bursts of strange screams. The bold villagers searched the entire village, but could not find the source of the strange noise. The old man in the village said that there were legends of extremely ferocious beasts roaming here, which made people panic for a while.

The program team also added fuel to the fire, using scary sound effects, using weird filters, and dividing it into two episodes.

After watching the last episode, the children were so scared that they did not dare to go to the toilet at night.

As a result, the secret was finally revealed in the next episode. It turned out to be a fat man in the village who snored while sleeping.

Who can I ask to reason with this?

Also:

One program talked about "The Legend of the Flying Stick". At the beginning, it was said that the camera had photographed the alien spacecraft many times, and it was so miraculous that it even divided it into three categories: upper, middle and lower. The episode was broadcast, and in the end it was discovered that a flapping moth was flying in front of the camera.

In one issue, a child was possessed by a "ghost" and often made various strange actions, rolling his eyes, biting, and jumping and walking like a zombie in a zombie movie. The villagers were extremely frightened.

The program team took the child for a physical examination, and everything turned out to be normal. Finally, the psychiatrist gave the answer: The child's father usually doesn't pay attention to him, and he wants to use these strange actions to attract his father's attention.

There are also many programs with the word "ghost" in their titles, such as "Ghost Turns on the Lamp in the Midnight", Angry "Will-o'-the-Wisp", Bizarre Incidents in a Funeral Parlor, Mystery of Phantom Shadows in an Old House, etc. In fact, they are all The reason is very simple. After being packaged by the program team and broadcast in separate episodes, it can often scare people away from sleeping.

The "Water Monster Series" is even more ridiculous, with all kinds of suspense, all kinds of reasoning, and various experts. Finally, it was discovered that the three terrifying water monsters are "tortoises, otters and an old motorboat."

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Doesn’t it look a lot like the “water monkey” that often appears in a certain sound today? Thanks to the popular science routine of @无小光, we can identify popular creatures on the Internet.

Actually, when I think about it, people who know a certain amount of scientific knowledge find these programs ridiculous, but there are also many people who are uneducated and do not understand scientific knowledge, and often regard ordinary things as mysterious. Phenomenon, even superstitious legend.

What "Approaching Science" did at that time was very similar to what science experts do today, which is to popularize some common scientific knowledge about nature, biology, physics, chemistry and so on.

In essence, it is also to get rid of superstitious ideas, but "Approaching Science" is a bit exaggerated for the sake of gimmicks, and it can be called the originator of "clickbait". Over time, it became a comedy show that served as a meal.

03

In 2005, the revised "Access to Science" became a popular program with strong ratings from a program that no one watched before. By 2007, "Approaching Science" had already stood at the pinnacle of the domestic TV curiosity-seeking world.

Writer Zheng Jun once described the popularity of "Approaching Science": The custom in northern bathhouses is to drink tea, play cards, and shout five and six in it. Once I walked into a bathroom, and it was surprisingly quiet inside. I looked carefully. Look, it turns out that everyone is watching "Approaching Science" intently.

The host Zhang Tengyue also became famous.

Although the commentary was lengthy, the way he explained it carefully with squinted eyes still won the love of countless fans.

Zhang Tengyue said: "My neighbors didn't know that I was a CCTV host in the past. Now when I go out to buy vegetables, the vegetable sellers ask me for my autograph."

The program has become famous. Two years have passed, but people have had enough of the "clickbait" pretentiousness, and doubts continue to emerge.

Even Zhang Guofei, the producer of the program team, revealed: Our criteria for selecting topics are that the most important thing is that the topic should be attractive, then the story should be twists and turns, and the next step is to be scientific.

With such a tone, the final result of the show is naturally full of gimmicks at the beginning and inexplicable at the end.

After a series of "ghost" stories and "weird" legends, the official media couldn't stand it any longer, saying ""Approaching Science" is a flag for the media to pretend to be a ghost."

This evaluation made the program team feel like thorns in the back.

Then they launched a series of programs with "big thunder but little rain". For example, a 60-year-old man's body would spontaneously combust. It turned out that the fire was started by his granddaughter. The reason was that "spontaneous combustion of the elderly" was regarded as a crime in the local area Success is a symbol of good fortune, and the granddaughter wants her parents to support the elderly.

Also, someone called the police saying that someone was smuggling a panda. When the police arrived, they found that the panda was very strange. Experts said that it was the product of mating with a panda. Finally, the owner of the animal came out and explained: "I am free." Out of boredom, I dyed the Chow Chow at home."

Although the show no longer mentioned any ghost legends, it was still mysterious, and the audience felt insulted on an intellectual level.

In this regard, the host Zhang Tengyue was very aggrieved. He felt that while entertaining and educating, it also explained a piece of scientific knowledge clearly or revealed a problem that troubled everyone. This is enough. Moreover, the program team did not make anything up, and many clues were provided by enthusiastic viewers. < /p>

However, as criticism grew, "Access to Science" underwent another revision in 2010, changed the production team, withdrew from the 8 o'clock prime time slot, and cut off the novel hunting story. It was changed to hardcore science popularization, but the ratings also plummeted.

On September 30, 2019, "Approaching Science" announced that it would stop broadcasting after broadcasting "Water Peanut Control".

Unexpectedly, netizens who had previously scolded this show as being inferior began to miss it again: "Although it has a beginning like a ghost movie and a bloody ending, it is really good to watch."

Conclusion

Putting aside the pretentiousness, "Approaching Science" actually makes an outstanding contribution to the popularization of science at a certain level.

The program was launched in 1998. In the fifth census in 2000, the number of illiterate people aged 15 and above was 85.07 million, and most of these people were concentrated in rural areas.

A large part of the audience of "Approaching Science" is also from rural areas.

In the eyes of viewers who know a certain amount of scientific knowledge, what is said in "Approaching Science" may be a joke, but among people who are poisoned by superstitious ideas, this program allows them to increase their knowledge and realize the nature of things.

In 2010, the sixth census, the number of illiterate people aged 15 and above dropped to 54 million.

Perhaps because more and more people are getting into science, "Approaching Science" has been discontinued.

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