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could possibly wish:

The basics:

(a) The Hunk. Attracts bored women, girls, and gays.
(b) The Cow. Attracts anything. Role model for pre teen girls and anything else whose femininity is a sort of shop front.
(c) The Nice Person/People, instantly forgettable cannon fodder for the first removals.
(d) The Mean Little Guy/Girl for everyone to hate and for the next generation of mean little jerks to use as a role model before puberty wakes them up.

(e) The backstabber, for people who aren't honest enough to be mean, and are genetically incapable of "nice" or any method of generating interest in their sexual orientation.
(f) The belligerent ones. Those who can start World War Four over a teacup. Useful as social grounding for two year olds.

The rest is just innuendo, and a few easy setups about "fights" among the characters. This also helps teach kids in the audience that any sort of fight with another human being is perfectly safe, which must reassure someone.

We already had junk food, this is junk media. It is now tacked on to just about every other format. American Idol has a reality element, not because it particularly needs it, but because some clown thought that it should be there. You can almost hear the single digit I.Q.s grappling with the gigantic concepts: "People can identify with the losers. That's good, because they can use that as their crutch for their own failures. So they keep watching."

You will note that this philosophical triumph can also be used for just about any theme or show. It's part of the impressive move into the total irrelevance of the product in mass media. There is no show, as far as the marketing is concerned. It's about winners and losers, and hitting the larger demographic target. Doesn't matter what it's about. Whatever it is, you're supposed to be selling it, and this is how you do it.

Don't despair, media students, in the next set of seminars, you learn to fetch sticks and sit up and beg.

In terms of "quality" there isn't any to measure, as far as Reality TV is concerned. One corn flake tends to look much like any other. Modern TV is hardly a monument to thematic brilliance, but somehow, Reality TV has dragged it even lower. If there ever was a Golden Age of TV, this isn't it. This is just marketing, pretending to be entertainment, and failing enthusiastically while picking up large amounts of money for doing very little.

Reality TV is another name for bone lazy mediocrity in "creative" media. No need to think, just add some infantile, third rate, hype, and you'll at least get the idiot component of any audience. The average IQ of a human being is 100, and unfortunately for the gene pool you need people below that figure as well as above it, to get that average. My theory is that Reality TV addicts reduce the average IQ of the human race by about 40% but I'm always too optimistic.

If you really want to bore yourself to death, try inventing your own reality show, and compare it with the dreck on TV. You already know which you're likely to prefer. Actually, if you want to watch good reality, just turn off the TV.

Learn more about this author, Paul Wallis.
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