Like professional wrestling and Tea Party politics, it’s impossible to parody reality TV.
There’s just nothing that can be thought in jest that hasn’t already been done in earnest by actual cable channels.
So when WNET, the PBS station in New York, started putting up a series of fake reality posters on subways advertising shows like “Married to a Mime,” “Bayou Eskimos,” “Bad Bad Bag Boys” and “Knitting Wars” (“It’s Sew On”) the intention was to shame potential viewers and get them to watch public TV (“quality programming).”
But would “The Dillionaire,” about a pickle mogul, be so different than the duck call industry of “Duck Dynasty”?
“The fact you thought this was a real show says a lot about the state of TV,” is the scolding common tagline.
But public television has a long history in reality TV, even if it hasn’t always been filling its potential lately. “An American Family” was the first reality docu-series, you will recall. And innovative shows like “Frontier House” were beyond most network reality competitions. PBS has even won Emmys for reality TV for its “Antiques Roadshow.”
Promoting its own superior documentary series and occasional British imports would do the channel better than degrading a genre that currently seem to be outdoing them in ratings.