Apparently name recognition is all you really need to get your own show.  And sometimes not even that.

Sometimes peripheral relationships to long-outdated pop culture phenomenons are all you need to get on the air and humiliate yourself on basic cable.  We've known this for a long time with VH1's The Surreal Life, but now their Celebreality craze is just getting out of hand.

In addition to Celebrity Paranormal Project, VH1 is launching SIX new pseudo-celebrity-fueled series.  Something is clearly wrong.  The shows are:

Irv Gotti Project: No longer the subject of federal investigations for money laundering, Irv Gotti has cameras following him as he balances family life and work life.

Man Band: Arguably the most compelling show of the bunch, the one has former boy-band members including Bryan Abrams (Color Me Badd), Rich Cronin (LFO), Chris Kirkpatrick ('N Sync) and Jeff Timmons (98 Degrees) living in a house and forming a band.  It's like The Real World meets Making the Band meets The Surreal Life only crappier in every conceivable way.

White Rapper Show: Hosted by some white rapper you've never heard of, this show will follow 10 contestants trying to become, you guessed it, the next big white rapper.

Untitled Whitestarr project: The son of music impresario Lou Adler has a band.  And the band has a reality show.  That's about it.  Think of it as a low-rent "The Ashlee Simpson Show."

Bridging the Gap: Surprisingly, this show could be modestly classy.  It's basically just teams two musicians (that you've heard of) and they make a song together.  The first one has Eve and Queen Latifah.  Fair enough.

Rags to Riches: E! True Hollywood Story on a different network.  The first one has Snoop Dogg.

And if that isn't enough for you, there's more. 

Tori Spelling is going to have a show on Oxygen where she and her husband open up a Bed and Breakfast in Southern California.  Now, I loves me some Tori (shut up, I'm serious), but I really don't want to confront the reality of how horrible she probably really is.

Then there's the singer for Barenaked Ladies Ed Roberts who has a show on Canadian TV where he flies around and does odd jobs.  Seriously.  The show's called "Ed's Up."

And there's also a new Menudo show. 

I never really thought I'd say this about reality TV — but I'm out.  This whole situation is making me really depressed. 

Last night Heroes continued its reign of awesomeness and occasional clunky dialogue. What is it about Heroes? It's not original. It's not amazingly written. It doesn't have any standout performances (other than Hiro). It's almost never surprising. But something about it is fascinating. 

I've tried to come up with some reasons why this show is attention-grabbing, and not The Nine or Shark or Jericho or whatnot. 

1. There's a lot of them. Just when you're getting pretty sick of Niki not knowing what's she's doing or Peter moping about or even (god forbid) Hiro giggling up every scene, we turn our attention to Bad Glasses Man or Matt or Nathan or Mohinder or Sylar. The story is so spread out, we're still introducing most of these characters.
2. They're familiar. Not familiar as in reminding you of your best friend, but culturally familiar. Hardly anyone watching Heroes probably actually knows an office drone in Tokyo or an internet stripper, but we absolutely believe that such people exist. Sure, she's an internet stripper — so she must have a heart of gold. He's a smarmy politician — he must want to cheat on his wife. It's comforting without hitting too close to home.
3. Lots of stuff happens. There's not a lot of soap-opery dragging of feet. There's a lot of action, whether it's cheerleaders being flayed or politicians leaping into the sky. It's fun to see people in constant motion, trying to deal with crazy stuff and keep a somewhat normal life.
4. We know what they know. Namely, that this stuff is really weird. But we're all in the same boat. Fun and communal-like.
5. It's not afraid of its own dorkiness. I like a show that embraces its genre. This is a superhero show, and no one's shying away from that, trying to make it into Six Feet Under. It is what it is.

One complaint (along with the occasionally grating dialogue): I do wish that NBC hadn't revealed in promos that DL could walk through walls. For a show with very few unpredictable moments, it might have been nice not to know that.

Agree? Disagree? Thoughts on which Hero you'd most like to take to prom?