The Travel Channel is trying to kill us

Bite Me - Travel Channel's new show.



Alright so this is more about the show than anything about the commercial but sometimes I feel like its my moral and ethical obligation to ask the question; What the hell is Travel Channel thinking? Maybe they're just trying to make up for the fact that their channel is really just a thinly veiled advertisement for all the places they go. Don't get me wrong, I love to watch the Travel Channel, but seriously they should try doing away with the commercials they have and get the places they feature to just underwrite the shows.
That said, I don't see how they thought this was a good idea. The show is basically ennumerating reasons for me to not to go to these places. The example above is basically saying "Want to die? Come to Vietnam!" So, basically the same sort of idea when recruiting for the Vietnam War.
I like to think that whoever came up with the idea for this show thought to themselves "well I'm sure there are a lot of smart people looking for a show like Jackass that caters to their higher intellectual standard and that Steve Irwin guy sure got a lot of respect after he died so lets see if we can make this work for Mike Leahy, he is a doctor after all."
Now watch this show become a wild success and force other networks to have their stars endure torture from Mother Nature ("This week on AC360: "Snakes biting Anderson Cooper" will he survive?) and I'll admit that Travel Channel somehow made the correct call on this one. Until then I'm pretty sure I'll focus on the positives on my eventual trip to Australia, you know, the place where dying of "Natural Causes" involves something poisonous stabbing you in the heart.