SELLING REALITY TELEVISION

When all the hookers have failed to win the rapper’s heart and been booted from the house, the Celebrities have been voted out of the jungle or when D-list celebs have been cured of their addictions – every reality show, like all shows, must come to an end.

Oh good. Now it’s time for the next one.

So, another part of my job is creating new reality shows. If I don’t create new shows then audiences drop off, curiosity wanes and society, ultimately, collapses. Or so the voices tell me.

So, what makes a good reality show? Well, I could tell you, but you know what? You’re creative. You had that great idea for a show you pitched me at that dinner party, why don’t we work on one together? Let’s put one down on paper and pitch it. Right now, before the end of this blog.

Ok – this is exciting. We’ll both get rich. So, first, let’s decide what we’re going to make this show about. What always works in reality tv? Hmmm. Docusoaps – we’ll follow someone who says outrageous things to people, you just can’t stop them saying what’s on their mind. Like Dog the Bounty Hunter… you know, the guy with the Mullet and tattoos that America discovered to their horror is a terrible racist).

But if we could find someone who wasn’t Dog? That could work. They’re outrageous! Hilarious! And annoying and I personally find them REALLY repetitive – because those show’s secret is that they rely totally on an outrageous person doing the same thing, exactly the same thing, each week. And they make me want to kill myself – because the one thing audiences love about their shows is that they don’t change too much. So that’s a horrible curse for those shows, and the hosts and producers who work on them. Like they’re all trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare for 7 seasons and they’re still doing whatever it is they do, year after year in exactly the same way. Oh to be a Millionaire Matchmaker, a TV nanny or a Surprise Chef - for 200 episodes. Shoot me now. OK so let’s not do that.

What about one of those singing shows. Yes, people singing and being told they can’t sing! That is TV magic, right? In fact, terrible singing is even better. Ok, let’s have some singing. Oh, oh, oh! And some voting, some simple voting component ALWAYS works. It’s also going to have the marketing department at the network making noises like happy suckling piglets, (they make bank of those phone-ins). So, yes, let’s have some voting.

Ok, so we have a singing, competition show, where the audience phone in to vote for their favorite.

Personally, I think cooking shows are big right now – Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Top Chef, America’s Next Iron Chef… chefs are big business right now. SO, anyone mind if I throw in some chefs? You cool with that?

They could always sing, too? Right?

In fact ‘Singing Chefs’ sounds cool I could see that in a line-up.

But, let’s consider the downsides while we’re here. OK – who cares about Singing Chefs? Well, if we get them from middle America, the everyman or woman in the street, then maybe lots of people. But, will they have the credibility of a real chef? I mean a big restaurant Chef. Probably not. So let’s have a mix, some from the city, some from the farms of Kentucky.

WHY are they singing and cooking? It’ll never work in the focus group that “they just want to win for the sake of the title”. (Focus groups are generally made up of ‘man-on-the-street’ people with little drive and few goals of their own – and they HATE people striving to be the best at things. They just don’t get it. “Why would they go to all that effort?”, they ask. “Why don’t they just stay home and eat a nice bag of Doritos?”). Ok. What might people ‘get’ as the stakes. Oh! Got it. Why not for a million dollars? That always seems to work. Network execs ‘get’ the stakes with ‘one million dollars’. Everybody understands that – what these chefs might do to one another to clinch it for themselves.

Or charity. Oprah’s Big Give is all about that… (Kinda. It’s a horrible mess of a new genre; The new ‘charity-philanthropy-make-over-vote off-celebrity judges-evil-doing-backstabbing’ genre. Very weird).

So why do these people from a Kentucky farm want to go on tv, cook, sing, get voted off, get voted on, win, lose, fight and bitch to win money for some charity?

I don’t know. Darn it. I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t going to work out between you and me – and besides I just don’t know what you’ve brought to the table anyway, to be honest.

Wait, wait, wait. I’ve got it. If this idea sounds stupid to us both now, I’ve got the magic bullet that will fix it all – and make it a no-brainer for the network execs.

Wow. This is good. This is definitely gonna sell.

Let’s make the chefs Celebrities. That seems to fix every sh*t idea.