Reality TV Tops Itself Again
You thought WHO WANTS TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE was in poor taste. You cringed when a British BIG BROTHER contestant admitted to suicidal thoughts, brought on by the continual lack of privacy. Bruddah, that ain’t nothin’.
Endemol, a TV production company with offices built over the mouth of Hell itself, has announced it is going through with The Big Donor Show, to premiere in Holland this Friday. If you can see the graphic on the left, take a look at the “o” in Show. Say, isn’t that a KIDNEY? Why yes, yes it is.
All reality shows have a contest element, and in this one a 37-year-old terminal patient will choose between three contestants for the rights to her healthy but soon to be unneeded kidney. I can’t go on… BBC, take over for me.
“It’s a crazy idea,” said Joop Atsma, of the ruling Christian Democrat Party. “It can’t be possible that, in the Netherlands, people vote about who’s getting a kidney,” he told the BBC.
The 37-year-old donor, identified only as Lisa, will make her choice based on the contestants’ history, profile and conversation with their family and friends. Viewers will also be able to send in their advice by text message during the 80-minute show.
The Dutch donor authority has condemned the show, as have kidney specialists in the UK. “The scenario portrayed in this programme is ethically totally unacceptable,” said Professor John Feehally, who has just ended his term as president of the UK’s Renal Association.
That’s entertainment! By the way, how can I join the Renal Association? Do I get to go to the dances?
Aside from the obvious ethical problems, I don’t think anyone has considered this scenario: shock jocks talk their fans into flooding the show with votes for the guy who deserves the kidney the least. And similarly, how much will it cost Coca Cola to put their logo on the kidney?
Will the show hit in the ratings? H.L. Mencken famously said “nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public” but there are two mitigating factors here. The first one, obviously, is this is the Dutch public we’re talking about. And two, as Harry Shearer once pointed out, Mencken is wrong. Ask the guys who came up with the XFL.
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:03 am
[...] AP reports it was a hoax, designed to call attention to the shortage of available kidneys. Damn them and their activist ways! Now I have to go back and revise two posts, PLUS offer a correction on next week’s podcast. [...]