Monday, May 28, 2007

Dying to be on Reality TV?

I saw this story today.
A Dutch broadcaster is standing by its decision to air a reality show in which a terminally ill woman selects a recipient for her kidneys from three contestants.

On 'The Big Donor' this Friday, a 37-year-old woman will choose from three people with kidney problems.

Her choice will be based on the contestants' history, profile and conversations with their families and friends.

Viewers will be able to send text messages advising her during the 80-minute show.
How sick can TV get? I guess now the only place left to take Reality TV is to take 3 condemmed prisoners and allow the viewers to text in and select which one to kill live on TV.

3 comments:

Major General Creedon said...

That's a fucking fantastic idea Dec!!!. Not the woman and her kidneys but your one about the 3 condemmed prisoners.
Could the audience be pro-active in the method used to terminate the prisoner? Hell; the audience could even participate!
This is the best idea yet for reality TV!!!

Anonymous said...

Normally I have a "who cares, they're muppets" attitude to reality shows. I mean, I don't think the Big Brother producers can ever make the show degrading or humiliating enough. Its a win-win, they get to have their 15 minutes and we get to look at untrained gorillas prance about and preen themselves in front of the cameras.

However, the Dutch show sounds quite sick and cruel to people that don't deserve it and exploitive of the fact that they would probably do anything to get better and be normal again.

Of course, if you want to be capitalist about it, as an allocation of scarce resources, it will probably still be better than the health system (our one at least).

Anonymous said...

Turns out the whole thing was a setup :)