Why you can't live without reality Tv

[Smackhead Kangaroo]

There seems tob e an irritating trend for adverts for relaity TV to suggest that without watching the relevant programme we won't have ANYTHING else to talk about.
That's not really the subject I want to tlak about though I want to know what people's feelings and predicted behaviour will be towards the upcoming next series of Big Brother.

I've enver been a fan but I'm feeling really hyper cynical about this next lot. I managed to completely miss the last two (or was it three?) series, ahving caught more than enough of the first lot.
It's tired and dull. There's far too much reality TV now. so much that I expect there are people who have less real reality than TV reality. What can they possibly hope to DO with the show? Obviously they're milking it for all it's worth, but I just get the feeling no one really cares anymore.

no one that matters anyway. you plebs can toil in the muck.

[Dusty Gozongas]

Turn the telly off.  Invite some mates round.  Film it.

If at any time during the edit you feel that there aren't enough famous people on camera to to make it interesting turn the telly back on.

[Neil]

This years will be the BEST EVAAR.  I'm sure of it.  They fucked up last year by rejecting Endemols pick of loud boisterous people, and ended up with dicks who did bugger all.  So this year they will over-compensate and put the most obnoxious gits they can find in.  It'll be great, I'm sure of it.

[Smackhead Kangaroo]

But do you want more? Surely they should just stop doing it and try sometihng else.

ANyway as to last year's ppicks, I rmember seeing one of the people to do with the seleciton process saying that the people they'd picked were so crazy and wacky it'd be great. (could have been the year before?) Were these the people who were rejected for some other shits then? No wonder I was unmpressed.

[Neil]

Hard for me to remember but there was a rumour that Channel 4 rejected the Endemol choices (who were meant to be mad bastards) as they wanted a "quiet year" after the Jade-style shenanigans the previous year.  Another rumour was that they had to go with another set of house-mates at the last minute because The Sun or somesuch put a full list of the people in their newspaper before the show started.

[Sherringford Hovis]

So this year they will over-compensate and put the most obnoxious gits they can find in.  It'll be great, I'm sure of it.

I'm not watching until there's a liberal Thunderdome-esque smattering of weaponry, and the house marked up as a grid with online betting on where various decapitated parts land.

[Matthias]

Reality TV has about as much to do with reality as a Bill Plympton cartoon.

What's real about being incarcerated in a house with several strangers, where every mirror is a two-way with a cameraman behind it?

No scripts. No celebrities. No entertainment.

I'm sick of 'reality' shows and 'makeover' shows. And what about that BBC News 24? It's just news. All bloody day! Pah!

[TraceyQ]

I love people watching, I love to watch people. Pervy? maybe. Enjoyable, yes.

[Still Not George]

I mentioned to Cerys the other day that I'd had an idea.
Essentially, reality TV shows in their purest form (ignoring all that phone voting bullshit; what has that got to do with reality anyway? We're dealing with zeitgeist manufacture there, not reality. But I digress, and digress in a parenthesized fashion, so I'll leave that alone) are about control. Specifically, control over the contestants, their environment, their actions. The attempts to break from this control make up most of the 'entertainment' that arises from reality shows; the rest consists of sitting watching and waiting for something fucked up to happen again.

So, here's my suggestion. Make the fucked up bits the core of the show. After all, the programme makers have an incomparable degree of control over the contestants, specifically over their environment and actions. Variations on this have been tried (that prison thing?) but it's never been taken to it's ulitmate conclusion:

Surreality TV.

Start the series off as per normal, with a 'Big Brother' stylee selection process (ideally choosing the candidates with the largest probability of unpredictable behaviour and poor impulse control). Then, as the series progresses, first begin by making small, imperceptible changes in the environment. Make rooms almost unnoticably colder or warmer from day to day. Gradually dim and brighten the lights, over the course of hours. Rig doors so they 'jam' at certain points in time. Then, play with the contestants' perception of their situation. Remove a contestant without alerting the others, and don't explain where they went. Order the contestants to go, 1 at a time, into a soundproofed room, and then let them all out again. Give them really strange, pointless tasks to do (not of the ilk already done; I don't mean pointless in terms of gameshow variety, I mean utterly, completely pointless. Like digging holes and filling them in again).
Then gradually escalate things until individual players start suspecting something is wrong - but, and here's the important bit, pick out only 1 or 2 for this treatment and leave the others alone. The others are unlikely to believe that John can hear someone crying under his bed, or that the light in Jane's room keeps turning red for no reason, especially when it never repeats for them.

Now that I'd watch.

[glitch]

Surreality TV.

snip

You've got my vote.

Also the bit about removing someone and not mentioning it reminded me of when Cameron was taken out of the last series and temporarily replaced with that South African guy.

Depending on how much information was given to him (probably not a lot due to the constraints Endemol typically apply to contestants), if I was the black guy, I'd love to just be sitting around waiting for the others to wake up and when met with the inevitable "Who are you?" "What are you doing here?" questions, I'd respond with:

"I'm Cameron! I went to bed last night as usual and woke up like this!"

etc. etc.

[Matthias]

Yes, Surreality TV!

Still Not George, you could make some money out of that.

[king mob]

Hard for me to remember but there was a rumour that Channel 4 rejected the Endemol choices (who were meant to be mad bastards) as they wanted a "quiet year" after the Jade-style shenanigans the previous year.  Another rumour was that they had to go with another set of house-mates at the last minute because The Sun or somesuch put a full list of the people in their newspaper before the show started.

The story in media circles is that the latter rumour is true, they had a whole load of "mad" types lined up & the Sun got the list & was ready to go to press on it.
Endemol got the tip from someone in the Sun & very quickly changed it to the reserves got called in.
The original line up were sussposed to be vastly over the top but the other rumour i heard was that all of them had equity cards & that was one of the things the Sun were going to grass them up on, the slags.

[Gamma Ray]

I'm not watching until there's a liberal Thunderdome-esque smattering of weaponry, and the house marked up as a grid with online betting on where various decapitated parts land.

Aye, I'd put that on my channel. Along with 'I'm A Celebrity Xtreme' where the losers are murdered in a variety of slow and painful ways as voted for by the general public, 'Criminal Battle Royale' where lifers and violent offenders are incarcerated on an island with chainsaws, samurai blades etc. left lying around, and 'Mad Cow Mine Clearance'. Obviously the potential for interactive betting, sponsorship of weapons/cows/rapists etc. is massive. I reckon you could make that shit pay-per-view and people'd go crazy for it. It's like porn or crack - once you develop a taste for it you need MORE and MORE and it has to be ULTRAVIOLENT to INSANE extents.

Smackhead Kangaroo - you write like Jeff K. ... it's great.

[daveytaylor]

How is reality TV any kind of reality when there isn't a TV?

Don't call it Reality TV, call it what it is. A bunch of saddos desperate for their 15 minutes of fame and willing to get naked on camera.

It's fucking bollocks of the highest order but as Paul Weller said, "The public wants what the public gets." Pay enough journalists to write enough headlines and people will think it is what they want.

If only they turned off the TV and spoke to their family more often.... now there's a thought.

[Vermschneid Mehearties]

Any Reality TV with Celebrities in is anything but real. That last one 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me South of Here'  was very carefully orchestrated. The whole Jordan<>Andre thing especially.

Which is why I'm going to stick my neck out and say that for that reason alone, Big Brother is superior. That's enough neck sticking out. Just don't watch the fucking things. They're shit. Get a video out and watch something you like.

[Smackhead Kangaroo]

DOn't forget that one day the contestants should wake up and all the furniture's rearranged. Ideally stuck to the ceiling. they'll spend the rest of their time on their hands HAHAHAH