RealityShow-related stories
Posted Nov 20th 2009 1:04PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Sports, OpEd, Celebrities, Documentary
Lately, Detroit Tiger all-star outfielder Curtis Granderson has been in the news because he might be joining the New York Yankees. However, if
Major League Baseball free agency doesn't make him a household name, television might. Granderson has an idea for a reality series that's being shopped around now and it's not like anything else other athletes have pitched.
Granderson's series is called Stadium Secrets and it will be like History Channel's
Cities of the Underworld. In fact, it might be suited to the History Channel. Granderson would host the show and lead viewers into the inner recesses and hidden passages of famous stadia around the world -- although it'll probably start with American locations.
Continue reading Granderson has Stadium Secrets to share
Posted Nov 4th 2009 7:29PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Animation, South Park
Even though the show has been on forever, I still enjoy my weekly dose of the new
South Parks. But lately, they seem to be running out of targets or have narrowed their focus too much on one particular evil: reality television.
The season opener featured a rather nasty swipe at Disney's Jonas Brothers. The recent "Dead Celebrities" chortle-fest took a much needed pot shot at
Ghost Hunters, aka, "the gayest f#*$ing show on television." And last week launched an all out attack on Discovery's
Whale Wars and
Deadliest Catch, particularly against
Whale Wars star Paul Watson.
The show has always been a bitch to write and making every episode a satirical masterpiece is impossible without suffering a full-on breakdown. But should the show lay off reality TV and take some bolder shots at reality, which as we all know are two completely different things?
Posted Nov 3rd 2009 8:32PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Celebrities, Pickups and Renewals
A&E, the cable network that is slowly becoming no arts nor entertainment, has signed on another tabloid favorite celebrity to bare her life for the camera.
Kirstie Alley will join the network's neverending list of celebrity reality shows. This one will focus on her neverending battle with weight loss as she raises her kids. The network has ordered 10 episodes of the new series.
In other words, it's every other family-related reality show you've ever seen except this one will star Kirstie Alley.
Posted Sep 17th 2009 5:35PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd, American Idol, Judges, News and Gossip
The past few seasons have seen some controversy about some
American Idol contestants. Particularly in the case of Carly Smithson who'd already had a major label deal. People want their American Idol to be an unknown. Some waitress plucked from Texas or something.
Now that Kara DioGuardi's sticking around on TV's top show, she wants to have her own reality show. Everybody else on the panel has side projects. So
DioGuardi is shopping around a show she's developed called Dropped. The idea is simple: grab the best acts that have been dumped by their labels and give them a second chance to make it big. America loves second chances, right
Biggest Loser?
What a great idea. There are a lot of talented artists who got dropped by labels because of poor sales on an initial CD, or just differences in creative direction before they even got that far.
Continue reading Kara DioGuardi thinks Dropped artists deserve a second chance
Posted Sep 8th 2009 2:01PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Programming, OpEd, Watercooler Talk, Episode Reviews
When it comes to hoarding stuff, I've gotten better over the years, but I'm still a fairly impressive pack-rat. For instance, I've got boxes of newspaper clippings in the basement dating back to the 1980s, when I wrote for the local daily paper.
Do I need this stuff? No, but it's part of my history, so I hang onto it. Maybe at some point in the distant future, I'll make a bunch of nice scrapbooks and pass them on to my kids. Then
they'll have to figure out what to do with it. Isn't that how it works? People just keep handing their stuff down through the generations, and no one knows what to do with it. Eventually, no one even knows who it belonged to in the first place, and maybe it'll get tossed out.
But I must say, after watching A&E's
Hoarders, I feel downright neat and tidy.
Continue reading A&E's Hoarders - And I thought MY place was cluttered
Posted Sep 2nd 2009 12:10PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, OpEd, Pickups and Renewals
Once upon a time, Showtime had a popular show called
The L Word. When it was winding down, they worked to put together a spin-off, but that never worked. What to do. What to do.
"Them there
Real Housewives of Mayberry is real popular."
"Yep."
"Ain't they just doing
Desperate Housewives with real people?"
"I reckon."
"Why don't we do that?"
How's that for authentic Hollywood dialogue I just totally made up? But that's what
Showtime is looking to do: The Real L Word: Los Angeles.
Continue reading The L Word evolving into a reality show for Showtime
Posted Aug 29th 2009 5:32PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Industry, OpEd, Celebrities, Celebreality
Do you remember the good old days? The innocent times when Lindsay Lohan was an up and coming young movie star. She received critical acclaim for those early roles. She was beautiful and voluptuous (and you know how the kids love that!). Then she got into drugs, drinking, partying, weighing less than 90 pounds, and it all kind of fell apart. Since then, she's cleaned up her act a bit.
Which is great, Lindsay. But
Lindsay Lohan in a reality show? You do know what kind of celebrities appear in realty shows? Do you think Whitney Houston and Britney Spears were at the heights of their careers when they did their amazing stints in reality television?
Speaking of Brit-Brit, LiLo is working with her manager on the project. Hopefully not the same guy that helped develop
Britney & Kevin: Chaotic. The series is intended to follow Lohan as she attempts to get her career back on track.
Continue reading As Lindsay Lohan ponders a reality show, I remember when she had a career
Posted Aug 29th 2009 3:35PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Game Show, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
ABC's newest stunt game show
Crash Course looks exactly like the kind of show that bloggers and critics watch just so they could put their "Suck Extinguishers" to good use.
And yet 45 minutes of TV viewing later, I'm not even feeling the need to break the protective glass. On the surface, it appears to be just another reality/game show with typical contestants having their ids scared for life for cash and/or prizes and most of it is just that.
And even though it met those stereotypical expectations, I still didn't hate it. Part of me actually kind of (gulp) enjoyed it. Did I just swallow my brains along with my pride?
Continue reading Is it wrong that I don't hate ABC's Crash Course?
Posted Mar 28th 2009 1:02PM by Nick Zaino
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Programming, Music and Variety, Interviews, Celebrities, Reality-Free
For those who might think the new
Osbournes: Reloaded variety show is a quick-fix, six-episode ratings boost, think again.
Reloaded, which premieres Tuesday at 9PM on Fox, was two years in the making. According to Sharon Osbourne, who spoke with reporters via a conference call Thursday, the family was given a somewhat open-ended invitation to return to television, and they wanted to make sure they picked the right project.
They cycled through a few options, rejecting most of them, including one idea that will be a smaller part of the finished product. "It was going around the country just looking for other Osbournes, and I was like, I don't think so," Sharon told the group. "But we did keep that as a segment on the show."
Continue reading Sharon Osbourne talks Osbournes: Reloaded
Posted Dec 23rd 2008 12:06PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, The Apprentice, Survivor, Web
Have you ever wanted to audition for a reality television show, but didn't have enough sick leave to fake an illness for your boss or the patience to wait in lines that would rival the bread lines in Cold War Russia?
Mark Burnett has struck a deal that will let people produce their own audition tapes.
Burnett signed a deal with Studio One Media to supply high traffic areas with self-serve kiosks that let people put together their own tapes for a measly twenty bucks. They can also provide a web-based service that lets contestants upload their own videos.
Continue reading Reality show audition lines will be a thing of the past
Posted Dec 4th 2008 1:04PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities
There are two things that I find disturbing about the news that there's a reality show in the works for married actors
Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna for TV Land. Number one, do we really need another show biz couple exposing their personal lives for the cameras? Number two, why is TV Land getting away from celebrating TV history by broadcasting great old shows to do banal entertainment like this kind of unscripted drivel?
Are audiences really clamoring for more of this stuff? I know I'm not, and I don't know anyone else who is! Seriously, this is not reality TV. There's nothing real about it except that they're using their real names. (Yes, those are their real names!)
Continue reading TV Land plots a Harry Hamlin & Lisa Rinna reality show
Posted Dec 3rd 2008 7:42PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Programming, OpEd, Pickups and Renewals
Director Sam Raimi, the man who created such gut-wrenching horrors as
The Evil Dead trilogy and
Spider Man 3, takes his talent for disemboweling innocent people and chopping off limbs with a dull ax to television ... for a reality show?!?
13 - Fear is Real premieres
tonight January 7 on The CW at 8 p.m. eastern. It puts 13 innocent (not really) people in the middle of a fake horror movie, and the last one standing on their bloody stumps takes home the grand prize.
The reality show aims to do for horror movies what
Next Action Star did for action movies - rip them off and turn them into another schlock reality show that requires little to no creative ideas or thought.
Continue reading Sam Raimi gets into reality with Fear is Real
Posted Jun 27th 2008 1:41PM by Jay Black
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Industry, OpEd, Watercooler Talk, Big Brother (US), Hell's Kitchen
As an intro to my article about The New York Reality TV School, I've asked Red from
The Shawshank Redemption to narrate my opening paragraph:
I wish I could tell you that the New York Reality TV School fought the good fight, and that the students in attendance were not a collection of mostly desperate people whose desire for fame burned more strongly than their sense of dignity. I wish I could tell you that, but the entertainment industry is no fairy-tale world. Thanks Red. Now, if you, the reader, would be so kind as to click through to the article, it would mean a lot to me. Not because I get paid more for click-throughs (I don't; AOL pays me a flat rate of 60 cents plus a pound of corn husks for every post I make, regardless of the number of clicks), but because I spent
three hours attending the inaugural class of the NYRTV school last Saturday. I just couldn't take it if the end result of that is an article no one reads...
Continue reading My day at the first school in the world dedicated to art of appearing on reality TV shows. (Yes, this actually exists)
Posted Jun 27th 2008 1:41PM by Jay Black
Part Five: The Money ShotAfter about an hour and a half of fake fights, thrown tennis balls, and clap after clap after clap, everyone sat down for a Q&A.
The students were able to ask questions of the following three people:
Robert Russel, the aforementioned reality show casting director.
Dave Martin, finalist on season one of Bravo's
Top Chef.
Jorge Bendersky, "Dog Stylist" on Animal Planet's
Groomer Has It. I'm going to do something that I haven't done up until this point: report what happened without snarky asides or not-so-subtle digs at the students or organizers. This hour was actually worth the price of admission. If you're someone that is truly interested in the way reality shows work and what they're looking for, the Q&A gave some real insight into the process.
Continue reading The New York Reality TV School (Parts 5 and 6)
Posted May 19th 2008 1:21PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd, Music and Variety
When I read the news that
Billboard magazine (which is probably best known for giving Casey Kasem source material)
was going to go into the reality show business, I scratched my head to figure out what exactly they'd do. After all, countdown shows are as old as TV itself, so doing something based on the trade magazine's famous charts would have had to be pretty damn creative. I was envisioning someone standing on a street corner acting out the top twenty songs through mime. And, as we all know, nothing good can come from the use of mime.
Fortunately, we've dodged that bullet for now; according to
The Hollywood Reporter (via Reuters), the reality show will be a competition series, dubbed
Billboard Next. Artists from various genres will submit videos via a website, which will be voted on by the site's audience. Those with the most popular votes will compete for the grand prize, which right now is unspecified. I'd imagine it'll be some sort of recording contract, but for all we know, it might just be a professional redo of the artist's MySpace page. I guess it all depends on the budget.
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