Fans in search of a jolt should find “Moments of Impact” (8 p.m., Discovery) a tad diverting. “Impact” offers one darn clip after another, capturing sudden car wrecks on highways and speedways, near misses between airliners, surveillance video of convenience-store break-ins, heroic rescues, bull-riding blunders, mud-track mayhem, motorcycle collisions, fire-truck accidents, sudden violent acts of ingratitude by inappropriate pets and stunts gone very wrong, all accompanied by loud music and even more amplified narration. Subtlety is the first casualty of this 20-car pileup.

If all of this highly caffeinated television sounds familiar, it’s because these violent clip-fests have come and gone ever since “When Animals Attack” and similar shows filled so many TV hours back in the mid-to-late 1990s. These shows were an apparently inspired by the shocking “Faces of Death” collections that became morbid underground collectibles during the heyday of videotape. And 20 years before that, in the early 1960s, shocking documentary films like “Mondo Cane” filled theaters with scenes of the exotic, the morbid and the obscure, set to jazzy European music.

This shockumentary genre is hardly the case of television returning to old standbys. ABC is scheduled to return “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire” to the prime-time schedule in August, 10 years after it became a runaway hit in the summer of 1999.

Last week, viewers took some comfort when MTV honored Michael Jackson and his contribution to that network’s rise by airing many of Jackson’s most celebrated music videos. At the same time, it took the death of an industry superstar to get MTV to stop airing “The Real World,” for at least a decent interval.

Cable news and network news divisions also seemed compelled by the news of Jackson’s death to fall back on the tried-and-true. The news was so sudden, and the results so ritualized and predictable, that you got the sense that folks had to scramble just to put the operation on automatic pilot.

The combination of old clips, emotional tributes, repetitive observations and the general atmosphere of non-news trumping real news (Iran, Iraq, North Korea and all that) could not have been unfamiliar to anybody who has witnessed similar wall-to-wall media dirges for John F. Kennedy Jr., Princess Diana and others.

Tonight’s other highlights

• USA offers viewers a chance to catch up with a “Burn Notice” (5 a.m. through 10 p.m., USA) marathon.

• The “Twilight Zone” (7 a.m., Sci Fi) marathon begins, running continuously through 7 a.m., Sunday, with a few breaks for paid programming in the wee, wee hours.

• Seventy years on, the 1939 fantasy musical “The Wizard of Oz” (7 p.m., TCM) still has that certain air of savoir-faire.

• On two episodes of “30 Rock” (NBC), product placement (7 p.m.), Valentine’s Day (8:30 p.m.).

• On two episodes of “The Office” (NBC), Christmas (7:30 p.m.), dueling suitors (8 p.m.).

• Kelly Clarkson performs on “So You Think You Can Dance” (8 p.m., Fox).

• A safe room becomes a banker’s tomb on “The Mentalist” (9 p.m., CBS).

Cult choice

Director Werner Herzog narrates the 2005 documentary “Grizzly Man” (7 p.m., Animal Planet).