There's a new breed of animal television show out there, and it's not your friend.

When I was growing up in the '60s and '70s, we had three whole TV channels to chose from -- at least til PBS came along and made it four. On Sunday nights in our house it was always Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom" followed by Disney. If we were real lucky after that there might even be a Jacques Cousteau special. I can almost hear Marlon Perkins nasally twang "I'll be upstream in the duck blind with a pitcher of margaritas while Jim wrestles for his life with the mighty 20-foot anaconda in the river." Big stuff when you're a six-year-old kid.

Animal programming back in the day was simpler, more honest, wholesome (at least onscreen), and viewers were taught to respect animals. Marlon, Jacques, Marty Stouffer and the others of the era really cared about the animals they were working with. I guess it was a different time and a different culture then, with far fewer distractions and a lot fewer media-hours to fill.

Today, the right message about animals has gone by the wayside. While some current and recent shows carry on those traditions to an extent, like "O'Shea's Big Adventure," Nigel Marvin, and of course the late Steve Irwin, a new crop of shows is taking over. These self-described "reality" shows are about animal abuse and misery, about people with mental illness, and about using shock and gruesomeness, and the real suffering of people and animals, to attract an audience.

And if you think the people who make those shows are our friends, think again.