Crazy Idea #54: Improving Reality TV Shows

Poststructural Pub
1

I watch very little reality TV because people can’t behave themselves and they seem to become bigger TV stars because of their pitiful @#$ behavior. I thought of a new idea for a reality TV show where people may win for behaving well. That’ll throw the contestants off balance.

Here’s my idea. It’s a Survivor type show, except a person doesn’t get voted off the island. I think it’s an important concept of the show that the people don’t know that they’re being rewarded for behaving well and that they have to stay on the show to figure things out.

  1. People will have bank accounts where they can accumulate credits and even spend credits.
  2. There will be challenges, just like on Survivor, where contestants can earn credits by competing in challenges.
  3. At tribal council, instead of voting people off, there is a pool of credits and the tribe gets to decide who gets how many credits. They can decide any way they want how to divvy the credits. By how much work folks did, by how much scheming, how nice they are, whatever. They set the rules. If this is done in the open, that’ll bring some lively discussion. If this is done by secret ballot, that’ll bring intrigue and plotting. I haven’t decided on this aspect yet. This would have to be tried to see what happens.
  4. The real kickers of the show are that there are two ways unknown to the contestants that they can earn credits.
    a. The first way is that the producers decide how to divvy up another pool of credits. I’m hoping the producers would base their decision on how well people behaved. They’ll probably base their decision on folks’ Q factor so that’s why there is a second way.
    b. The second way is that there will be a group of general public who watch the interaction of the contestants and base their decision on how to divvy their pool of credits on how well contestants behaved.
  5. Here’s where it gets tricky. Each contestants bank account will be private, although they can share the amount if they want. People talk. They’ll know how many credits they won from winning the challenge and from the tribe divvying up a pool of credits but the other credits that they may or may not earn will be a mystery to them. They’ll have to figure that out. I don’t know how many people will figure out that it was because of their good behavior rather than because they have big bazooms.
  6. Here’s another tricky part. Contestants can hoard or spend their credits. And if they spend their credits, they can spend their credits on themselves or buy things to share with everyone. If it’s like Survivor, I know I would be spending my credits on a soap concierge and a full service bathroom with unlimited hot water. Being generous with your credits may get you even more credits but hoarding or being dumb with your credits may actually result in a net decrease in credits.
  7. The winner is the person who has the most credits at the end of the season.

Would you watch?

2

Yes, it could be a most excellent single-season show. Once the process has been witnessed by potential future contestants, their little conniving human minds will skew the process.

I am not sure about whether credit-spending will pay off. We’d have to make it so it would, generosity-wise. I’m not sure how except in that the “secret” credits might have to come in significantly larger sums than the “earned” ones.

Also, suppose a contestant earns 100 via game play and 500 from viewer and/or producer votes. If he is inclined to spend them freely, even in the nicest way, he’ll still end up with zero at the end of each voting period. Unless the secret-credit increment goes up by a huge margin each time.

How can you be fairly sure that nice people would win? Maybe you can’t.

3

Someone all agog (I love that part) was asking how on Earth could I NOT watch reality shows. I said Jerry Springer had been quite enough for me in his day and his show told me all I’d ever need to know about the whole genre, and I really didn’t watch any of him, either. Not interested. “But Jerry Springer wasn’t a reality show!” “How so?” I asked, already laughing, it being my turn to be agog. “Reality shows have a story,” he said.

This is one of those cases where asking, “Did you actually hear what you just said?” would have perhaps been a bit unkind of me.

4

Yep, but I would like to see a second season celebrity edition.

Yep, and in amounts so large and obvious that a nice person who was buying from the credit catalog would have options completely out of reach even by the winning contestant who may not have been so nice. Would the massive amount of credits corrupt them?

A person would still need to be frugal to win the show but I have to say, if I was on Survivor, even if it might cost me the game, if I was tempted by a lobster dinner for 100 credits or spending 250 credits for lobster dinner for everyone, I may chance the bigger expendicture. Plus, I would have the potential possibility to get 11 lobster dinners in repayment. And maybe earn 500 credits at the end of the episode for being so nice. That’s a good investment.

I wouldn’t but but I do have faith in humankind to rise to the occasion and considering what’s on TV now, even a major flop would be a great experiment. And there are few things that I enjoy more than the opportunity for people to be guinea pigs in an experiment of my own making for my own pleasure.

5

Jerry Springer got all touristy. He lost his mission.

6

Oh, no you don’t. Nuh-uh. Find a bonafide reality show fan for that discussion. I had my say, and that’s it. :laughing:

7

And when did you first notice this reticence of yours? Would you like to talk about it?

8

The best way to improve “Reality” shows would be to get rid of them. The term “reality show” is an oxymoron unless you’re talking about National Geographic, Nova and the like.

9

Okay, I’m with you so far.

So you capture all of the producers, bring them into international waters strand them on a floating platform with minimum food and water and film them trying to figure out why you are randomly throwing one of them off the platform each week.

Of course finding someone to produce it might be a problem…

10

Well,
I realize that if it were my goal to present myself as someone of impeccable breeding, it would behoove me to disclaim any interest in any tv show in the “Reality” genre.

Trouble is, there are many areas in which I’ve taken an interest in peccable subject matter. For example, sometimes I play video games and I’m totally middle-aged. Don’t tell my mother that I am not completely mature and ladylike, because she will somehow blame herself.

Under the greater umbrella of “Reality TV” however, there are some vastly different styles. I have watched quite a few seasons of Survivor. For whatever else might attract or repel you, I observe that there is a reasonable percentage of people playing that game whom I would find to be compatible humans in actual life. I also think that Jeff Probst is quite smart in how he grasps and moderates the interactions of these people who have volunteered for a month-long social experiment. And yeah, it’s silly, but sometimes I’m bored at night.

Mutey’s idea seems to fall into a Survivor-like category more than some of the other types.

As for Jerry Springer, that I can recall I have only witnessed the program during a time when I was trapped (for reasons that have now become obscure…probably the Springer brain-wiping effect,) in someone’s hospital room. I assume, based on that experience, that they stock that show with people by means of trolling Walmart for the most evidently borderline personalities.

I don’t know what the shows that follow the lives of apparently actual people living their apparently actual lives are all about, but my impression is that they tend to choose milieus of society where I share neither the prevailing interests of the players, nor their values. So I’ve avoided that.

The only other genre I’ve seen a few episodes of (and this again had to do with being bored at night and sitting down to something a daughter had turned on,) are the Bachelor/Bachelorette ones. I’ve gotta say, it’s a bit of a tough concept for me to buy into, that anyone could truthfully consider a romantic entanglement under the conditions superimposed by the show. Mystifying, actually.

Still, I like Mute’s concept. But I have neanderthal DNA, I’m sure of it, and there’s no point in apologizing. I understand it conveys a good bit of immunity. So, if Mutey needs a co-producer, he should call.


So good.

11

OK, we’re moving forward. emm’s the co-producer. I figure the flute makers have enough funds to bankroll this event what with the exhorbitant prices they charge and the good publicity they’ll receive and all. They’ll be begging to be part of this. What we’re still needing:

  1. We need a name. I may have crazy ideas but I can never come up with names.
  2. We’re advertising for a host. Someone likeable, able to maintain control and quick on their feet. I’m none of those things and value my anonymity. Last thing I need is TMZ stalking me.
  3. Contestants can volunteer or be shanghai’d. Mrs. mutepointe is of the belief that folks will never be able to figure out all by themselves that they’ll win by being nice and even if they are told that this is the hook to this reality show that still won’t get a good portion of people to behave. I explained to her I didn’t care whether people where actually nice people or just acted nice, the outcome was the same for me. She said they still wouldn’t behave.
12

I beg your pardon? And, no.

13

If reality shows then

how come nobody sees it the same?

14

Ok, neither Paul Busman nor Nano get to be the host since they dissed us. ; )
We will, however, consider giving commercial time to Paul’s whistle enterprise for a sufficiently placating sum.

15

I didn’t want to, anyway. But I’d suggest considering the strong points of getting someone like me: a Howard Beale sort. You know, someone who’s mad as hell and just doesn’t give a monkey’s fez what anyone thinks any more; railing at the system and the contestants, rolling his, or her, eyes and making big exasperated sighs and firing off snide jabs. Biting the hand that feeds him. That kind of host alone could send your ratings up right thru the roof. Contestants would sign up just for the abuse.

16

The point of the show is to get folks to behave Nano. Behaving badly oneself does not help matters.

17

Right. Sorry.

Maybe the host is, like, browbeating them into model behavior? In any case it would be a shoe on the other foot, that’s for sure.

18

And in the fine print of Busman’s advertising contract, in the real fine print, Busman agrees to be a contestant AND give us a free flute a year for life. Producing rocks!

19

I think some product placement could be a useful angle altogether.

As for host, he/she might need a personality more along the lines of Mary Poppins.

20

Devondancer (Lesley) is nice and from England. She may pass as Mary Poppins. As a back-up, I’d like to give Doug Tipple a chance to apply, he needs one more strange job on his resume.

That’s about it for nice people on this website.