Honey Boo Boo

[tboo]

Every loser with a grade 6 education has now got a reality show.

Dont talk about Kim Kardashian that way. Thats not nice.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I think most of us on Anandtech (myself included) are completely and totally out of touch with how incredibly stupid the average person is. That could be the only explanation for the horrific decline of quality television and when formerly awesome channels such as the History Channel go down the "Redneck TV" route.

 

[nickbits]

I watched all the eps up to last week then decided there wasn't enough good material to justify watching it. I am dissapoint.
Kind of like how I thought teen mom would be funny but it wasn't.

 

[Ichinisan]

Too bad that like the Sci-Fi channel the History channel knows not what history is. I could care less about flea market collectors or pawn shops. I want to learn about history. I guess we've run out of it. Then again the lump sum of history in that channel's book is Nazis, Nazis, and more Nazis.

Well, they do talk about the history of the items and how they were used. That's the only interesting thing about those shows.

 

[CPA]

I don't have a huge issue with reality shows, but what I have an issue with is the fact that lot of them are actually faked to look like it's reality. You end up hearing eventually about how the whole thing is staged. For example all those storage war type shows are kinda interesting to watch, until I found out that all the containers are staged. They put stuff in them ahead of time and then basically act out the whole thing. This ruins it. A lot of reality shows end up being this way. It's all acting.

Even some of the home related reality shows are faked. House hunters for example is not actually real. They may possibly go out and look at houses and all that, but it's not actually a couple looking for a house with specifics and they end up buying it. They just make up those stories and then act them out. At least that's what I heard.

Some of the shows might be real though but after hearing that lot of them are fake it kinda makes you question all the others. Even the shows like survivor. Maybe it's in some big hangar with props and at the end of a shooting they're all eating pizza in the back and driving back home for the night. Who knows.

Actually, the couple have already picked the house, then they film as if they are looking for one. It's staged in the sense that there's really no decision to be made.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8YBHxO3q8c

 

[Leros]

I kept hearing about this, so I finally looked it up.

What... the.... fuck....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9nbhzKaqvA

 

[Imp]

The Restaurant Takeover show was confirmed to be staged as well, as they use actors to play employees.

Reminds me of Restaurant Makeover. Premise is that the restaurant's in trouble, then they do a complete remodel of the interior and menu. News stories have popped up saying that they usually end up going out of business afterwards because not only do they keep sucking, they have to pay for all the bills from the reno or the extra cost of operation.

 

[Dedpuhl]

I kept hearing about this, so I finally looked it up.

What... the.... fuck....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9nbhzKaqvA

This is just another sign of the ensuing apocalypse...

 

[gorcorps]

I like American Pickers and Pawn Stars but hate all the off-shoots they have now - Pawn Stars Texas and Pawn Stars Alabama is stupid. enough already

You gotta catch these shows when they start because pretty soon they get too popular and the producers stage everything to make it interesting. Or it just gets chock full of ad garbage. Why bother watching Pawn Starts these days when I can just watch a Subway ad?

 

[tboo]

I love American Pickers and Wheeler Dealers. Hopefully the networks dont mess with them. I already see the Pickers guys shilling for Subway now on the show.

 

[mmntech]

When the writers went on strike, TV networks realized that it was far cheaper to produce reality TV. Not hard to setup a show like this. Come up with a concept, find some z-list actors or regular people who will work for cheap, coach them on what you want, and they ad lib the rest. Shoot for a couple of days and call it a season. Minimal staff, minimal budget, big time profit. People love this shit, and will watch it religiously. Corporate Hollywood in its purist form.

Though I can't blame the suits entirely for this trend. Especially with what's happened with History, Discovery, and TLC. All of which used to be educational channels. Discovery still is to a degree but actually science programming is few and far between. A while back, the CRTC had actually threatened to revoke History Television's license because it has so little history related programming on it. I don't know what became of that.

Unfortunately nobody wants to expand their mind anymore. The suits are just giving the people what they want.

 

[Lemon law]

I have no cable or satellite tv, so I don't have this problem. Nor a $100 monthly cable bill.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While on one hand Karadin, I have no cable or satellite TV either, as I get my TV with 1950 era television antenna technology. But at least with the 2009 US digital transition, OTA TV has grearly improved in terms of high defintion pictures and in the fact previous analog channels can now offer up to five sub challanels instead of only one in every time slot

But still I ask, how far along baby have we come since 1950 as the US people have gotten used to having two TV's in every the house and a chicken in every pot? Or is Newton Minnow still correct, that television is still a vast wasteland. As my main comment is, does it matter if you get only 20 channel for free or 500 in pay TV, whn 99% is junk and garbage and the more you pay, the more junk and garbage we get.

Even if I would pay money to not get dancing with the stars I get it anyway, regardless if I get it for free or pay for it on subscription based TV. Yup I briefly flirted ith sattelite TV in the 1990's, even if the vast bulk was junk and garbage. At least I got a few extra channles worth watching, Argueably worth it at $15.00/month. Then wow oh wow, I got a whole lot more pure junk and garbage channels, 50% of the channels I wanted got dropped, and the price doubled to $30.00 month when I told Charlie of Dish exactly where he could stick it. I would be willing to come back to satallite TV if I could just get the few channels I want at reasonable price.

But no ala carte menus are not subscription TV options. Meanwhile Charlie Dish TV is convinced I will come crawling back, and sorry Charlie, you have not gotten a dime from me ever since. But still Dish spends at least $15.00 a year spamming my mailbox with new oppotunities to reup at ever higher monthly prices.

Now Earth to Charlie, if you can offer me some ala crate choices, and we can talk. Failing that you don't stand a ghost of a chance with me and my famdamily.

 

[Rudee]

I don't have a huge issue with reality shows, but what I have an issue with is the fact that lot of them are actually faked to look like it's reality. You end up hearing eventually about how the whole thing is staged. For example all those storage war type shows are kinda interesting to watch, until I found out that all the containers are staged. They put stuff in them ahead of time and then basically act out the whole thing. This ruins it. A lot of reality shows end up being this way. It's all acting.

Even some of the home related reality shows are faked. House hunters for example is not actually real. They may possibly go out and look at houses and all that, but it's not actually a couple looking for a house with specifics and they end up buying it. They just make up those stories and then act them out. At least that's what I heard.

Some of the shows might be real though but after hearing that lot of them are fake it kinda makes you question all the others. Even the shows like survivor. Maybe it's in some big hangar with props and at the end of a shooting they're all eating pizza in the back and driving back home for the night. Who knows.

Storage wars - staged
Undercover boss - staged
All the ghost hunters shows - staged
restaurant takeover - staged (hire actors to portray employees)

Those are the only ones I've seen. Which reality shows are actually 100% legit and not staged? I'd like to know.

 

[Rumpltzer]

I refuse to be friends with anyone with cable TV.

You keep telling yourself that. It'll make the pain all better.



BTW, it looks like these rednecks are upping their pay to something like $80K for all of next season. Not bad for TLC.

The Kardashians are pulling $30 million for the next 3 seasons.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/honey-boo-boo-pay-increase-salary-raise_n_1897780.html

 

[Rudee]

I think most of us on Anandtech (myself included) are completely and totally out of touch with how incredibly stupid the average person is. That could be the only explanation for the horrific decline of quality television and when formerly awesome channels such as the History Channel go down the "Redneck TV" route.

It's about money mostly. Sitcoms etc cost major money to produce. You have to pay actors up to a million dollars an episode. Reality shows, including shows that offer a prize at the end, i.e. The Bachelor Pad, are cheap to produce as they don't have to pay actors. Just offer up a cheap cash prize at the end of the season, but still rake in millions and millions in revenue. Reality TV is just a cheap form of television for the executives to produce and it doesn't take a lot of brains to coach some dim-witted people what to say to attract viewers. Some of the biggest draws like the Kardashians make millions though.

 

[ViRGE]

Those are the only ones I've seen. Which reality shows are actually 100% legit and not staged? I'd like to know.

Reality TV is by definition an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp. If it's entertaining, it's not real.

 

[Wyndru]

Thumb

 

[ichy]

TLC has gone from being The Learning Channel to The White Trash Channel. Discovery has become mostly garbage as well.

The only remaining decent documentary channel on cable is Nat. Geo.

 

[techs]

When the book the Decline and Fall of America is written the Honey Boo Boo show will be the signature event.

 

[BrokenVisage]

How do you tell when someone doesn't pay for a subscription TV serivce?

You don't, they'll tell you.

 

[Jeffg010]

I love American Pickers and Wheeler Dealers. Hopefully the networks dont mess with them. I already see the Pickers guys shilling for Subway now on the show.

These 2 are my favorite and seem to be legit. You really can't fake what Wheeler Dealers is doing. One guy find cars cool cars the other guy fixes them. Wheeler Dealers started out as something you could do over a weekend and flip the car for a profit. It turned into more then a weekend flip and how much work it really takes and they seem to be honest about it.

American Pickers could be faked when they do these cold calls. They roll up on someone's house the next thing you know the got some cool stuff. The places they do go sometime have so much stuff that there is no way they are faking that with out going broke. They may be finding these places a head of time but I'm OK with that.

That Amish show pisses me off. That is the most fake show ever. It was such an awesome idea. If only they had real Amish in the show that really did leave for the first time. I stopped watching that one.

 

[TangoJuliet]

My wife watches these shows...sometimes I sit next to her and work on the laptop and listen to the crap. Theres these 2 dress shows which basically have the same concept. Each show is the same. Then theres that honey boo boo show which is total shit. There was one episode where I almost threw up...."forklift foot" in which the fat mom had gnats in her toenail.

Then I saw the preview for the Amish show which seemed to have a descent concept. I watched the first episode and was disappointed. I had a feeling it was staged.

I do like Pawn Stars though...even if its staged its pretty entertaining. And you may get a tiny bit of "history" out of it. The spin offs are terrible - American Restoration, Cajun Pawn Stars and Counting Cars just dont compare to Rick and the boys.

 

[preslove]

A LA CART NOW!!!!!

All the idiots who say that "A la cart programing will mean less programing for consumers" don't realize that all the idiotic, redundant shows like this one are created because of the current cable paradigm. When big content providers like viacom or disney bundle their channels and sell them as one to the cable companies, this means there's a constant revenue stream for each individual channel. This incentivises each small channel to pick cheap, knock off reality shows that barely have to bring any ad money in to be profitable.

If we actually, as god damn consumers, got to pick which individual cable channels to subscribe to, then all these pathetic channels like TLC would see their audience shrink to practically nothing. Then, some smart businesspeople would put together channels with content that is actually worth a shit.

 

[BUTCH1]

"Some" of the new shows are OK, "Shipping wars" is decent, "Ricks restorations" and "Counting cars" are OK too. Good point by some though WTF do any of these have to do with history?. They must have given up on other good shows like "Dogfights" because it's cheap to produce reality TV...