I HATE REALITY TV!!!!!

Survivor Rocks still. It still gets 20 million on average.

The Apprentice wasn't so good the last time but this time it's good. Showing that Street Smarts is just as or better than book smarts.

The Amazing Race is awesome.

People need to get over themselves complaining about something that brings in the money.

If it brings in the money it'll be done.

Reality TV last longer than real TV.

Survivor X and beyond.

Bringing in the money doesn't make it good. It just brings in the money.

Exactly -- and that fact sucks. Because some shows don't bring in as much money but are amazing - yet get cancelled. Grr. And then some of the crap shows last. Grr. Ah well -- at least there's usually a few shows on that I like!

Many years ago, when the FCC still stood for something, the chairman called TV "a great wasteland." This, mind you, was long before cable TV even existed. I can't imagine what he would say now...

I enjoy the entertainment value of some of the reality shows but would not want to be friends with many of the people who go on these shows as the majority of them seem self centered and egotistical.

You think it isn't good doesn't make it not good.

Child pornography brings in big money. I suppose we need to get over that too?

Can someone tell me what is 'The Swan'? I've never heard of it! I HATE BIG BROTHER!!!!!

Are you equating reality TV to child pornography?!

No. Of course not. We're just speaking on whether an industry that brings in big money is good simply because it brings in big money.

This ran in the NYTimes today...

One Show's Unexpected Lessons in Reality
By JACQUES STEINBERG

An essential element of "Wife Swap" - the ABC program in which two women with starkly different lives switch families for a few days - is that each woman should learn something about herself by walking in the shoes of the other.

But the two women featured in tonight's episode say that perhaps their most valuable lesson concerned the creative liberties involved in assembling a show that is in the vanguard of the latest wave of so-called reality television. Their observations, in interviews arranged by ABC to promote tonight's episode, instead serve to provide a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of how those shows featuring a documentary-style examination of people's lives - as opposed to the cutthroat competition of shows like "The Apprentice" and "Survivor" - rely more heavily on the techniques of scripted drama than the shows let on.

At least based on the experience of tonight's featured wives - Christy Oeth, a working mother from suburban Philadelphia, and Nancy Cedarquist, who is home-schooling her six children in northern Vermont - making a "swap" ready for prime time can entail withholding facts from the viewer that might muddle the central premise; supplying participants with material to read aloud; rehearsing pivotal confrontations off-screen; and, in some cases, re-enacting events the cameras missed.

In tonight's episode, for example, the Oeths, a family of six, are described by the narrator as putting "success before family life" and as "high achievers who run their family like a business." In pitching the episode in a one-page memorandum to ABC, the show's producers - a British company called RDF Media, which also produces a British version - posed the following question: "Will Mrs. Oeth get in touch with her natural maternal instincts?"

In fact, Mrs. Oeth, 36, who works at an investment firm, said in a telephone interview this week that she had stayed home for five years to raise her four children, a fact the producers never share with viewers, and that she had returned to work only last year, when her husband left a high-pressure job in Manhattan.

"There is a very big element of unreality to the way they pigeonholed me," she said.

This was also the case for Nancy Cedarquist, 36. The Cedarquists are portrayed as having "dropped out of society" to live in a "treehouse," and that is technically true - their home, which has no cement foundation, is indeed perched on the bases of 11 trees. But another assertion by the narrator at the outset of the program - "husband Keith is the only one who leaves the treehouse on a daily basis, to work at the local paper mill" - ignores the many activities in which their four older children have participated at the local schools, including ballet, a pompom squad, basketball and band. None of these activities is ever shown or mentioned.

Moreover, no mention is made in tonight's episode that tensions between Mrs. Cedarquist and Michael Oeth had so grown during the five days she spent living in the Oeth house in Yardley, Pa., that the producers effectively evacuated her early and installed her in a Sheraton hotel nearby, driving her to and from the house until her final scenes were completed.

And do not get Mrs. Cedarquist started on the scene she agreed to film in which, she says, she pretended to be asleep - she had indeed overslept one day, but cameras were not present - or the new rules she agreed to post for the Oeth children, which, she said, were written not by her (as the narrator suggests) but by a producer working off-camera on a laptop computer.

"This is where you should play the stupid hillbilly music," Mrs. Cedarquist said, a reference to the "Dueling Banjoes"-style soundtrack that is, incongruously, laid over images of her Montgomery Center, Vt., home. "I really thought reality television was more real than it is."

To Wendy Roth, co-executive producer of "Wife Swap," the postproduction concerns expressed by the two women are a function, at least in part, of a naïveté people have about reality television.

"A documentary is a news show," said Ms. Roth, who has worked as a producer on "Good Morning America" and several prime-time Oprah Winfrey specials. "We come out of the entertainment division. There is a certain amount of poetic license."

Ms. Roth acknowledged, for example, that mention of the five years Mrs. Oeth spent raising her children full time was omitted from the episode, not because it would have complicated the episode's stark premise - coldhearted working mom versus nurturing stay-at-home mom - but because "we don't do back stories on our show."

"The most back story we do is, 'They live in a treehouse and they built it themselves,' " she said. "We do what's happening in the present. Otherwise it gets too bogged down."

Ms. Roth said the two women, who were shown rough versions of tonight's episode last week, might have fallen victim to two afflictions that frequently befall not just reality-show participants but also people interviewed for television news programs and even newspapers. One is the reality that while nearly 100 hours may have been recorded - as is the case with "Wife Swap" - only 43 minutes can be broadcast, which, she said, always necessitates hard editing choices.

But each woman had also raised concerns that neither the way they are portrayed nor the way they sound matched what they saw and heard in their own minds - and that, too, Ms. Roth said, is common.

"You know how you have an image of what your life looks like to other people?" she said. "At some point, they realize the way they see themselves and the way other people see their lives isn't exactly the same."

"Wife Swap" thrives on its ability to get viewers to see themselves - or at least their ideals - represented in the life of one player, and under assault from the other. By nature, the show's structure dictates that the participants be presented as caricatures. In earlier episodes, for example, an heiress from New York City was switched with a woodcutter from New Jersey; a woman with two dozen pets traded for a neat freak; and, as was widely reported last month, a lesbian toggled with a woman who was anti-gay.

Thus far the show, in its first full season, has enjoyed relatively high ratings. It is seen by an average of 9.4 million viewers each week, which places it behind such reality fare as "Survivor: Palau" (22.3 million) and "The Apprentice" (15 million), according to Nielsen Media Research, but ahead of "The Contender" (8.9 million viewers last Thursday).

Each episode of "Wife Swap" takes months to research and produce. On a big board in the show's Manhattan offices, near the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the producers have listed descriptions they hope to match with actual families - "tattoo parlor," "rocket scientist," "midwife."

In the cases of both the Cedarquists and the Oeths, many details presented in tonight's broadcast are dead-on accurate, the participants agree. Mr. Oeth, for example, does, as the narrator intones, type his grocery list on a spreadsheet and then overlay it on a floor map of the local supermarket.

Not all the relevant details omitted from the broadcast are the responsibility of the producers. In an interview, Mrs. Cedarquist said she actually worked 20 hours a week - many of them outside the home - in a rental property management business she had joined in September.

She made no mention of her work in her application. Ms. Roth, the producer, said she had been unaware of Mrs. Cedarquist's work until told by a reporter; Mrs. Cedarquist said she had attempted to bring her job to the attention of a field producer, but had been discouraged from doing so.

As for Mrs. Cedarquist's other assertions, Ms. Roth disputed that the scene of her oversleeping had been re-enacted, but cautioned, "I wasn't there." She made no apology for having a producer draw up Mrs. Cedarquist's so-called rules for the Oeth house. "The rule changes we always rehearse," she said. "It's a major format point."

When asked why Mrs. Cedarquist's evacuation to the hotel was not portrayed, Ms. Roth said she was satisfied that the tension between Mrs. Cedarquist and her new family was apparent - Mr. Oeth is shown tearing the rules off the wall - and that no more needed to be shown.

While the producers said they had hoped Mrs. Oeth would learn to loosen up a little bit, she came away with a different take. Watching the disarray in the Cedarquist house, she said, had cemented her belief that she was causing no harm to her children by putting them in day care and school and then working a full day. "I've let go of that nonsense guilt," she said.

Mrs. Cedarquist was far more jaded by the experience, and is seriously considering a new career for herself - one she imagines introducing on the program headed by Ms. Roth's former boss, Oprah Winfrey.

"I'd like to offer myself up as a support person for people who go on these shows," she said.

I saw that article. Interesting, but not surprising.

So, reality TV fans, does the fact that the reality presented is actually artificial (fake) matter?

Re: I HATE REALITY TV!!!!!


This is a little extreme, don't you think? I mean, fundamentally, reality TV is just the popularized version of documentary film. Granted, some of them are pretty ridiculous; but in general, the idea is a good one with lots of remaining potential.