Peeking Through the TV Keyhole - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Sept, 2000 by Joe Saltzman

THE PASSION for watching our neighbors is probably as old as cave dwellers peering around trees. As humans, we are curious beings, and we probably have spent much of our existence watching and gossiping about our neighbors. Passersby may be repelled at what they see, but they still can't resist looking at an accident or fire. We all know that it's a lot more fun to watch someone else slip on a banana peel than to be the one falling down. Or, to put it in 21st-century terms, it's a lot easier to watch 16 castaways stranded on a desert island, a frazzled want-to-be-a-millionaire struggle with an easy question, seven people locked up in a house, an English family spending three months in a middle-class household circa 1900, or a multimillionaire choosing a bride from a bevy of unknown women.

Always-amazed media commentators insist on doing cover stories and tsk-tsk news reports whenever the public once again becomes a crowd watching lions devouring humans. They mislabel it as "voyeur TV." It's the same old stuff repackaged into this year's reality television.

Those same self-serving media commentators have been appalled for years at such programs as "The Jerry Springer Show" that daily parade average citizens shouting at each other over infidelity or family secrets revealed while the audience impatiently waits for someone to throw a punch at an offending neighbor. Car chases and live-action news events always mean high ratings. Slap "based on a true story" on any made-for-television movie, and the ratings go up a couple of points. Audiences have always loved watching humans in distress--"Alan Funt's Candid Camera" made fools out of thousands of willing subjects and became one of TV's longest-running shows. In 1973, Americans watched the Loud family of California parade their innermost secrets before public television cameras--we even got to see a son coming out of the closet and a marriage breaking apart.

People like to watch other people. Technology has simply made it easier to do so. Now, we can sit by our computers and watch webcams showing us a female named Aimee rolling around on the floor with her dogs, a New York cabdriver talking over live pictures from the streets of New York, or even meat rotting on camera.

This year, American television has discovered what Asian and European television discovered years ago: People will watch other people doing strange things. Real-life drama has an edge that makes TV exciting: Who will be kicked off the island tonight? Will anyone be able to win $1,000,000 tonight? Will today's car chase end up in disaster? Will the guy admit he is gay tonight? Will the jilted sister punch out her sibling? As the National Enquirer discovered years ago, we are curious minds who want to know.

CBS treated "Big Brother," a program that took 10 unrelated Americans and put them into a locked compound for three months to see what happens, as if it were a major news event. The first program was anchored by a female breathlessly covering the show as if it were a landing on Mars: "One house. Ten strangers. Every moment captured on video. No outside world contact. No luxuries. Who'll outlast the others to win $500,000. You decide." "Big Brother" not only was broadcast five days a week, but viewers could check out four webcams on the cbs.com website to candidly watch the five men and five women 24 hours a day before voting on who stays and who leaves.

Does this mean civilization as we know it is coming to an end? That's the question media commentators seem to ask every time a wrestler shouts threats into the camera or a talk show host is a party to domestic violence. What civilization are these commentators referring to? The one that saw millions killed by war, government terrorism, and famine during the 20th century? Or is the whole furor over "voyeur TV" really a question of economics? Why shouldn't the news media make a buck off the latest craze? CBS's "Early Morning" is dying in the ratings. Why not have the kicked-off survivor as a guest the day after and watch those ratings go up? Time magazine needs a cover story that will sell. So why not put a binocular-view of the skimpiest-clad female survivor on the cover and label it "Voyeur TV"? Give the public what it wants. There's nothing wrong with that. But who needs the stench of hypocrisy from the commentators appalled at Springer & Co. and its logical descendants. Springer & Co. had to rely on happenstance or staged fights, whereas "Survivor" pushes the envelope with a more sophisticated game plan and willing players.

Years ago, viewers were just as excited watching someone try to win $64,000 as they are today watching "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." And there was plenty of media hype, too. There was just as much hand-wringing over "Candid Camera" and "shocking" talk shows as there is over "Survivor" and its copycats. When it comes to bizarre TV, America has nothing on European and Asian television, which regularly feature humans doing almost anything to gain attention (and money), from defecating on camera to hanging objects from their private parts to stuffing themselves with as many sausages as one mouth and one stomach can handle.