I am one of those cranks who think there isn’t enough travel on the Travel Channel, food on Food Network, history on the History channel, and things worth learning and discovering on the Learning and Discovery channels.

So shamelessly do these networks copy one another’s programming these days that it hardly matters what they call themselves anymore.

And what’s with all the ghost-hunting shows?

There are three types of ghost hunters, it seems to me: rank con-artists, silly people and crazy people.

My guess is that the hosts of ghost-hunting shows hide the fact that they are in the first category by unabashedly courting people in the second and third categories.

Speaking of con artists, rank or sweeter-smelling, there is a current mania on basic cable for reality-based entertainments about people trying to make a fast buck.

A few of the hosts of these shows do seem to have a passing interest in educating viewers, if only as a way of parading their own expertise.

The best of these programs is History’s “Pawn Stars.”

On “Pawn Stars,” people come into a Las Vegas pawnshop with improbably wonderful items to sell. The hosts always have arcane facts about these items on the tips of their tongues.

Because I am a trusting person, I am sure that the cameras are never stopped so that the hosts can look up any of this stuff on Wikipedia.

The show’s veracity is fishy at best, in other words, but even the fishiness adds to the shambling charm of the whole enterprise.

What does sort of bother me about “Pawn Stars” are those schizophrenic scenes where warm appreciation for the historical value of an item gives way to desultory haggling over its monetary value in the moment.

“Pawn Stars” has been called a blue-collar version of “Antiques Roadshow” and I’d be the first to admit that the “Antiques Roadshow” concept was sorely in need of a transfusion of funk.

Watch enough “Antiques Roadshow” and you may start craving something more effusive and volatile like a golf telecast. But one thing “Antiques Roadshow” seems to be blessedly free of is desperation.

The people who bring their possessions to “Antiques Roadshow” for appraisal may intend to sell them at some point, but they seem to be motivated more by casual curiosity than by looming disasters in their lives.

Conversely, the sellers on “Pawn Stars” all seem mildly to gravely desperate, even if the producers of “Pawn Stars” aren’t keen to have us ponder this too extensively.

Nobody brings a museum-quality artifact into a pawnshop to satisfy a casual interest in history.

And therein lies the schizophrenia.

Because on “Pawn Stars,” what you get is the message that history is cool followed by the message that history is cheap.

Host Rick Harrison, who seems to be the pawnshop’s de facto commander-in-chief, will nod sagely or vibrate excitedly while an appraiser estimates an item’s worth at, say, $1,000. He will then turn to the owner of said item and inform him that, despite what he and 5 million viewers have just heard, the item’s real-world value is no more than $200.

This is just good business, I guess.

But “just good business” translates into lots of bummer moments where a seller who knows that he probably won’t get on TV if he turns down a low-ball offer is motivated by that and further forms of desperation to surrender his treasure for a pittance.

The “cast” of “Pawn Stars” is a likeable bunch of guys, but is no fun to watch “the house” always win all the time, to borrow a gambling reference.

In a pawnshop, the phrase “the house always wins” may be truer than it is in a casino.

“Pawn Stars” is far from the only pawnshop show out there and most of the others are considerably more brutal.

How did shows about pawnshops come to be so popular?

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t pawnshops used to be considered by most people to be a destination of last resort?

Perhaps most pawnshops now have groupies who loiter hoping that something exciting happens.

I guess I should have called around before I wrote this.

Anyway, many pundits have suggested that the popularity of such shows is indicative of how hard the recession has hit many people.

As for me, I have enough people in my own personal sphere who are suffering from the recession that I don’t feel the need to watch any more of them on TV. But I am clearly in the minority.

Desperate people love to watch reality shows about desperate people.

I would not be surprised to learn that even more desperate shows about even more desperate people are in the offing.

In fact, I just perused a full list of basic cable pilots for the 2011-2012 season and found the following scintillating entries: “Rendering Plant Wars” (Synopsis: Two rival roadkill hunters compete for squashed opossums on the interstate), “Plasma Stars” (Synopsis: Two rival blood plasma warriors try to trick area hospitals into letting them donate more than twice a week”), “Clinical Testing Hunters” (Synopsis: Two human guinea pigs compete for medical research studies with the highest risks yet highest profits for participants) and “Treasury Bond Kings” (Synopsis: Two rival investors wait around for 30 years while their bonds mature).

Something tells me that last one isn’t going to make it.