Reception
The program had 1.676 million viewers in late October 2010, 2.034 million viewers in mid-December (for the "Unexplained Structures" episode) and in late January 2011 it had 1.309 million viewers.
Some reviewers have characterized the show as "far-fetched", "hugely speculative", and "...expound wildly on theories suggesting that astronauts wandered the Earth freely in ancient times." Many of the ideas presented in the show are not accepted by the scientific community, and have been criticized as pseudoscience and pseudohistory. History professor Ronald H. Fritze observed that pseudoscience as offered by von Däniken and the Ancient Aliens program has a periodic popularity in America: "In a pop culture with a short memory and a voracious appetite, aliens and pyramids and lost civilizations are recycled like fashions."
Forbes.com contributor Brad Lockwood criticized Ancient Aliens as an example of the History Channel's addition of "programs devoted to monsters, aliens and conspiracies", commenting that, "Ancient Aliens defies all ability to suspend disbelief for the sake of entertainment." Forbes.com staff writer Alex Knapp also criticized the series and cited archaeologist Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews rebuke of the History Channel for "treating (Ancient Aliens) nonsense as though it were fact."
Smithsonian.com science writer Brian Switek was extremely critical of the series, particularly an episode that suggested "aliens exterminated dinosaurs to make way for our species". He characterized the show as "some of the most noxious sludge in television’s bottomless chum bucket."
Read more about this topic: Ancient Aliens
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