Jewish World Review July 8, 2003 / 8 Tamuz, 5763

Ian Shoales

Ian Shoales
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http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Public Television is where reality programming originated. Remember the Louds? All the cooking shows? Even Antique Road Show could be considered reality programming. Ordinary people with a dream — that the chifferobe up in your attic could have belonged to John Paul Jones — only to have that dream dashed — the chifferobe really DID belong to John Paul Jones, but you ruined its market value when you stripped it and painted it over in a sunflower and daisy motif. Sorry.

The Louds begat the Osbornes, and the cooking shows begat entire cable networks, not to mention Martha Stewart, but public television, undaunted, continues to step boldly into the reality arena. PBS has offered 1900 House, Frontier House, and Manor House, in which participants step back in time and live as our forebears did, sharing the pain and joys with us, the ardent television viewer.

And in April, PBS debuted Warrior Challenge. Participants become Vikings, gladiators, knights, and Roman warriors, flail at each other with weapons of choice, and collect valuable prizes. Well, no, no valuable prizes: this is public television. They're in it for the glory, and for the sure knowledge that ardent public television viewers are learning something about what kind of person would want to pretend to be a Viking on television. And that's important.

Also looking to contribute to the grandeur of the American airwaves, CBS has laid plans to launch The New Beverly Hillbillies, in which a real rural American family will be moved to a Beverly Hills mansion, and we observe how they cope.

On the face of it, I don't see why they wouldn't cope just fine. A poor family is given a mansion, all expenses paid, and all they have to do in return is expose themselves to possible public ridicule. Where's the downside?

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Well, there's been a firestorm of protest against this show, hurled by everybody from the United Mine Workers of America to the state legislatures of Tennessee and Louisiana, who want CBS to cease and desist this yokel-bashing.

If the series is to be saved, CBS needs to take a page from PBS and turn it around. People from Beverly Hills should be plunked down in the Appalachians, if they're television executives so much the better.

Teevee executives will be plunked down in Kentucky, given only a $20 line of credit at the Goodwill Store, food stamps, and a 65 Impala. Sinister locals get to pelt the Chevy with broken black and white Motorola televisions and rusted auto arts until the executives either surrender or make it across the border to Ohio. Think of it as Deliverance Meets Fear Factor.

With this scenario, stereotypes of studio executives and country folk alike will be preserved. Isn't that what pop culture is all about? And valuable prizes of course.

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JWR contributor Ian Shoales is the author of, among others, Not Wet Yet: An Anthology of Commentary. Comment by clicking here.

Up

06/30/03: The Amazing Red Faced J-Lo
06/25/03: TCB, KFC
06/16/03: Because it's there
06/11/03: The Matrix regurgitated
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03/18/03: Hour of the Narc
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02/03/03: Hasn't 'reality TV' always been with us?
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01/21/03: Spinning through the 'newscycle'
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01/22/02: Save the Grand Ole Opry?
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© 2003, Ian Shoales