Reality TV Rant

A great deal of television programming is following the style of reality shows.  I think it offends my Dutch heritage.  I was watching a program on house flipping on A&E and the guys doing the flip were complete scoundrels I’d never do business with.  They yell, they scream, they threaten workers. Either this is made-for-TV dramatics, or they will soon have no subcontractors left.  And this show is not alone.  It seems like every do-it-yourselfer throws tantrums on the tube.  Emotions and dramatics is the common denominator.  In real life, this would kill your business. 

            Occasionally we watch HGTV’s Love it or List it.  The designer and realtor have to put up with some of the most embarrassing crab-assing and fits of rage by homeowners over common happenstances in construction I have ever seen.  It takes place in Toronto, and without knowing, I would guess Canadians are the most ill-tempered people on earth.  If I were in the Canadian Tourism Department, I would be protesting this show for dissuading others from coming to Canada.  Nor in reality, do you get your way by this kind of histrionics.  It merely violates the win-win contract between client and professional.  Many pros would simply “fire the client” in those situations. 

            For some strange reason, everything in reality TV must be posed as an athletic contest.   But if you are in business, the first rule is to get your business plan together and stop watching how much money everyone else is making.  That’s your last worry. True there are competitors, but your concern is the customer.  The product must be good, your marketing must reach out, your service must work.  Yet I watch shows about guys bidding on a repo house or a storage bin who cuss around at each other and play one-upsmanship to the hilt.  Are they making money or just film?

            When I consider how explorers made it the poles or crossed an unknown ocean, or how stuntmen arrange a stunt, it’s all in the meticulous planning.  You don’t get to the South Pole or discover gold during a two-month arctic window by dancing around like a ninny and picking fights with your team mates all the time. General Cussed-her just builds motorcycles on reality TV.   

            Househunters is another Unreality program where feckless shoppers decide to part with half a million or more and the definitive reason for purchase is often looney.  They need a place with a fifth bedroom despite being childless.  Or near a park where they walk the darned dog. How many times have I watched buyers demand a house so close to the ocean they can dangle their feet over the edge of the deck and get them wet?  And the realtor doesn’t warn them that in Hawaii, at the focal point of the Pacific Rim of Fire, they get numerous tsunamis? Or in Virgin Islands there are a couple hurricanes every year?  Nor do you see anything representing careful financing or prudent investment.  I guess these things bore the producers.  But those things make or break a property deal in real life.

            The point of Unreality TV should be that there really are reasons why Boy Scouts works and Jackass doesn’t.  Having friendliness, loyalty, trustworthiness, etc. has much bearing upon ones ultimate success. I remember watching the first episode of Survivor and just shrugging at the idiocy.  It is little more than corporate backstabbing in a wilderness setting.  Sure enough, they voted someone off the island just like a corporate downsizing—where the salary-sucking survivor employees vote to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.  In reality, a group of people stranded in the cruelty of nature by some disaster will survive when they are like Swiss Family Robinson, not the Donner Party.  The most primitive peoples survive by extreme cooperation, not corporate politics.  If disaster hits, I have beans and raw meat.  But you might have some peach cobbler and a barbecue grill.

            Sorry, I’m on a rant.  Next week I will try a new topic like “why are the participants on 'Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader' so stunningly and frightenly dumb?” Maybe this is why the voters elect a President who swore his administration would be about reducing the deficit and the opposite happened—and many voters are perfectly satisfied!