Reality TV

[Consolata]

Am I the only one watching? It's my fav new show. It's funny 'cause the girls are so ridiculous, catty, and good looking. I like Adriane and Elyse. I hope they are in the final group, I have a feeling Giselle will be in the final part too.

dear God, I'm here..I'm here.

[Hushpuppy]

I guess we're the two people watching this show. It just makes me laugh. I have never watched an entire episode of a reality show, but I've watched all of this one. I'm betting on Elyse to win. She's an anorexic atheist, so I know she has what it takes to be the next top model

And next week, meet the girlfriend!!!

[BytrSuite]

I don't usually watch these shows but my brother had one on the other day and I got sucked in.



Monster House on the Discovery channel. Now, it's not something I'd go out of my way to see but it sure was interesting.



To have this group of guys come in and totally redecorate your house so that it had a hardcore racing decor? Wow. I thought for sure the lady would hate it and break down into tears, but the whole family seemed to love it.



And if the guys got it done within 5 days and the family kept it, they each got $3,000 worth of tools or something. I think those were the rules.

________
"Oh, good! I was hoping to add theft, endangerment and insanity to my list of things I did today."
"Ah! You, too?"
(Stitch laughs delightedly)

[LilacWine22]

hi all



well usually i hate reality TV shows and try to avoid them at all costs but bored one night i reluctantly switched on Fame Academy

and now I'm hooked

i saw one episode of the last one and swore i would never watch it again

but this series has actually got some talented people especially Alex and Peter they rock and is good to see some variety on the usual pop music that the others do

so as much as i hate to admit it i like a reality show

[MadeinNZ]

I too have been sucked into the Fame Academy vortex. Alex is my fav - cute and talented and did I mention cute.



Peter has a great stage prescence and I really liked Alistair and Lorna as well and what the hell does Robin Gibb add to the panel and why do we care what the other 'Simon Wanabee' judge says and I now realise that I know far too much about it.

"Oh! I know this one: "Slaying entails certain sacrifices... blah blah bity blah. I'm so stuffy, give me a scone."

"It's as if you know me." -- Buffy and Giles (when things were still funny)

Edited by: MadeinNZ at: 8/13/03 1:20 pm

[LilacWine22]

i know what you mean i know the names and everything and i actually jumped in excitement when Alex and Peter were voted to stay .......... oh i need help

[AlexisWillow]

oh my godh - i knew it! LOL - me not the only one, I totally refused to watch fame acedemy this year, last year sucked - Sineadshould have won! and whos that Dave Sneedon? lol (go Lemar! lol)

Anyway. i was doomed to be setting the VCR weekends ever since i caught a glimpse of Alex in the trailers for the Show, Oh my gosh, shes soooo gorgueous, talented - what a presence she has!

And thus, yes, its meeeee - i vote for Alex every weekm but i am not ashamed!

[SJ]

Glad a few people on here are watching Fame Academy.

Yeah Alex is pretty cool.

[sam7777]

Reality TV: Nobodies' Home

Quote:

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In really olden days, TV viewers could mildly amuse themselves with a weekly show called "Amateur Hour." Things have, need we say it, changed; 2003 could be called Amateur Year. In the half-decade or so since the reality TV craze took hold, this was the year when its manufactured stars -- people plucked from richly deserved obscurity and deposited on the TV screen -- achieved parity with real stars.



Only television, it seems, could present "real" and "reality" as two alternatives and include a large measure of phoniness in both of them.



With the explosion of channels and audience demand for more program choices, it was clear early on that there wouldn't be enough good ideas or original concepts to go around. The system was already taxed to the limit in the days of four networks and very little cable. The new era brought with it much that was old -- remakes, retreads, recycled old shows and what the industry calls "repurposing" of even new shows. The first-run episode of a series that shows up Monday night on NBC could show up Thursday night on one of the cable networks that NBC owns.



This is one of the reasons that the so-called "diversity" of today's television is largely a sham. It turns out the industry definition of diversity is a viewer being able to watch the same show on different channels at different hours. Whoopee.



What happened in 2003 was that somebody flipped a switch and reversed the pipeline. Instead of broadcast-network shows making their way down to cable, cable shows were just as likely to make their way up to broadcast -- from a tributary to the mainstream instead of the other way around. It happened the previous year with USA Network's "Monk," a clever variation on the classic cop show "Columbo," which was picked up after its USA showings and used to plug one of many holes in the pathetically perforated ABC prime-time schedule.



The biggest and buzziest migrating program of 2003 was a quirky fluke called "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," which not only confirmed the public's increased acceptance of gays on TV (at least as long as they remain silly stereotypes), but also worked ratings miracles both for Bravo, the otherwise stuffy and bland cable network where it started, and NBC, which owns Bravo and forced it to share "Queer Eye" with the mother ship.



More significant to those within the industry than whatever the show's success said about gays on TV was the fact that a low-budget, no-stars hour was able to hold its own alongside costly, scripted and star-studded fare from Hollywood. The gay lads who zoomed about in an SUV restyling apartments and wardrobes and lives became stars themselves literally overnight. Yes, literally, because Nielsen supplies the industry with something called next-morning, "overnight" ratings.



In the new expanded universe, we not only need a perpetual infusion of fake stars, we need those stars quick-like-bunnies, especially since the combination of 500 channels and the omnipresent TV remote have made viewers fickle and power-mad. Like modern-day Caesars who eat Doritos instead of grapes, they sit on their couches voting thumbs up or down for the new synthetic stars trotted out week after week on show after show. The so-called stars just keep a-comin'.



So it is that in 2003, one of the most-quoted statements in media history by one of the most prescient pop-culture gurus of the 20th century seemed truer and less whimsical than ever: Andy Warhol's immortal and inescapable observation that in the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes.



Andy Warhol's future is virtually here. "Everybody" doesn't quite have a shot at it yet, but Everyman and Everywoman do, at least as long as they're attractive or marginally so.



The new celebrity nobodies grin and gambol on "Entertainment Tonight" alongside the hideously ubiquitous Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez and Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter, hooked up on "The Bachelorette," let TV cameras follow them all the way to the altar, setting a new standard in exhibitionism that real stars may feel obliged to emulate. The real stars and the reality stars keep up a kind of proverbial tug-of-war, with the Spotlight as the prize.



Conveniently or coincidentally enough, the quality of our showbiz celebrities is declining in proportion to the rise in popularity of concocted stars from the reality shows. Shakespeare might have to stand corrected now: The fault, dear Brutus, is in our stars. They're boring. They're infantile. They're callow. The supposedly glamorous couples cannot begin to compare with the great teamings of old -- Liz and Dick, Fred and Ginger, Kate and Spencer, Lucy and Desi, Oscar and Felix.



As the bar is lowered for entry into the real-star pantheon, the fake stars, more likely to be thrilled by fame and attention and less likely to be jaded or standoffish, will grow in number and stature until comes the day when they're all indistinguishable, the real phonies and the fake phonies. And then everybody will be a star because nobody will be a star.



There were big stories affecting television in 2003 -- coverage of the war in Iraq, the specter of once-powerful Saddam Hussein being yanked from his grubby "spider-hole" lair, George W. Bush's aircraft-carrier gig (he seems to be taking over for Bob Hope) and a continuing scandal involving FCC Chairman Michael Powell's plot to let gigantic media conglomerates become ever more gigantic by trashing old rules that kept them within certain limits. Both conservatives and liberals oppose Powell, but the White House is conspiring with him to get the measure passed. The big get bigger, the rich get richer, and Rupert Murdoch gets several steps closer to acquiring DirecTV and controlling the satellite market in America.



But the madcap Dance of the Stars had its own fascination: Plumpish airhead Nicole Richie is teamed with wealthy Internet porn princess Paris Hilton, and they become a sensation in Fox's "The Simple Life"; a clueless ditz marries a boy-band has-been, and they're a much-watched riot on MTV's "Newlyweds"; CBS is unhappy even with pretty good ratings for its latest "Survivor" adventure, so it simply changes the rules mid-game and lets discarded losers back in to continue competing, and People and Us magazines race to keep up with the breakups and makeups of formerly anonymous nebbishes coupled on reality shows and now residing in well-lit glass houses.



TV always manufactured its own stars, but the basic requirement was always talent, an ability to perform and be professional. Such values are so yesterday. You don't have to do anything anymore, you just have to be something. Want stardom? To be or not to be; that is the question.

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I see dead lesbian cliches

Edited by: sam7777  at: 12/29/03 10:30 am

[Cicca]

OK, I'll be brave and admit that I am (reluctantly) hooked on The Bachelor/The Bachelorette. I can't help watching and then I get disgusted with myself for watching. Bob was just scary and I'm glad that Estella got picked. I do kinda wish that Meredith and Kelly Jo would've just run off together, darnit! They almost make a good uber-Xena couple. heheheheh (yes, another fixation)

I'm looking forward to watching Meredith, and yes, in large part because she's so darn purty!



And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I'm hooked on Survivor. I watched Celebrity Mole for the laughs and I just finished watching The Apprentice because it was on between Friends and ER. Uhhhhhhhhh, may be hooked on that too.



I have no television morals!

Oh wait, I watched Buffy through to the end.... Redundant R Me!

Is there a hyphen in anal-retentive?

[sam7777]

Gosh can I admit that I am actually intrigued by that UPN reality show about the Amish? Watched "Witness" too many times (well Kelly McGillis is hot). I'm sure it will be dreck and completely misrepresent yet another minority. It's like watching a train wreck.

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I see dead lesbian cliches

[xita]

The cruelest show ever, but god it's so funny! I love this show. I love Rosa and Jamie I hope one of them wins! They are so bad, they are good!

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"Trust is a risk masquerading as a promise."