"In the beginning there was the Talk Show ..."

It occurred to me this morning while I was driving to work listening to Weird Al's song "Talk Soup" what the deal was with all this crap reality TV.

You have the people who want to (or need to) be the center of attention. We've all known someone like that since grade school, some of us are like that (I know I have a certain amount of this in me). The "show offs". "Look at me! See what I'm doing!". And then there are the people who watch them. Without people watching them, the show offs would eventually stop showing off since no one was watching and their need to be the center of attention wasn't being satisfied. So the two are intertwined and inseparable.

So Talk Shows allowed the show offs to SAY what they wanted and know that people would listen. It isn't about the topics or allowing people to air greviences or any of that, despite what the host may claim (since on their side it's really all about ratings and people watching). It's about show offs getting guarenteed audiences for their shenanagans.

And so this glut of crap Reality TV (and I believe that the term "crap reality TV" is being redundant since all of it is crap to me) is only the next logical step in this chain. The show offs can DO instead of just saying, with a guarenteed audience. And from the hosts perspective they cost nothing to make since there are seldom any complicated sets and no actors to pay huge salaries (which rise with popularity).

That doesn't mean that I don't lament the demise of real television. Guess it will be a Galaxies and City of Heroes evening tonight!