I had to research reality TV this week. It was awful.

[Plaid Adder]

Do you know that there are entire websites out there with forums just like DU devoted entirely to following reality TV? It's a whole culture. I found a review of "Married by America" which totally panned the show--*because they lied about letting the viewers pick who got to get married.* Guy was pissed off he didn't get to play God with the contestants' lives when they promised he could. He does mention, later on in his list of grievances, that MBA appears to have done a total demolition job on the egos, lives, etc. of everyone who appeared in it.

Shudder. Shudder.

Meanwhile, apparently the Little Peoples' Association is 'reserving judgment' on "The Littlest Groom." I will be REAL surprised if they are still 'reserving judgment' by the time it's over.

What is the MATTER with people, I ask you,

The Plaid Adder

[underpants]

1. I've recently rediscovered Univision

:evilgrin::thumbsup::bounce:

[madrchsod]

15. ahhhhhh

evil grin-thumbsup-bounce..could you mean the incredibly hot looking ladies with the bare minimum of fabric covering their bodies?

[underpants]

19. I particularly appreciate the witty reparte on that Viviana show

Aye Carumba!!!

[BootinUp]

2. This post is so funny - but sad, you know

whats even sadder is when my own familiy members have to watch the shit. :argh:

[KCDem]

3. reality TV sucks, IMO

I feel your pain. Are you going to write an article about it?

[Plaid Adder]

4. Already have.

See front page today,

The Plaid Adder

[KCDem]

16. (blushes)

Will do... I always go straight to the forums and then check out the articles later.

I love your contributions, btw!

[woofless]

5. I feel for ya'.

Personally have never watched a minute of "reality TV" and the allure escapes me.

[Plaid Adder]

7. It fascinates me with its awfulness, but I can't stand to watch it.

I saw one episode of *Survivor II* and it almost killed me:

http://www.plaidder.com/survivor.htm

And I saw part of one episode and the finale of *Temptation Island I* and that almost finished me off. What a foul freakin' concept THAT was.

Sigh,

The Plaid Adder

[MsUnderstood]

6. Ouch!

As a reality TV watcher I'm feeling belittled (pardon the pun on the littlest groom) by the generalization of your assumpltions of reality TV AND THE VIEWERS.

Just like all television, reality TV has several levels of complexity and appeal. If you don't enjoy the genre don't watch. I personally skip any religous based shows such as 7th heaven and Touched by an Angel and I'm sure some people enjoy that type of drama.

The reviewer of "Married by America" is right--the promos stated america would pick the winner, but the person getting married picked the winner. Without reading the review, I would assume the person was offended that he was misled, not that he couldn't play God. . .

Wouldn't someone who watches Fraiser be upset if the promo said "On the final episode of Fraiser, Ross and Fraiser get married" but all that happens is they kiss?

[Plaid Adder]

11. I didn't mean to offend. No doubt there are pleasures to be had.

I just have never understood the appeal. To me, knowing that there are real people involved just makes it all very upsetting. I wouldn't want to be responsible for picking someone's mate via a phone-in vote. It'd be different if they weren't real people...but they are.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[MsUnderstood]

23. After reading your article

I sense your frustration stems from the "Matchmaker" Reality shows that film a guy/girl picking out girls/guys to be the one and true love.

Yea those Reality shows (there are going to be over 4 hours of these shows this week during prime time) don't do much for marriage and its sense of superiority.

On a side note, have you seen the Fox Promo where a girl has to pick out a guy from a group of straight and gay guys? If she picks right the couple split $1,000,000. If she picks a gay guy he gets it all.

And for those of you bashing Reality shows--Fox is the one carrying the most offensive shows (not the news network ofcourse).

Isn't it strange the news network is pumping out propoganda for Marriage Amendment while its sister station has the litte groom, forver eden, the straight show, Big fat obnoxious fiance?

[Skittles]

8. I've asked the same thing, PA

It's f***ing disgusting, absolute PROOF of the Dumbing Down of America.

[SOteric]

9. Yeah. It sucks. But it has an enthusiastic following

and the networks can wring big profits out of it because they don't have to pay actors amazingly big paychecks or residuals. They just let some greedy people with no sense of pride scramble for a pot not 1/4 the size of the expenditure they'd have to put into salaries for a 30 minute sitcom.

[GOPisEvil]

13. Born of the last writer's strike, I believe.

Reality TV means not having to hire writers either.

[lazarus]

18. Writers aren't everything

editors, cameramen, producers, production people, art design....

Some of these shows do spend a lot of money, and it does appear on screen. Yeah, there's some trash. But Sturgeon's law applies to reality TV, just as it applies to everything else: 90% of everything is crap. If you're going to condemn reality TV because of the 90%, let's condemn everything else because of the crap content. Nothing has a better crap-to-non crap ration that I'm aware of. 90%.

[madrchsod]

10. my daughter saw the

little groom,couldn`t believe that they put it on tv. do you do research on all the mtv reality shows? most of these people should be slapped silly. one program a girl all most died because of a spider bite and her team mates were bitching cause she was a slacker. 95% of the young adults mtv has on these shows are complete jerks or incredibly naive

[VOX]

12. Just to horrifying. It's like kryptonite -- don't get near it...

These shows are cheap and easy to produce. Always the bottom line.

People will indeed watch anything.

[lazarus]

17. Not easy to produce, nor cheap

Sure, most of them are. But Survivor costs well over a million dollars per episode, and has a crew of 300-500.

Some of us actually enjoy reality TV.

[Loonman]

14. MTV doesn't care who they cast

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/roadrules1.html

[DrWeird]

20. People should be ashamed of themselves.

I can easily imagine a boardroom of cynical TV executives laughing about how stupid their viewers are, and trying to one up each other on how stupid they can make a television program and still get people to watch it.

[Skittles]

21. never underestimate the stupidity of the public

never

[Ricdude]

22. "You'll never go broke...

...underestimating the stupidity of the public." -- P. T. Barnum.

Disclaimer: I find *some* reality TV entertaining.

I don't watch with baited breath to see if contestant X has it out with contestant Y over conflict Z. I don't watch gross-out eating contests. I don't particularly like the trivialization of marriage propagated by most of the dating/wedding shows.

My favourites of the reality genre are Lost and The Amazing Race. If you haven't seen it, Lost starts by dropping 6 contestants in a random location somewhere on the Earth. After landing, they are divided into pairs, assigned a cameraperson, and told to find their way back to the Statue of Liberty. They start with $30/team. When they figure out which country they're in, they get another $300, and their passports (in a combination locked box). The first series dropped the players off in Outer Mongolia. I believe the second was on a small plateau in Bolivia, at an elevation about 9000 ft.

The Amazing Race is basically a global scavenger hunt, but the teams have enough money to get from one place to the other. There are sometimes restrictions on what they are allowed to take from one location to the next, and every day there's a well defined rest period, but some of the challenges are interesting to watch, e.g. could you find The Girl From Ipanema on a Brazilian Beach?

Sometimes you want to eat at a four star restaurant. Sometimes you just want some french fries. As long as there's ketchup...

[lazarus]

24. So I'm stupid?

Lynnesin's stupid? Pithlet's stupid? That's three DUers that I know for a fact are fans of at least one reality television show.

I ask that everyone invest in a slightly narrower brush.

[Skittles]

25. *no comment*

*no comment*

[Pithlet]

26. Some reality shows out there are just plain awful.

Particularly the ones on Fox.

Others aren't so bad. I like Survivor and The Amazing Race, which aren't quite as high on the sleaze factor, IMO.

This isn't directed at the OP, more to other comments in this thread, but I would hesitate to judge anyone's intelligence level based on what type of TV they like to watch, or any other entertainment, for that matter. I think it is a bit judgmental and unfair.

[slackdude]

27. What is the purpose of your research?

I was doing a little reality TV research for a possible screenplay which I may or may not continue writing. There's a magazine called Reality Check which has some decent behind the scenes stuff (though it's really fluffy reporting and interviewing). I have to say that My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance has become a big guilty pleasure in my house, as well as Average Joe 2.

[MidwestMomma]

28. It's part of our bizarro world

Where the news is made-up and the tv shows are based on reality.