10 posts tagged “reality tv”

I’m having a hard time envisaging the New Zealand version of The Apprentice.
   I rather like the UK version of the show (above). Sir Alan Sugar gives a very different style to Donald Trump, and I hope we Kiwis will give our own take.
   The issue I have with the American edition is that the tasks are somewhere between seventh form and first-year uni in terms of complexity, yet egomaniacs who are not used to getting on with one another fail dismally at them. (This is me generalizing and I specifically exclude at least one friend who has been on this show. And I imagine I have just stated the formula behind the programmes.) All these years, I felt smug about how much better Kiwis—who celebrate teamwork more than individuality—would do given the tasks.
   Now my fears are coming to the surface for one reason: what if we suck just as badly? What if the folks who go on the show are picked because of some level of narcissism and the esprit de corps that Kiwis have as a default behaviour takes a back seat? And then, to make it worse, first-year B-school students think that being an uncooperative moron is de rigueur in the business world?
   And providing these guys are not hired for more than 90 days, I suppose the Kiwi Don will be able to say, ‘You’re fired,’ instead of, ‘We need to go into a consultation regarding your dismissal while you have a right to lodge a complaint with the Employment Tribunal,’ or whatever crap we are supposed to say as bosses.
   So, who will be our Donald? Thérèsa Gattung? C. Rankin? My former economics’ classmate Sir Bob Jones?
   My friend David suggested that Rob Muldoon, if he were not dead, would have been perfect for the role.
   We effectively need a rich guy who is cutting, and chances are the producers will want a white male as well. When I go through the potentials in my mind, there’s not a single person I am afraid of, or think, ‘I would feel intimidated in a meeting with him.’
   One of the few rich guys I admire in this country is Peter Jackson, but I can’t see him being enough of an ass to front this sort of show.
   Any former All Blacks at the top of the financial tree who could at least intimidate a few young Kiwis? Someone who can deliver some politically incorrect comments (which comes back to Sir Bob)? Or a big McDonald’s franchise holder who can assign losers to work on the chips with the phrase, ‘You’re fried’?

This post was cross-posted, if you prefer not to sign up to Vox to comment.

I tend to avoid reality TV shows with the exception of the first series of That’ll Teach ’Em. However, every now and then I might catch Motorway Patrol, and I have to admit I find it fascinating from a voyeuristic perspective. Who needs CHiPs? But I miss the intrigue of Cobra 11 on German TV!

If you had to be on a reality television show, which one would you pick?

With respect to those friends of mine who have appeared on reality TV shows—and in their defence it was relatively early in the run so they didn’t know what to expect—you would have to be absolutely bonkers to be on one. At least as a contestant. You know, as a host or a judge it wouldn’t be so bad. Jason Gunn is great on Wheel of Fortune and his other shows but on the local incarnation of the non-show of shows, Strictly Come Dancing, I reckon I could do a better job, be more debonair and not need to play with my Thingy; and given the ease of the tasks on The Apprentice, wouldn’t it be great to sit in Donald’s or Sir Alan’s seat and abuse the crap out of a bunch of whiners for failing on a task that a first-year business school student could do?

Top: The publicity shot for Glam God, featuring all the contenders. Above: Lucire alumnus Brad Batory at work.

[Cross-posted] On August 21, 10 p.m. EDT on VH1, Glam God premières, and there’s a Lucire connection. In 2003, associate publisher Ann Fryer was introduced to Indashio designer Brad Batory, who walked the talk when it came to donating the proceeds of his shows to charity. In 2005, Brad worked on quite a few of our covers and shoots for the then-nascent print edition as a team member, and he seemed to have a natural affinity with the celebrities we showed. Largely, I think, because he’s respectful. It seems only natural that Brad is on this new reality TV show, which is summarized thusly:

Twelve stylists from all walks of life move into an L.A. loft to compete for the coveted title of GLAM GOD. At stake: representation by a major styling agency, a celebrity spread in US MAGAZINE, and $100,000. In this first episode, they meet their host, actress Vivica A. Fox, along with her glam panel of judges, US WEEKLY Bureau Chief Melanie Bromley, and celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch. After viewing highlights from their portfolios, Vivica and her glam panel select four team leaders for their first challenge: “Who wore it best?” Each team must create a red carpet moment using identical designer dresses. By the end of the night, two stylists will be eliminated from the competition and sent home.

   Folks, Brad is one of the nice guys in this business—so please send out positive vibes for him.

The Guardian makes it sound like Ashes to Ashes’ second episode was a ratings’ disaster. The headline: ‘Almost 1m viewers desert Ashes to Ashes’.
   That makes 6·1 million viewers in the UK, which admittedly makes the headline true, but it was obviously written by a glass-half-empty type.
   A positive headline would have been ‘Six million watch Ashes to Ashes’ because, when you think about it, six million is still a lot of people.
   In fact, six million is more than what the series première of Life on Mars managed in 2007.
   The desired effect may be to get more viewers deserting the new series if they feel things are looking down. And that will be a sad indictment on us as gullible people, watching what we are told is popular.
   On Friday, at lunch at the Villa Margarita, I asked a young Briton from Leeds what was popular in her home country.
   She replied that Heroes, Lost, Desperate Housewives and other American shows were the must-sees in the UK, just as they are here thanks to heavy promotion and good timeslots. New Zealand programmers will follow their American network counterparts, too, scheduling without regard to local tastes. There are exceptions, such as TV3 with Outrageous Fortune, but a visiting American would feel quite at home here (providing one waits several weeks to numerous months for the episodes to catch up to where the US is). The best American (or British or domestic) shows that have found limited audiences do not make it, or get stuck in bad timeslots. Americans themselves are annoyed at the dumbing-down of their networks, so what they are being fed is hardly something they have asked for.
   Does this suggest a willing globalization in television programming, shutting down local industry in favour of a commoditized broadcast? Will we have more singing and dancing competition shows and reality crap shoved down our throats?
   Few want more reality junk but it is cheap to make. Ashes to Ashes isn’t cheap, with all of its sets, photography and music usage. When in doubt about a bad decision, just follow the money.
   As if to show the power of a headline, Ashes to Ashes may still lose viewers for episode three, thanks to a weak outing last week. Life on Mars wasn’t always perfect, either, and had some off-weeks. But the producers of the new show know what our expectations are like, and I had hoped that things would remain or build on the high that Matthew Graham gave us in the pilot. Last week, things had settled too much and Ashes to Ashes felt uncomfortable in its own skin, with Gene Hunt having fewer great lines.
   Six million one hundred thousand still means that enough Britons think that Ashes to Ashes is among the best shows in the UK, and let’s hope the third episode gets us back to the high of the first, or even that of Life on Mars. I’d hate for the newspapers to think their headlines actually affect us when in reality their circulations are dropping, and for the producers pushing cheap reality and quiz fare to think they can win against properly scripted shows.

Death row. Twelve prisoners. One grant of clemency by Governor Schwarzenegger.
   This seems less bad taste than the transplant one where a dying woman would decide whom to grant her kidney to. Well, OK, that show never happened. It was just reported as having happened. (When revealed as a hoax, not as many media outlets were willing to report that.)
   Each week, the Governor chooses who will be electrocuted, after a round where the prisoners are judged on various labour tasks that they may find out of the ordinary (e.g. baby photographer, maître d’hôtel) and attempts to escape are dealt with by immediate dismissal from the show, also by electrocution.
   The show is best known for the Governor saying, ‘You’re fried.’

On a night when The Apprentice (the UK version, which is less panicky and fraught than the one with the Donald) and Granada’s Hell’s Kitchen is on, did Mark Burnett consider combining the shows?
   Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Apprentice Chef.
   Each week, the contestants are set to make certain things. In the boardroom, the loser is told that (s)he has to go and work at McDonald’s instead of his or her own $1 million restaurant.
   Instead of going off in a cab as at the end of The Apprentice (the original one), the loser is shown going in to a local McDonald’s, being welcomed by a character known as the Ronald.
   Considering NBC has done a crap job of promoting Journeyman, I should pitch this idea to the network. It sounds like its cup of tea, or pack of fries.

[Cross-posted] Ironical that I can’t get C4 very clearly here and that I will probably be out, but yours truly will appear next on a TV documentary about the Cadbury Dream Model Search ’07 on Saturday 7 p.m. in New Zealand. And thank goodness it is in line with some of what I do, in this case publishing Lucire.
   I already have the first pic from the fashion shoot with Elle Gibson, the winner, here—Hannah Richards’ photography and Barry Betham’s styling are beautiful. But before all that happened, there was a lot of deliberation with the judges.
   I don’t know how the editing went, but I am betting that Duane Gazi from Trump Model Management, one of the more fluent and authoritative voices in modelling, will and should get a lot of coverage. And I hope to see Caroline Barley of Nova in the programme heaps—without her, there would be no competition.
   For those looking for controversy and bitchiness, you might not see much with us. We had very collegial judging sessions and from what the girls tell me, things went very well with the competition itself. But I am certain this will be watchable, especially among those who like reality TV, since it is, well, real. The backstage pressures, the need to deliver a verdict—that’s still there. What we didn’t have were phoney-baloney moments that could be cobbled together to make one person look bad.
   What the girls got up to, I don’t know: they were separate from us and chaperoned, and undoubtedly there will be moments there, since they are the real focus and were followed around by two TV crews for days. However, there has been no fallout from contestants moaning on blogs—unlike the many anonymous comments after Miss New Zealand that can be traced back to certain young “ladies”—as I think most of the final 12 I met realized that they were already winners, having been selected from 900 nationally.
   Elle has already had a great start and I am willing to bet that the others are already prospects for the agencies.

Regular visitors may have noticed two renditions of ‘Avenues and Alleyways’, the theme from The Protectors, by Mitch Murray and Peter Callander and originally sung by Tony Christie, on this blog. One is from jazz singer Rinaldi, and presented here in full, and the other is a shortened version performed by Chris Moyles on The X Factor—Simon Cowell’s other show.
   I’m not sure if non-Brits know of X, but here’s their chance to see Simon being less of a prick—and realize he does heap praise when the performance is good. Moyles sounds like he fudged the shortened chorus a tad (I believe it is meant to be a mixture of the first and second choruses, and the backing vocalists seem to be singing something different toward the end), but I prefer this key to Christie’s original, plus the arrangement is rather nice.
   Rinaldi lacks the oomph, but the visuals—a parody of The Saint, Get Carter and swinging London—more than make up for it. He delivers a more loungey version, which is very pleasant on the ears.
   It shows that a lot of these old Brit themes are still in the public consciousness after all these years—‘Avenues’ was more of a hit for Christie when he revived it in 2000, and it certainly was a hit for Moyles and Rinaldi. I remember when 1969’s ‘We Have All the Time in the World’ from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service caught on again in the 1980s after it was used for UK TV advertising.
   Interestingly, as I discussed with my Brit friends, the Athertons, after they moved down to New Zealand, I seem to have more in common with them than many of the locals, in sense of humour and tastes. The former is down to the similarities between Cantonese and British humour, but the latter could only have come from being brainwashed by Lew Grade and his TV shows in my formative years. And I still carry a wee passport with Dieu et Mon Droit on the front.

When I was around 10 or 11, I used to wonder: what if someone could pay to see what I saw? I would walk around, trying to get the right angles “through my eyes”, and pretended I was transmitting to someone. As referenced on the Bad Banana Vox blog, Justin.tv is just that: a guy called Justin has a camera strapped to his head and he will wear it till he dies, claims the site. ‘Justin wears the camera 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even in the bathroom. Even on a date.’ The thing is, it’s for free.
   Andrew Niccol (The Truman Show) was right. Only thing is, it’s pretty dull, by my reckoning. I prefer my own life.
   Note: Justin is in California, so bear that time zone in mind when you tune in. It’s pretty late there as I type this, so not much is happening.