Posted by Leonard Steinberg on December 4th, 2011

Did MTV start the reality TV craze with MTV CRIBS? Maybe C-span started it? Maybe it was HGTV? Actually it was PBS with a show called AMERICAN FAMILY….and it aired in 1973. Remember PBS creates content on a tight budget. The snowball seemed to escalate with SURVIVOR, The Apprentice, American Idol, The Real Housewives and all of a sudden Television Land had learned how to produce super-dumb content with weak but regular ‘who shot JR?’ cliffhangers at a low cost. The dumbing down of our world has indeed accelerated.

Now the worst show of all: THE REAL REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEES: The country and world watch this reality-TV style debating structure with shock and awe as each candidate slowly eliminates themselves through their own ‘gotcha’ moment. Just like every show, this one too has it’s Amarosa, Bethany and Danielle Staub. It’s creepy.  And it would probably be as bad if these were Democrats, although the hypocrisy may be somewhat lesser. Now with news that Donald Trump will be doing a Republican nominee debate, it is absolutely certain that life has become one big reality TV show, of course purveying a reality that is highly scripted (un-officially of course) hyper-edited and hyper air-brushed. In short what is being conveyed as reality is far from it. We witness this with the real estate reality shows. Its entertainment in the guise of reality. The other day I was asked to participate in a Broker’s Poker game for an HGTV show showing how brokers sit around playing poker with one another all the time…..I don’t even play poker, least of all with other brokers…..yet in a few months time this episode will air and what was once fiction will now become fact and ‘reality’. These reality shows could actually be genuinely informational, but they have mostly bowed to entertainment value and choose superficial garbage over solid content. These shows have decided that the viewership are simply idiots. Really?

I do thoroughly enjoy flipping through a PEOPLE or US WEEKLY magazine every now and then:  who can truly resist a taste of ‘who wore it better’, ‘best and worst beach bodies’, etc. To me the biggest problem with reality TV is how it skewers fact horrifically and makes fiction reality to the masses. This is a sad day in our culture. Is it the tipping point? I do hope so. It would be nice to have a presidential-quality debate with candidates who were not posturing as presidential candidates for the sake of selling their latest book, upping their fees for television appearances, or boosting their tv show ratings. The joke is on us, and we are paying for it in more ways than one.

OCCUPY REALITY TV LAND!