Realityly Bad TV

A few weeks ago, I went on an angry tirade against reality TV in large part because of FOX's new reality show that pits a team of Ivy law students against a team from "lesser pedigrees."

Just as November sweeps is getting underway, there've been quite a few stories on the decline and fall of reality TV. Now Kevin Drum opines on the matter as well. He writes in part:

I have an idea that might explain part of it. As regular readers know, I'm a Survivor fan (the perfect show for the George Bush era, I like to call it), but this season hasn't really grabbed me much. One of the reasons is that for about the third or fourth time, the producers have decided to turn it into a Battle of the Sexes. Yawn.

What's more, an awful lot of other reality shows are following the same formula. The Apprentice pits the boys against the girls, Richard Branson divvied up the teams along gender lines in his new reality show, and of course all of the Bachelor/Bachelorette/Joe Millionaire shows are gender based by definition.

I still think my tirade was better.