If you didn’t know this already, TV is inundated with reality shows, and guess what? Your show is next. That’s right, they’ve officially run out of quality programming to run, so they want you to be the star of your very own TV show. Just think, cameras will follow you around all day while you go about your mundane business, like grocery shopping, picking up the kids from daycare, or collecting miniature ceramic presidential heads. Don’t worry if you think it’s boring, or that nobody will be interested, there are over 300 million people in the United States, and believe me, someone will want to watch you shaving in the morning, or applying mascara in the car, especially those with a strange fetish for personal hygiene (there’s probably a show in the works for them as well). Just remember, it’s the producers job to find your strengths, or more importantly, your weaknesses, and exploit those for ratings gold; you just continue to go about your strange life.
If you don’t believe that they’ll put anything on TV, you should check out these real reality shows, and then be the judge:
- Mounted in Alaska – The day-to-day life of a taxidermist and his team. The audience follows the team as they tackle challenging animal stuffing projects, and family issues.
- Swamp People – Follow a group of 15 people, and less than 100 teeth around the swamps of Louisiana as they wrestle alligators to feed and cloth their families.
- Ryan & Tatum: The O’Neals – Who? I imagine that this show would be relevant if it was still 1979, I think the producers are about 30 years late on this one.
- Whisker Wars – Documenting the lives of competitive beard, and mustache growers. Umm, yes, that’s right, there’s a sport where men, and some women, I’m guessing, grow their beards as fast as they can in order to win some kind of prestige in the facial hair community.
Now can you see that your quirky life could be captured for the amusement of millions of adoring fans? If you’re still not convinced, here’s a list of reality show that are in the works, at least in my future pitches to Bravo, and the History channel. Feel free to leave an idea or two of your own, and if you see them on TV in the near future, you may be eligible for royalties from your idea, but probably not. We’ll film you as you wait for your residuals check.
- Ketchup Eaters – Some people love Ketchup a lot, so much that they use it on everything, from toast to watermelon, and even apply it to their skin daily. They are literally in love with Ketchup. Follow a group of people who do strange things with ketchup, like sleep next to the bottle, and fight for their rights to marry their favorite condiment.
- Daycare Wars – Watch maniacal parents maliciously sabotage rival daycares in a delusional attempt to give their kids the opportunities that they were never given as children. The first episode shows Jenna, the mother of Jade, infiltrate the Misty River Daycare, and replace the children’s snack of fishy crackers with catfood, and spike the fruit punch with pure caffeine.
- Traffic – Unsuspecting drivers are setup with hidden cameras in their cars to capture all their uncensored interaction with fellow motorists on their daily commute. This is a no holds barred look into the average drivers morning, complete with the dramatic nose picking, and the occasional fart. Beware, this show is not for young children, since the profanity heard on this show is unconscionable.
- People Watching TV – This is the show a lot of you probably have an opportunity to audition for. It’s a simple concept really. It’s just a camera fixed on people watching TV, and the drama created by not being able to find anything to watch on over 100 channels. This one is a tear jerker, as we all identify and feel the pain for the people who sit flipping through channels in an effort to find some meaning in their sedentary lives.
Those are just a few of the ideas that are floating around in my head. The great thing is that people will watch anything, especially to a catchy tune in the background, so I’m expecting to see these on the air soon. Get to work Hollywood.
Until next time, see you on the tube.
The ketchup eaters idea has promise, but only if we can see a few food fights.
Yes, there will be food fights, maybe with the enemy, the Mustard Eaters.
All this says a lot about what kind of meaningless lives viewers of such programs watch.
But you gotta admit – watching toothless backwoods people trying to catch alligators at night has gotta tickle your funny bone just a bit. It’s like watching America’s Funniest Videos and seeing little Bobby swing the baseball bat for the first time only to pop Pop in his foul balls.
True, it’s the rubber necking syndrome. If we watch these people who can’t respond to our sometimes rude observations, and comments, then we all feel better about ourselves, or maybe it’s just me.
You are so right. There is an audience for anything these days. Pick a topic idea, and no matter how off center it is, someone will watch it. Who would have thought a show about truckers driving across frozen lakes would command such a large audience.
I imagine people watch the Ice Truckers show to see someone eventually fall through the ice. I’ve never watched it, so maybe it’s happened already. It seems like a good cliffhanger idea. A trucker is stuck in the middle of the strait, and ice is starting to crack, is he going to get out, wait until next week to find out.
Actually the show about the O’Neals was made to reacquaint Ryan with his daughter, who he “hit” on at Farrah Fawcett’s funeral because he didn’t know who she was! Now THAT”S reality!
Oh yeah, I remember hearing about that happening. I think that makes the show even weirder, and sadder than just two former A-List celebrities. I guess I have to watch it now, just to see what happens when he realizes what he has done.
You know, I totally believe this can be true. If we can peek into the lives of mob wives and hoarders and drug addicts and stupid people at the Jersey shore (which I hate because I like the place known as the Jersey shore) then how about a show about feuding neighbors or the guy who mows the lawn each week, or anyone. Great post!
Yes, it’s going to happen, especially when TV has become less about quality, and more about cutting production costs. How much would it really cost to follow the guy mowing lawns? They can probably film it with an iPhone 4G, and edit it with Final Cut Pro for under $2000, when a dramatic show can have budgets in the millions with the same audience.