As fox1013 said elsewhere in this thread, you can't judge reality television by the standards of scripted television anymore than you can judge scripted TV by reality TV's standards. So knocking it because it's cheap to produce and hires people off the street who don't know how to act is giving the genre shit for things it doesn't require. It's like knocking on scripted television because the cameras don't follow the actors off set and expect them to say funny things off the cuff or perform little games and competitions for prizes.
It's popularity contests that put jackasses like Sanjaya (who I've never seen, but who I know the name of because reality TV pours over to taint every other form of media known to mankind) on for longer than the thirty seconds it should take to determine that he's a waste of space who should be pumping gas somewhere.
That wasn't real popularity, that was a joke. That was VoteForTheWorst.com proving that being able to vote for the winner means you might not like the winner and they might not even have talent. At which point you laugh at Simon Cowell because, HA. Then there is pointing and mocking.
I dislike reality television because it promotes the ascendance of the American Idiot. I dislike it because it promotes sitting around living vicariously instead of doing something with one's life.
I'm trying to figure out how not to feel vaguely insulted by this comment, and I'm coming up with nothin'.
Also, from an emotional standpoint, it's the genre that Fox cancelled Firefly for. "The Littlest Groom", my ass...
Fox may have cancelled Firefly to put on a reality show but that absolutely does not make all reality TV evil or all reality TV watchers socially inept idiots. A reality show is easy enough to produce and advertise. Even if you're not Fox (which is notoriously run by people who shouldn't be allowed to run a lawn mower, much less a TV network), how exactly do you promote a sci-fi/western TV show created by a man best known for creating a cult horror show that ran on a network barely anybody watched and cast with no-name actors? I can't imagine how to sell Firefly as a concept to a network, no matter how good the writing and acting are. I mean, I love that show to itty bitty pieces but it's WEIRD.
And Fox was a completely wrong fit for it network-wise -- what other network would be dim enough to run it out of order and think it'd just work out okay in the end? -- but it's neither reality TV's nor Fox's fault entirely that Firefly failed, and I can give you an example of why -- Serenity. There was two years between the time the TV show went off the air and the time the movie came out, plenty of time for fans to get the word out, and tempt their friends and family. People got hooked on the DVDs and they shot towards the top of the Amazon DVDs sale list. They gave box sets to their friends, they copied the episodes for family members. The fans sold the ever-loving FUCK out of that show. The movie got great reviews and opened at number two, and after all of that it only made back the forty million dollars it cost to make. For a big-screen action movie that's not good, particularly for one that costs relatively little to make compared to other action movies.
And again, as fox1013 already said elsewhere, exactly how was Fox supposed to get the money to produce Firefly? Cheap-to-produce reality TV shows bring in the money that TV executives can put towards their more expensive, better-quality ventures like, say, a critically acclaimed sci-fi western with low ratings and a cult following.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-27 02:42 am (UTC)It's popularity contests that put jackasses like Sanjaya (who I've never seen, but who I know the name of because reality TV pours over to taint every other form of media known to mankind) on for longer than the thirty seconds it should take to determine that he's a waste of space who should be pumping gas somewhere.
That wasn't real popularity, that was a joke. That was VoteForTheWorst.com proving that being able to vote for the winner means you might not like the winner and they might not even have talent. At which point you laugh at Simon Cowell because, HA. Then there is pointing and mocking.
I dislike reality television because it promotes the ascendance of the American Idiot. I dislike it because it promotes sitting around living vicariously instead of doing something with one's life.
I'm trying to figure out how not to feel vaguely insulted by this comment, and I'm coming up with nothin'.
Also, from an emotional standpoint, it's the genre that Fox cancelled Firefly for. "The Littlest Groom", my ass...
Fox may have cancelled Firefly to put on a reality show but that absolutely does not make all reality TV evil or all reality TV watchers socially inept idiots. A reality show is easy enough to produce and advertise. Even if you're not Fox (which is notoriously run by people who shouldn't be allowed to run a lawn mower, much less a TV network), how exactly do you promote a sci-fi/western TV show created by a man best known for creating a cult horror show that ran on a network barely anybody watched and cast with no-name actors? I can't imagine how to sell Firefly as a concept to a network, no matter how good the writing and acting are. I mean, I love that show to itty bitty pieces but it's WEIRD.
And Fox was a completely wrong fit for it network-wise -- what other network would be dim enough to run it out of order and think it'd just work out okay in the end? -- but it's neither reality TV's nor Fox's fault entirely that Firefly failed, and I can give you an example of why -- Serenity. There was two years between the time the TV show went off the air and the time the movie came out, plenty of time for fans to get the word out, and tempt their friends and family. People got hooked on the DVDs and they shot towards the top of the Amazon DVDs sale list. They gave box sets to their friends, they copied the episodes for family members. The fans sold the ever-loving FUCK out of that show. The movie got great reviews and opened at number two, and after all of that it only made back the forty million dollars it cost to make. For a big-screen action movie that's not good, particularly for one that costs relatively little to make compared to other action movies.
And again, as