Reality Bites, by Arthur Tebbel & Chris Toia – Pop Art… and Chris #36

August 11, 2009 Arthur Tebbel & Chris Toia 0 Comments

Dear Art & Chris,
It’s very hard dictating the Emmy telecast these days. Fewer and fewer people watch the shows that win most of the awards. Mad Men is poised for a sweep and gets about 1.3 million viewers. No one wants to watch something they’ve never heard of win. We thought we had a good solution; we were going to move some of the less glamorous awards to a pre-taped ceremony so they could be aired more quickly. There was a near instant backlash on the Internet forcing us to ration the 8 displaced awards among the four major categories (acting, directing, writing, and producing) and still people seem sore at us. What other kind of damage control do we need to run?
-Les Moonves, Chairman, CBS

Les,
Clearly you didn’t watch last year’s Emmy telecast. It was a five-headed disaster, one for each of the vapid idiot reality show stars you had host. They weren’t even remotely entertaining. Perhaps that had something to do with how few people watched your show. Not people turning the channel every time a writer or director walked from their seat to the stage. Perhaps this dramatic lack of respect for your audience also explains why shows on your network are getting slaughtered by shows on cable, other networks and the Internet.

We understand your frustration, we do. Your network airs the People’s Choice Awards, which only awards popular things. Without the Emmy name it doesn’t do as well. You want the best of both worlds. Unfortunately awards for excellence don’t work like that.

The crux of this idea is so that you’ll have more time for tributes to more popular, perhaps not nominated, shows and more awards for reality television. Your mistake here is thinking that that will make people sit through the awards for less watched stuff that is still the lion’s share of your program. By trying to please everyone you are going to please no one and your show will be even more unwatchable. Fans of good programming will be turned off by the shameless pandering and the audience you’re pandering to will be too confused that no one’s yelling at them to call in and vote.

Most importantly reality shows should not be honored at all. They’re bad. There are 50% more reality show wards this year than last year. There are now awards for best competitive and non-competitive reality show. Rewarding reality TV is a lot like giving Poland to Hitler you think it’ll stop them but it will only egg them on. We know you like reality TV Les but do you really want to be on the same side as Hitler? Heidi Klum even kinda has the same accent. There’s even already an awards show for reality shows, the aptly named Reallys. We think that should always be pronounced with a question mark.

This is rare but we are actually going to save your show here. You should murder Neil Patrick Harris in the opening (not for real like a TV murder) and then in between the awards have handsome and wisecracking detectives slowly unravel the case until the murderer is revealed as the producer of the Best Drama. Sorry Matthew Weiner, you’re gonna go away for a long time. No one would not watch this.