I don't see what the big surprise is. Could anyone NOT know that the History Channel was going down hill after cancelling "Dogfights" and replacing it with "Ice Road Truckers". Between that and their shows on UFO's, Bigfoot, and "end of world prophets", it's been pretty clear what direction they have elected to go for the past 3 to 4 years.
BTW, I used to be a frequent member and poster on the "Dogfights" forum on the History Channel website before it went under. Believe me, there were so many negative threads about the direction that HC was going that they began to HEAVILY censor their forum and delete any posts with a negative tone. During the peak, I counted at least 10 posts a day which were censored due to their negativity towards the History Channel.
The "new" head of HC, Nancy Dubuc, even started a thread on the "Dogfights" forum. Within a day or so, it had about 8 or 9 pages of negative comments about the History Channel programming and the direction they were going. Nancy acknowledged all of the negativity and basically said she was sick of hearing about it. The next day, the entire thread and every post that she wrote had been deleted.
That "Dogfights" forum was the absolute WORST one I have ever participated in. It was EXTREMELY censored and not in a good way. It didn't matter that you didn't use any profanity, generate any personal attacks against anyone, or violate any of the forum rules, if you wrote anything even remotely negative about the History Channel, your post was deleted. It was very, very sad, because I felt like I was in a repressed, Communist internet site, with all of the unwarranted and unfair censoring they were doing over there. That experience turned me off so much that I will never, ever join any History Channel forum ever again.
It was brutally obvious over there, that the History Channel didn't give a damnn about what people thought about their programming.