The TV networks' recent announcements of their fall schedules revealed a shocking development: For the first time since the Survivor juggernaut arose, reality television shows signs of fading.
I'm distraught. In fact, I'm devastated. Reality shows have had a huge impact on my quality of life.
Not that I've seen any of them.
I did watch about five minutes of the first version of Survivor. It had sounded silly, and it was. I clicked away and never looked back.
I've missed every immunity challenge, every snake-pit dip on Fear Factor, every ounce of sucked-out fat on Extreme Makeover, every karaoke-bar escapee on American Idol, every loser on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette and all those dumb bunnies on Joe Millionaire.
Actually, I don't miss them a bit. But I've been thrilled that up to now they've been spawning spinoffs faster than roaches in a cheap Florida apartment.
Oh, at first I ranted. I detested the very concept of reality TV. There's nothing real about these shows. They're elaborate contrivances, as unrealistic as any sitcom or melodrama but without any effort at artfulness.
And that's what really ticked me off: They're just so damn cheap.
The networks make billions selling us products. Reality TV is their way of saying they can't be bothered to spend any of that money for real writers, real actors, for even the fairly low level of art of most traditional television.
We're not worth it. They're just going to extrude these shows and go home early and count their profits.
But I'm fine with it. I no longer rant. Reality TV has reminded me of the beauty of the sentence, "There's nothing on."
A couple of years ago, I did a stint working nights for 3 1/2 years, during which I watched very little television. When I went back to the day shift, I had a kind of feast-or-famine reaction: I came home in the evenings and watched hours of TV.
Some of it was good, some of it wasn't, but I got into the habit. The TV was on every evening. You know how it goes: There's something on at 8 you like, something else at 10, so you sit there from 8:30 to 9:59 staring blearily at Yes, Dear or That '80s Show and feeling your brain cells die.
I watched so much TV I started feeling woozy. My brain got so soft I couldn't tell for sure whether The West Wing really was better than Baby Bob.
What snapped me out of it was reality TV. Not the shows themselves - I never got around to watching them - but the hype, the buzz, the self-congratulatory blather that hailed them an inspiration rather than a cut corner.
The ads for Survivor were enough to break my habit. They were so irritating and so ubiquitous I started turning off the TV whenever I saw the same one three times in half an hour. Then Survivor begat everything from Big Brother toCelebrity Boxing, and I had so many reasons to turn the TV off that some nights I never turned it on.
Not that I hate television; anything but. I'm a first-generation TV baby, a boomer who remembers Lucy and Desi and Rob and Laura as warmly as I remember my aunts and uncles, a proud and happy viewer of the first moon landing and the first day of MTV and just about every naked fanny on NYPD Blue.
But I try to be selective. I don't like that woozy feeling, and usually I've avoided it.
About 12 years ago, my husband and I signed up to be a Nielsen Media Research household, recording our viewing habits for the TV ratings service. We dutifully filled out our little logbook with who watched what when, and mailed it in.
The next week, a woman called from Nielsen. She wanted to be sure we understood how to keep the log, because we didn't seem to be watching nearly as much TV as most people.
"Now, you know," she said, "we want you to record everything you watch, not just the shows you like."
Pause at my end. "Why would I watch a show I didn't like?"
Pause at her end. "Well, you have to watch something."
Well, no, I don't. And reality TV has helped me remember that.
With a schedule stacked with bachelors and survivors and idols, I can go days at a stretch without turning the TV on except for a morning traffic check.
So this news of the possible passing of reality shows is distressing. What if the networks start to come up with comedies and dramas that are clever and engaging? What if they hire smart writers and talented actors?
I know, it sounds as unlikely as a couple from The Bachelor living happily ever after, but it could happen. Then I'll have to put down my novels and stop cooking dinner from scratch. So please, keep those reality shows coming. They're doing my real life a lot of good.
