Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘reality tv’

Sometimes, The Onion seems almost impossibly funny:

New Fox Reality Show to determine Ruler of Iraq

It must be a new sign of just how low society has fallen: Howard Stern sued ABC over a TV series that evaluates contestants solely based on looks:

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Superior Court, accuses the network of copying the “unique aspects” of a Stern radio segment in which members of his crew and guests evaluate the bodies of in-studio contestants.

Stern claims that some of the tactics used on his show were duplicated by ABC’s version. Some of the alleged similarities include blunt criticism of contestants and the use of a laser pointer to highlight areas of the contestant’s body.

This might just be my utter disgust showing, but to me, it’s really sad that a radio personality and a network would be falling over themselves competing to claim this idea as their own. If I were them, I’d be fighting to disclaim it.

I was just watching The Agency on CBS.

Between “Reality TV” and prime-time soap operas, I thought I’d seen it all. But this hour of TV just set a new low. In the show – which is about the CIA – the Americans travel to Israel to attempt to broker a deal between the Israeli Mossad and the Palestinian Authority. (Yeah right!)

Even more ludicrously, an assassination attempt on the CIA staff is traced back to “extremist Israeli settlers” – including an IDF captain and a high-ranking Israeli security officer – who, according to the script, are so against peace efforts that they liaised with Hamas in order to make and detonate bombs. The entire scenario is so ridiculous, I had a hard time keeping a straight face. Never mind that right-wing Israelis, although portrayed by the media as fanatics, have never been involved terrorism, as the show suggests. And they would never in a million years dream of working with a Palestinian terror group like Hamas.

I guess the scriptwriters were afraid of seeming as though they were taking sides. But attempting to paint both sides with the terrorism brush is incorrect and unfair.

The scenes where one of the characters, ostensibly a high-ranking member of the Israeli Mossad, was speaking the most awful Hebrew I’ve ever heard, were rather amusing. (Although his boss seemed to be fairly fluent). The thing that made me literally laugh out loud, though, was when the CIA – in attempt to stop a cell phone from being used as a bomb detonator – decided to block all cell phone signals in Jerusalem. Anyone who knows how reliant Israelis are on their cell phones would understand.

Only on TV.

FOX is starting a new season of American Idol. Could the music industry sink any lower?

What ever happened to the days when fame was based on talent, rather than the other way around? When artists were expected to be able to sing, write music, and play instruments? When image was a consequence, not a cause, of fame? When music had depth?

For those unaware souls, packaged music is a pet peeve of mine. But, combined with another pet peeve (reality television), it’s all that much worse.

I know it sounds strange for me, as a marketing person, to complain about this. But come on, American Idol is nothing but a glorified karaoke contest. We’re already so close to the point where creativity and art stop mattering in music. The “day the music died” doesn’t seem so far off anymore, and it’s a really dismal prospect to think what music will sound like in another ten years.