Today, I spoke with a technician at Ascent Media Networks (the uplink facility for A&E Networks which includes the A&E and History channels) and A&E Director of Operations, Rob Jackson and both told me that A&E's management made the decision to change from OAR to 16:9 upconverted stretchovision. They agreed it didn't look good but they could do nothing about it. He suggested contacting A&E's viewer relations so I sent an email to:
ae.viewerrelations@AETV.com. Anyone who feels strongly about this issue should do the same.