Really Unreal
One of the things I’ve always loved and hated about living in New York City is being bombarded with media ads. They’re one way I can keep up with what’s going on, especially in entertainment. I suspect a lot of the ads are not so much about getting audience, but just as much about showing media buyers and sponsors that a show’s being promoted.
Recently there’ve been a spate of ads for “reality” TV shows. We can, I see from a Times Square billboard, watch the daily lives of Venus and Serena Williams. A subway ad on the wall of a station on the Upper West Side — a bastion of the media elite — tells me I can watch the comings and going of music impresario, husband and father Bobby Brown (they don’t have the wife-beater part on there). At the same station today, I saw fleetingly that there’s now some game show of battles between reality TV characters (can we really say “stars”? This page has more on the upcoming series, like Brown’s, on Bravo.
Aside from the irreality of it all — someone getting paid just for “Being Bobby Brown” — I wonder when someone will coin a better term than “reality.” And how many more of these can we take? Are we heading for an all-Reality channel? How about a further niche: All Reality Sports Stars. (I bet All Reality Porn might do some business — as long as it’s just as “real” as all the other “reality”. Real reality would be boring and maybe even a turnoff.)