What will Reality TV evolve into? Maybe it’ll be like video blogging, intense 24-hour, multi-media blogging. Maybe one in every thousand people will operate his or her own network. You could probably do a pretty good job of it with a staff of three. The wealthy, those with the time and the resources to be truly self-obsessed, will be the first into the pool. The rest of us will just sit and watch. We’ll sit and watch as this privileged class enjoys the “reality” that none of us could ever hope to have.
(On that subject… If the producers of Reality TV shows were really interested in capturing reality, they would focus on the millions of people that sit in front of their televisions at home every night, not on the one simian-looking construction worker / male underwear model who gets whisked off to a European castle where a bevy of twenty-something skanky gold-digger types compete for his affections. The latter is not reality. Reality is the obese American kids toddling home to watch Jerry Springer.)
Here’s an article from the New York Times on the current state of Reality TV in the US. Of particular interest to me is the mention of “The Simple Life,” the Green Acres-themed reality show that promises to plop the useless heiresses Paris Hilton into the midst of a real, hard-working, mid-western farm family… I know it’s not nice for me to say this, but I hope she gets horribly disfigured in a combine accident. (story)
