Last night I was stuck in traffic of the worst sort while driving (or, parking might be the better term in this case) down Los Angeles' famous Sunset Strip. While slowly passing by famous spots such as the Chateau Marmont and The Plaza, I had lots of time to observe my surroundings.
At one point, in a "very LA" section of the strip, I looked up and saw three oversized billboards around me. One was for something called Camp Rock 2, starring a bunch of teenybopper kids. The other two I found more interesting. The first advertised Gene Simmon's Family Jewels, A&E's reality program following the modern travails of Kiss' former front man and self-evangelist extraordinaire. And the other was for Jackass 3-D. The Jackass franchise of course came out of the MTV reality series of the same name (and for its Finnish spinoff of sorts, check out The Dudesons), and boils down to series a non-sequential unscripted set-ups featuring amazing stunts, dumbass hijinks, grotesque explorations of human behavior/reaction, and legitimately funny comedic exploits… at times all at once.
As Adam Carolla would say, my point is this: 20 or eve 10 years ago, the Sunset Strip would not be dominated by billboards pitching reality TV shows or films that sprung from the same. It was a small but significant snapshot to me of how much reality television has come to dominate our entertainment landscape in a relatively short period of time.
Intriguing too is that these are shows that air or aired on basic cable channels (A&E and MTV, respectively) and did not come from the big guns of the networks. The networks boast big ratings reality shows of course (some of which are actually quite good), but it's interesting to think about how basic cable seems to be the perfect home for the "smaller" and scrappier reality shows that can be highly successful in finding the niche audiences that cable TV can support and indeed thrive on.
