- Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura
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Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura 
Opening credits showing title sequenceFormat Documentary, Reality Starring Jesse Ventura
Alex Piper
June Sarpong
Michael Braveman
Daniel Kucan (season 2)Country of origin United States No. of seasons 2 No. of episodes 15 (as of Dec 17, 2010) Production Executive producer(s) Jesse Ventura
Arthur Smith
Kent Weed
Frank Sinton
Michael BravemanRunning time apx. 45 min (excluding commercials) Broadcast Original channel truTV Original run December 2, 2009 – Present External links Website Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura is an American television series hosted by Jesse Ventura and broadcast on truTV (a US cable television channel formerly known as Court TV). It premiered on December 2, 2009, and is produced by A. Smith & Co. Productions. A second season premiered on October 15, 2010.[1] A third season is being created and will be aired in 2012.[2]
Contents
Format
Former Navy UDT, professional wrestler, actor, and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura teams up with a group of investigators consisting of skeptic Alex Piper, reporter June Sarpong and investigator Michael Braveman, and examines various conspiracy allegations involving numerous controversial subjects such as global warming, the September 11 attacks, secret societies, government surveillance, and secret weapons projects.
In season two, Alex Piper is replaced by investigator Daniel Kucan in a few episodes.
Ratings and reviews
The premiere episode was watched by 1.635 million viewers, TruTV's biggest audience for a new series launch.[3] The next two episodes were watched by 1.586 million[4] and 1.301 million[5] viewers. Over the first three episodes the series averaged 1.5 million viewers, up 60% from the same time slot a year prior.[6] During the month of January the show averaged 1.6 million viewers helping truTV deliver its biggest month ever in primetime.[7]
Reviews by critics included Linda Stasi of New York Post who called the show; "Mindless, good fun and a hoot to watch aging action stars still taking action"; and Robert Lloyd of The Los Angeles Times who wrote, "Whatever truth is out there, it's filtered here through what is arranged more as an adventure series than a documentary."[8]
Controversy
'Police State' criticism
Shortly after the season two episode "Police State" aired, U.S. Representative Steve Cohen from Tennessee, who was interviewed in the episode, called for the removal of this program from truTV's lineup. He called the episode "outrageous distortion and an outright lie," as well as "dangerous and irresponsible." He stated "when the media purposely distort the facts to create confusion and mislead people, they must be held accountable. Unless we actively debunk false and misleading reports, we risk leaving the public with a dangerously skewed vision of this country." Cohen said he was "shocked and appalled" that Time Warner would air a program "so full of inaccuracies and irresponsible distortions." [9]
The "Police State" episode surmises that various prison-like facilities built around the country will be used during martial law for the internment of citizens who are deemed a threat to national security. However, officials have stated the facilities are emergency FEMA camps for the housing of civilians displaced by hurricanes or other natural disasters.[10] Cohen, whose district covers most of Memphis, created legislation aimed at creating temporary FEMA camps for the housing of people affected by any earthquake that could occur in the area.[11]
Another allegation that focused around a private facility outside Covington, Georgia, was the stockpiling of thousands of plastic bins alleged to be used for mass burials. The company that runs it is Vantage Products, the country's largest manufacturer of grave liners, and the facility is their storage site.[12]
In a response to the criticism, Misty Skedgell, a Turner spokesperson, described Conspiracy Theory as an "entertainment program that appears on an entertainment network."
Future of the series
On January 25, 2011, the Drudge Report announced that Ventura had filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), for what he calls "warrant-less and suspicion-less scans and body searches."[13] Ventura, who has a titanium hip replacement, claims that he sets off metal detectors and is always pulled out of line for lengthy pat downs. The same day of the announcement, Alex Jones stated on his show that he had personally witnessed an embarrassing pat down of Ventura at the Atlanta International Airport while filming for Conspiracy Theory, during which Ventura loudly protested that "America is turning into East Germany." Jones also stated on air that Ventura, who flew two to three times a week for Conspiracy Theory, refuses to fly commercially again and may not be able to continue hosting Conspiracy Theory, and left the production of a third season of the program in doubt.[14]
In September 2011, it was revealed that Ventura will host a third season that will be completed and launched on TruTV sometime in 2012.
List of episodes
Season one (2009–10)
Episode Title Original airdate 101 (1) "HAARP" December 2, 2009 Ventura visits HAARP (the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) in Gakona, Alaska to uncover the truth behind rumors that it is being used as a weather modification weapon, an instrument for mind control, or both. 102 (2) "9/11" December 9, 2009 Ventura investigates the rumors of a possible cover-up of the black box recordings from the airliners involved in the September 11 attacks which could contain evidence that 9/11 may have been an inside job. 103 (3) "Global Warming" December 16, 2009 Ventura looks at some of the purported evidence that man-made global warming is an elitist scam, and the money trail leads him to the doorstep of an elusive billionaire and a former UN adviser residing in Shanghai. 104 (4) "Big Brother" December 23, 2009 Ventura looks into theories about how far the U.S. Government has gone, in the name of national security, to keep an eye on its citizens–including contracting private companies to spy on people and giving special incentives to InfraGard members who report suspicious activity. 105 (5) "Secret Societies" December 30, 2009 Ventura infiltrates the Bilderberg Group–a very secretive, annual meeting of elitists who gather in luxury hotels, under heavy security, and supposedly plan the strategies for world domination. 106 (6) "Manchurian Candidate" January 6, 2010 Ventura investigates rumors that the CIA has restarted the project to turn ordinary citizens into programmed assassins, and meets a man who claims to be a real-life Manchurian Candidate. 107 (7) "Apocalypse 2012" January 13, 2010 Some believe the world is heading for disaster in 2012 and Ventura looks into rumors that the U.S. Government has a doomsday plan for saving the elite while leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves. Ventura also checks out the Denver International Airport where mysterious artwork displayed throughout seems to depict a "road map" of plans for the Apocalypse. Season two (2010)
Episode Title Original airdate 201 (8) "Plum Island" October 15, 2010 Ventura investigates the secretive Plum Island Animal Disease Center located off the coast of Long Island, New York, which has been suspected as being a bio-weapons research center responsible for the release of Lyme disease and other deadly viruses. He also learns that the facility is to be moved to Kansas, into the heart of cattle country, which could spell disaster if a dangerous contaminant was released into the nation's food supply. 202 (9) "Area 51" October 29, 2010 Ventura treks into the Nevada desert to monitor the activity of Area 51, the most secretive military complex in the country and believed by many in the UFO community to be reverse engineering alien technology. He also interviews two Area 51 watchdogs who claim they were targeted by the Joint Terrorism Task Force. 203 (10) "Wall Street" November 5, 2010 Ventura interviews Goldman Sachs whistleblowers and infiltrates a group of Wall Street elitists to find out what caused the financial meltdown, and to see who has the power to manipulate the stock market and the prices of oil, and precious metals. 204 (11) "Police State" November 12, 2010 Ventura is joined by conspiracy-talk radio host Alex Jones and looks into the plans and procedures in place by the government for declaring martial law. They investigate new law enforcement "fusion centers" that may be in control of rumored internment camps for rounding up U.S. citizens who are deemed a threat to national security. Note: This episode was removed for a time from the second season episode list on TruTV.com after a controversy.[15] 205 (12) "JFK Assassination" November 19, 2010 Ventura reviews a set of supposedly classified CIA documents that connect the John F. Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, and possible involvement by other U.S. presidents such as Gerald Ford and Lyndon B. Johnson. He interviews Lee Harvey Oswald's widow Marina Oswald Porter to gain more insight into the theory that Oswald was a CIA operative who had been framed by his handlers. 206 (13) "Great Lakes" December 3, 2010 Ventura looks into the prospects of "Blue Gold" and why corporations and the super-rich are buying up water rights around the world in what could be a plan in controlling nations and their masses. He looks into evidence that these tactics are going on in North America in what could be a literal theft of the Great Lakes. 207 (14) "The Gulf Oil Spill" December 10, 2010 Ventura looks into rumors that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a staged event by companies like BP and Halliburton to reap profits from the cleanup, as well as administer toxic agents into the Gulf coast waters as part of a larger depopulation program, inspired by the Hurricane Katrina disaster, to modify the world's ocean currents and weather, and to target the Louisiana coastline to gain complete control of its oil reserves. 208 (15) "Pentagon" December 17, 2010 Ventura investigates the theory that a missile, and not a hijacked airliner, hit The Pentagon during the September 11 attacks. Questioned are issues such as the lack of surveillance video released by the FBI; debris and damage inconsistent with a jetliner crash; the extreme difficulty of crashing a jetliner at high speed into a specific ground target by an amateur pilot, and links to a possible cover-up of $2.3 trillion of unaccounted taxpayer money announced by then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, just a day before the attacks. References
- ^ "The Future of Jesse Ventura's truTV Series and More". PWInsider.com. http://pwinsider.com/article/45863/the-future-of-jesse-venturas-trutv-series-and-more.html?p=1. Retrieved 2010-04-12.
- ^ "truTV's Hit Series "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" Hits the Road for Third Season of Truth-Seeking and Myth-Debunking Read more: Breaking News - truTV's Hit Series "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" Hits the Road for Third Season of Truth-Seeking and Myth-Debunking". The Futon Critic. http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2011/09/19/trutvs-hit-series-conspiracy-theory-with-jesse-ventura-hits-the-road-for-third-season-of-truth-seeking-and-myth-debunking-980404/20110919trutv01/.
- ^ "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura Delivers 1.6 Million Viewers, truTV's Biggest Audience Ever for a New Series Launch". TVbytheNumbers.com. 2009-12-03. http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/12/03/conspiracy-theory-with-jesse-ventura-delivers-1-6-million-viewers-trutv%E2%80%99s-biggest-audience-ever-for-a-new-series-launch/35201. Retrieved 2010-04-12.
- ^ "Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura Holds Steady At 1.635 Million Viewers". TVbytheNumbers.com. 2009-12-15. http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/12/15/conspiracy-theory-with-jesse-ventura-holds-steady-at-1-6-million-viewers/36236. Retrieved 2010-08-11.
- ^ "Sanctuary Ratings For December 11 & 18: There Is No Conspiracy!". TVbytheNumbers.com. 2009-12-22. http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/12/22/sanctuary-ratings-december-11-18-there-is-no-conspiracy/37081. Retrieved 2010-08-11.
- ^ "New Original Series Help Lead truTV to Biggest Year Ever in Ratings". TVbytheNumbers.com. 2009-12-21. http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/12/21/new-original-series-help-lead-trutv-to-biggest-year-ever-in-ratings/36867. Retrieved 2010-08-11.
- ^ "truTV Scores Biggest Month Ever in January". TVbytheNumbers.com. 2010-02-02. http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/02/02/trutv-scores-biggest-month-ever-in-january/40881. Retrieved 2010-08-11.
- ^ "Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura reviews at". Metacritic.com. 2009-12-02. http://www.metacritic.com/tv/shows/conspiracytheorywithjesseventura. Retrieved 2010-04-12.
- ^ Lawmaker: Jesse Ventura's show on U.S. concentration camps 'outrageous'
- ^ FEMA Camps: Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory Debunked
- ^ "Rep. Steve Cohen goes to mat with Jesse Ventura over Conspiracy Theory". Commercialappeal.com. 2010-12-07. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/dec/07/rep-steve-cohen-blasts-jesse-ventura-tv-show-about/. Retrieved 2010-12-09.
- ^ Popular mechanics: Debunking FEMA Camp Myths
- ^ "Confirmed: Jesse Ventura Sues TSA for Pat-Downs". drudge.com. 2011-01-25. http://www.drudge.com/news/140633/jesse-ventura-sues-tsa-pat-downs.
- ^ "Ventura Strikes Back with Lawsuit Against TSA". infowars.com. 2011-01-25. http://www.infowars.com/ventura-strikes-back-with-lawsuit-against-tsa/.
- ^ http://www.trutv.com/shows/conspiracy_theory/episodes/index.html Second Season episode list (accessed: 2010-12-14).
External links
Categories:- American reality television series
- American documentary television series
- 2009 American television series debuts
- 2000s American television series
- 2010s American television series
- TruTV shows
- Documentary films about conspiracy theories
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