Remember talent? Remember relevance?

Posted by Dan October 31st, 2006 at 03:35pm In Reality

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Sometimes peripheral relationships to long-outdated pop culture phenomenons are all you need to get on the air and humiliate yourself on basic cable.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.