At some point TV presented people as someone to look up to, at least a bit. You can still see it in the archives from eighties television over here. Maybe the barrier for entry was so high, so by the time you got there, you had the "father/mother figure" style down. Nowadays it's all the opposite.
I've been at home in flu for a couple of days, can anyone recommend any good youtube channels? Even BBC Earth looks to be a breathless barrage of words to "make you excited".