Loading ...Reality TV?
Back a few years ago when I was watching very little TV, so-called “Reality-TV” made its appearance and I was glad that I had gotten away from the habit. Since then I’ve slowly inhaled more and more and while I still only watch an average of 7 or 8 hours a week, a chunk of that is on the Reality TV that on the one hand I think is just dumb, but on the other hand I have some morbid fascination with. The two such programs I currently watch are The Apprentice and American Idol.
The Apprentice is interesting because it is at least vaguely similar to life-like situations where you have a project to run and a team of coworkers. Of course it’s also very unrealistic because you are given lots of support on the one hand and on the other you may have no background in a given task (nor anyone on your team). Also, you don’t normally get what might be called an impossibly brief timeframe to get a project done, and then when your sales are a whopping $10 less then your competitor, you are deemed the “loser” and one of your teammates must be let go! But still, it is about making business decisions that I think most people can kind of understand based on common sense and it’s interesting to come up with what you would have done differently in order to make the project work better. Unfortunately, as with most of these shows, you only get to see what the producers want you to. They shoot dozens of hours of footage and have to bring this down to about 40 minutes. It needs to make sense, but also be entertaining, and finally it needs to not anger viewers too much when it seems obvious that Trump is making a horrible decision. Yahoo provides some extended scenes and some unaired scenes which each week probably add an additional 10-20% of footage! So you know there’s a lot of stuff we just don’t see. You can make someone look very bad or very good by selectively including or excluding a given scene, and I’m positive that the producers are very strategic about how they do this in order to portray who they want to win (or who they expect to win).
American Idol is another show that, like The Apprentice, I picked up last year just to find out what all the fuss was about. It is a nominally fun talent-show type of program, but the format has gotten pretty stale. Last year at least the contestants got to meet with some music giants like Elton John but this year it seems the venues for most weeks are just based on date ranges that the songs came out. The contestant performs, then the first judge, Randy, says “Hey Dawg, how’s it going?” and then gives what is arguably the most “real” impression of the performance. The Paula Abdul gushes about how the performance was great and in the rare cases she doesn’t like the performance she instead praises the individual instead of giving constructive criticism, although this does happen once in a blue moon. The Simon plays the evil foil and berates the performer for singing like a lounge singer, or someone at a karaoke bar, or one of the half dozen other analogies that he picks from a hat, and often complains about what the performer is dressed in. Occasionally he does praise performances, but 80-90% of the time his comments are negative and mean.
What is interesting is to see some of the discussion of people on the net that follow these two shows. I don’t get a group of friends together to watch these, being a 30-something most of whose friends are too busy with kids to bother with such trifles. My coworkers don’t seem to watch these shows either. In order to see whether others have similar impressions of the shows, I visit a couple of sites that discuss each episode. It’s interesting to get the impressions of some who are exactly what mine are, yet others who seem the diametrical opposite.
American Idol is a bit different from others in that the audience actually has a roll in the show in that they vote and their votes effect the outcome – namely who gets to leave the show each week. You can vote multiple times for as many candidates as you want and so there are some very motivated people who vote dozens if not hundreds of times for their favorites. One of the things I noticed early on in the competition which I felt wasn’t particularly fair was that back stories of certain contestants were aired while those of others weren’t. That means the audience became familiar with certain people whereas others seemed a lot less familiar and thus the familiar ones had a big edge in developing fan bases. It’s not a guarantee that someone with more initial exposure won’t make it that far and those with a lot will, but it does make these scenarios more likely. As I said, it gives an edge. If the person doesn’t take advantage of it, then it doesn’t mean much.
Anyway, this last episode of American Idol put Scott Savol, one of the contestants who have been in the “bottom 3″ for most of the competition, into the top group, despite any big improvement in his performance. This was surprising and then I heard of VoteForTheWorst.com. This is a site which is encouraging people to vote for the worst contestant (in their minds this is Scott Savol) in order to teach the American Idol producers a “lesson.” In other words, don’t try to steer or manipulate the audience into voting a certain way. So far I’ve never actually voted myself for one of these contests, but this site really does motivate me to do so. As the site says, all of these contestants are getting great exposure and will get record deals very quickly after the show ends, why must our “favorite” (if we even have one) win? Why not just make it more entertaining by voting for someone that most people think is a poor singer and performer? I have nothing against Mr. Savol. He had an arrest for domestic disturbance several years ago when he threw a phone at the mother of his son, but apparently this is something they’ve worked out and he’s expressed remorse. I don’t like judging people on stuff like this anyway, but I can judge his singing and performance at least as I experience it and my honest opinion is that he is the least charismatic, the worst performer, the worst singer and the worst communicator of the current group. As he and his parents have indicated, he’s not had the easiest haul growing up, so voting for him gives the added benefit of giving him some extra success that will hopefully allow him the freedom to do what he loves best – sing. Just as long as I don’t have to listen to his songs!