Create your own reality show in three easy steps

Posted by Dan June 18th, 2008 at 11:48am In Reality

It’s been a while since the reality TV behemoth shoved its jiggling belly right in the middle of the network primetime TV schedule. TV execs like the fact that it’s a cheap way to create new shows during the summer and, hell, during the regular season as well.

But now everyone can pretty much see that the well is running dry for new ideas. Bravo is continually cranking out the sausage of competitive flower arranging (or whatever) and there’s always something brewing within the romantic-series-with-a-secret formula (Joe Millionaire, Boy Meets Boy) or the fish-out-of-water subgenre (Amish in the City, The Simple Life).

As such, the creator of Big Brother (the reality show/downfall of Western Civilization) has created a Web site for you to pitch your own program. If your pitch gets made into a real life show, you’ll get endless cash prizes and your own island nation off the coast of Madagascar.

However, I’ve come up with a foolproof plan for creating endless reality show ideas. Below, find three categories: people, activities and locations. Pick one from each category, squish them together and then you have the premise for your show. Expand and extrapolate, add competitive aspects. The world is your oyster.

See the examples and categories below…

Participants: Amateur rodeo competitors, midgets, soccer moms, lesbians, frat boys, scientists, librarians, bloggers, Russian immigrants, hipsters, truck drivers.

Activity: Live in a school bus, compete in a scavenger hunt, race cross-country, work in a Dairy Queen, perform stand-up comedy, learn to perform Shakespeare, teach kindergarten.

Location: A sunny Puerto Rican beach, a fabulous New York City loft, a retirement village in Florida, a trailer park in West Virginia, a Radio Shack in Indiana, a police department in Minnesota, an Indian reservation in Wyoming, a fishing town in Maine, a religious bookstore in Texas, a casino in Mississippi.

Show #1

The basis: Russian immigrants perform stand-up comedy in a trailer park in West Virginia.

The program title: “Give me that microphone, Sergei!”

The show: A dozen fresh-off-the-boat Russian immigrants compete for citizenship by performing stand-up comedy for a group of drunken West Virginia trailer folks. Each week, the residents take out their lawn chairs and the contestants try to spout off one-liners about not having to wait in line for days to get a Big Mac. Yakov Smirnoff hosts.

Show #2

The basis: Lesbians compete in a scavenger hunt in a Florida retirement village.

The program title: “You look like a nice young man…”

The show: Members of a Broward County lesbian political organization must compete in a scavenger hunt in a senior citizens home. The trick? They aren’t looking for things, they’re looking for bits of information from the residents. Therefore, they have to coax the names of first grade teachers from the senior citizens while enduring the failing memories of the old folks and inevitable stories that come along with it.

Show #3

The basis: Hipsters teach kindergarten in a religious bookstore in Texas.

The program title: Jesus, Mary and Joe Strummer

The show: Ten Williamsburg hipsters, outfitted in leather jackets and skinny jeans, must travel to Abilene, Texas to teach drawling kindergarten students. While they try to expand the kids’ minds by playing the Velvet Underground, the impressionable tots instead choose to draw pictures of horses and feel uneasy about reading adapted Kerouac over comparatively clear-cut Bible stories.