The Travel Channel

Travel used to be about action. You know: "it's not the destination, but the journey," or however that saying goes. Not so with the Travel Channel.

In the course of a day's viewing, a couch-bound wanderer can be whisked from disease-ravaged South America to last year's Bikini Bash. But despite all this globetrotting, it is the place, not the act of going or being there, that this channel pushes. Travel seems simply to be the task of putting geography into lists.

Top 10 secret beaches, Top 10 waterparks, Top 10 haunted castles — seldom do these rosters have anything to do with the act of getting anywhere. Instead, they are just descriptions of the comfortable atmosphere of the places themselves. Maybe it has to do with the ease of travel today, our preponderance toward air travel and shuttle buses. But even when the Travel Channel describes cruises, as it does up to four times a day, it shows the ship as the destination, not the ports it visits.

Perhaps, it is the change in American's view of travel. Air travel being so cheap and convenient — despite complaints otherwise — has meant that anyone can go anywhere in a day. People vacation, but they don't travel. They see breaks from work or school as chances for pure relaxation, not for personal growth or education. Television is much the same experience, and the Travel Channel is more than happy to provide rest and packaged culture, rather than a real travel experience.

Many of the places it chooses to focus on do have a certain appeal: sunny spots containing all the necessary amenities, pre-fabricated resorts grand in scale of building and buffet, sumptuous spas with smiling natives and celebrity clientele. These are the places that concentrate so much on being perfect that any investigation of them could reveal nothing more than a marketing campaign would.

The Travel Channel chooses places not because they are interesting, but because they have prepackaged information to give to viewers. Number of rooms and staff, type of drinks served, cubic area of the pools. What do these have to do at all with the experience of traveling to and from these places?

Gone are the heroic travelogues, a chipper Michael Palin setting sea with his Russian fishing-crew companions. Instead, we're left with interviews with the high-lit, overbitten public-relations specialists for Key West, who are careful to avoid mentioning the gay community or Ernest Hemingway.

Though its fallback foci of L.A. and Las Vegas are spectacular in their own way; even the Travel Channel cannot help but make them seem synthetic and soulless, unworthy of mention by Phileas Fogg or his descendents.

Yes, there are a few exceptions. Where Animal Planet has its crazed Australian, putting himself in dangerous situations, so too does the Travel Channel. He speaks about social injustices in South Africa and encroaching alien wildlife in Australia, and he feels like out-of-date filler, wasting time until 9 p.m. when they start showing bikini clad lovelies, competing for a shot at calendar covers.

Fascinating in a there's-nothing-else-on kind of way, the Travel Channel gives the brainless relief its destinations offer their guests. Maybe the world is too stressful now for adventures and self-made swashbuckling. Maybe travel has officially become vacation and we should all just sit by the pool with our daiquiris instead of walking that 100 yards to the beach.

— Andy Ross (apross@earthlink.net)