Reality or Just Cheap?

Years ago, we changed the channel rather than watch the contest/reality shows that were showing up on our television: Survivor and American Idol are the two that come to mind. I can remember being hunched over my desk at work, trying my hardest not to roll my eyes as co-workers jabbered about ‘Tony from Texas and his wonderful voice’ or ‘Can you believe how Anna betrayed her own team?’ While I thought it wonderful that some good voices got a chance to be discovered, I don’t enjoy listening to ‘judges’ being cruel to the contestants. Nor do I enjoy watching greedy people doing whatever they think will get them the prize.

Those shows were followed by others, so many I can’t hope to name them all. Over the years, it seems some television stations have gone ‘all reality, all the time’. We frequently find ourselves watching videos in the evenings, rather than actual television.

We’ve decided that ‘reality’ shows must be cheaper to produce than the shows that have a plot. Well, it stands to reason, right? They don’t have to pay a writer to come up with a script, they don’t need actors (although they may have a few judges to pay.) Heck, they may not even need a director, just some camera people to follow the contestants around, and someone to edit the vast amount of video to fit the time slot.

Sometimes I do watch a few of these later generation shows, if the premise is interesting and the judges critique rather than demean. But the few I might be willing to watch will never be as interesting to me as a good plot with interesting characters.

It Doesn't Work?

Everybody says that negative campaigns don’t work. And yet, it seems like every campaign eventually devolves to a series of name-calling and mud-slinging.

Everybody I know hopes that their guy won’t engage in such stupidity … but they do. Instead of actually explaining HOW they will do whatever they’ve promised to do, or exactly WHAT they think needs to change, and how it will effect Average Joe, they tell you what their opponent has done that they think is wrong. And if they can’t find enough of those types of things to tell you about, they will twist the facts or even make them up.

If negative campaigns don’t work, why do they do it? I suspect because negative ads DO work. If candidate A can throw enough dirt onto candidate B, then A will look better, especially since most voters have no idea what is true and what is not. I like that some of the news programs have started to ‘fact check’ things the presidential candidates say, but what about the more local candidates?

Even when the fact checkers say, “This statement by candidate A is absolutely wrong,” candidate A and his campaign continue to repeat it, over and over again, as if saying it a few hundred times will make it true. It doesn’t. But by repeating it that many times, they can drill it into people’s minds that it is true.

I hate negative campaigns. They don’t give me any INFORMATION to allow me to make an intelligent decision. But that’s one more reason why the candidates engage in them. They aren’t looking to inform you; they want to convince you. I suspect the candidates resort to mud-slinging because they really don’t have any idea how they are going to solve the problems of the day. So they have to convince the voters that their opponent is even worse.