Some Potential Reality Shows

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Your thoughts?

 

Unplugging UPN's Amish Experiment?

 

by Lia Haberman

Feb 23, 2004, 1:30 PM PT

 

Congress doth protest.

 

Lawmakers have blasted UPN for its proposed Real World-like reality series that would feature Amish teens living it up in the big city.

 

 

"The mentality reminds me of the old sideshows in the circus," Rep. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania said during a news conference Friday. "And it is wrong to do this to a minority group like the Amish."

 

The series, currently casting for five teens, is based on the Amish period of rumspringa, the Pennsylvania Dutch term for "running around." At age 16, Amish youths are allowed to experience more "normal" teen activities, such as dating and driving, before deciding if they want to join the church.

 

But "running around" is a relative term for the simple-living Amish.

 

"The majority of the Amish youth do not participate in these questionable activities but respect their parents and follow the teaching of the church," according to an Amish leader quoted in the Washington Post. The Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau has also complained, saying the networks would never do such a show on Jewish or Catholic teens.

 

For its part, UPN denies any efforts to exploit the teens. "UPN and the show's producers have every intention of treating the Amish, their beliefs and their heritage with the utmost respect and decency," said a statement from the network.

 

"Any young Amish adults who do choose to participate...will do so only of their own free will and with absolutely full knowledge of the content, nature and intent of the program."

 

Pitts, whose district includes portions of Pennsylvania's Amish community and who drafted an anti-UPN petition signed by 51 members of Congress, responded by urging Amish teens to "protect their community and refuse to participate in this mockery." He also charged UPN's corporate honchos, Les Moonves (CEO of CBS and the man who oversees UPN's programming) and Mel Karmazin (president of UPN parent company Viacom), of bigotry if the show airs.

 

It's not the first fish-out-of-water concept to land the Moonves & Co. in hot water.

 

Rural groups freaked out last year when CBS began casting for the Real Beverly Hillbillies, a culture shock show that would revolve around a poor Appalachian family transplanted to Beverly Hills and all its bounty.

 

The Center for Rural Strategies and other critics successfully got the show squashed after leading protests and placing ads in the country's largest newspapers accusing the network of conducting a "hick hunt" to find a stereotypical redneck family ripe for ridicule.

 

Although Moonves insists the Hillbillies project is still in development, there are no signs it will ever make it on air.

 

The Center for Rural Studies, meanwhile, has now jumped on the Amish horse and buggy, setting up a Website (www.ruralreality.org) that protests the UPN's plans to exploit the Amish "just to line their own pockets."

From:Eonline

Here's another one I just found:

 

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - FOX has yanked a one-off reality special in which two straight men would try to convince friends and family that they're gay.

"Seriously, Dude, I'm Gay" was scheduled to air Monday, June 7. It would have shown two "guy's guys" moving into lofts in West Hollywood, where each would get a crash course on gay culture from three homosexual roommates. The guy who did the most convincing job -- as judged by a panel of "gay men from all walks of life" -- would get $50,000.

 

The network decided earlier this week to pull the show after sending a screener copy to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and hearing of the organization's concerns. GLAAD officials asked for a meeting with FOX executives, but before that meeting could take place, the network decided to scrap the two-hour special.

 

"FOX deserves a lot of credit for doing the right thing here," Joan M. Garry, GLAAD's executive director, says in a press release. "They offered us an advance copy of the show and were incredibly responsive to our grave concerns."

GLAAD calls "Seriously, Dude" an "exercise in systematic humiliation." One of the contestants tells a former high-school wrestling teammate that he likes the sport because of the "contact with sweaty boys," while another refers to the experience as being "trapped in gay hell."

 

Garry says GLAAD takes the cancellation of the special, which came from the producers of "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance," as a good sign.

 

"This should serve as a model for other networks producing gay-themed programming," Garry says.

From Zap2it

 

So why didn't UPN send out screener copies to potentially interested groups? I could by cynical and say - neither the Amish nor the poor have the political clout to make their positions relevant.