How I'd fix the reality game shows

Cafe Society
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(I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, just kept getting distracted by other threads for some reason.)

Well, it looks like we can stick a fork into Skating With Celebrities. Not sure how they’re even going to find new contestants (nb. Falling on ice really hurts, celebrity or not.), and the lack of voting…actually a pretty good idea in this case…takes away the in-your-hands appeal, one of the few reasons anyone actually watches these things.

I have some ideas of how to fix the rest. Dissect, tear down, or approve them as you will I’ll start with AI, since most of my ideas for the other shows stem from it:

American Idol
Okay, first off, let’s make one thing clear: The reason the last man standing format works so great for Survivor is that the contestants vote each other off. It’s a cutthroat competition where you never know who’ll be next. Furthermore, there are no placements (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.); everyone who survives to the next round is effectively equal. Furthermore, each episode consists of material carefully edited out of three days of footage, so there’s always enough for an episode no matter how few contestants remain.

None of this is the case for American Idol, leading to all kinds of problems. Stars who blow the doors off the competition week after week, then get bounced for one slightly subpar performance when 3rd best wasn’t enough. Subpar talents who hang on way longer than they should because there happened to be one person slightly worse. And the winner invariably being someone who caught fire at just the right time. And/or had the biggest fanbase.

Which brings me to my next issue, the voting. Lord, what a colossal joke. I trust that I don’t have to explain why a completely unlimited number of votes from any phone in the world is a stupid idea. Not to mention the ridiculous finagling over whether this contestant is “safe” and doesn’t need your vote, or whether you should vote anybody because everyone else thinks that contestant is safe, or whether you should split the votes between someone who might be safe, etc.

Here’s what I’d do. Once we’re down to the 24 finalists, print and mail out forms listing them. Have them all perform for 3 nights, not just one. Slow starters have a chance to recover; early favorites can’t coast. The viewers then mark, on the forms, anywhere from 1-16 that they want to continue, then mail them in (there’ll also be an online option, of course). Take a week off to count the votes and allow for reprints, forms lost in the mail, etc.; they can put their fun-filled clip show in the slot in that time. Top 16 move on; new forms with the final 16 go out. A few weeks later, have the final cut to 8; from this, we pick the winner. Don’t carry votes from the first cut to the second. That way the winner has to be consistently good from start to finish but still has room to recover from one less-than-stellar night. If this is too complicated (although I can’t imagine why), how about voting for who you want eliminated rather than who you want to stay. That way the strong contenders are sure to be save, while blind supporters of mediocre contestants have a much harder time carrying their man/woman to the next round.

As for the songs, let’s do away with this grossly unfair “theme night” garbage. ONE criteria: time. Say, under 2:00 to begin with, between 2:00 and 3:30 after the first cut, then longer than 3:30 afterward. If this competiton is really about finding a professional singer, he or she’s going to have to handle professional lengths. Other than that, let the singers decide what fits their range and style. Don’t limit it to vanilla pop fluff, either. If someone wants to do punk, metal, jazz, disco, new age, let them. Let the voters decide if it’s inappropriate.

Now, the judges. By far the most ridiculous thing I’ve found about AI is that these three people 1. Have no say whatsoever in who advances, 2. and nonetheless are allowed to shoot their mouths off after every performance in front of everybody 3. for which they’re cheered or booed like they’re friggin’ Olympic scorers. All I’m saying is that if these guys are strictly entertainment, treat them as such. Have an all-out bull session each episode, away from the crowds, and also have them directly answer questions from the audience once in a while. Also, since this is all about finding which singer America is most willing to spend money to listen to, forget all that stupid arglebargle about pitchiness and energy and trying to be like Whitney Houston. Who’s marketable? Who’s got mainstream appeal? Who can cross race/gender/socioeconomic/cultural barriers? Who can do a live concert? Who’s presentable enough to put on a CD cover? THAT’S what needs to be discussed.

Lastly, the prize. Any contest where it’s common knowledge that it’s better to finish second than first has to address this. My solution would be to either make it a plain 'ol million bucks, or an international (or at least national) months-long concert tour. Additionally, I’d also have smaller awards for whoever finishes first after each cut/elimination, so even if they do suffer an untimely lapse, they don’t leave empty-handed.

Dancing With The Stars
As I’ve said in the other thread, I think this show has the potential to be really good, but it really needs to change a few things.

First off, the hell with last man standing. Or cuts. Or anything else. Don’t eliminate anybody unless they’re completely stinking up the joint. Say, a score of less than 15 results in disqualification. Otherwise, keep everyone around so that ABC will actually be able to fill an hour in the later rounds. Keeping everyone means that the order of the dances isn’t an issue, so everyone should be permitted to pick 8 or 10 or however many dances are required and do them in any order they like.

No legitimate competition allows its judges to be openly booed and heckled by the crowd, especially to the point where it can actually affect scores. Require the crowd to remain QUIET during the judges comments and scores, and toss out any bum who doesn’t comply. Alternatively, put the judges in a separate booth and allow them to make comments to the contestants privately.

After the last performance, the viewers (again via forms) rank everyone from best to last. Last place is worth nothing, second to last is 1 point, third to last is 2, etc. The judges’ and audience rankings are then combined to decide the winner, with most 10’s or first-place votes being the tiebreakers (and after that percentage of #1 or something).

One more thing…if contestants are yet not alllowed to choose whatever shoes they want, let them. It hurt to see Stacy Kiebler wrecking her ankles on those spike heels, ultimately for nothing. The health and safety of the participats always comes first.

The Amazing Race
Reward good play, enforce the rules consistently, and take out the bunchup points. I hate seeing constant bunchups and every finish coming down to a crapshoot at an airport or traffic light or whatever. If a team has blown away the competition week in and week out, give them the boring, ratings-killing victory that they’ve EARNED. If you want a contest, find contestants who’ll make it one. There’s a difference between a legitimately down-to-the-wire race and a wait-filled slog where the first 30,000 miles doesn’t even matter. I’d also support a two-cut system, again so that teams that falter early have an opportunity to make up for it.

That’s about it. I might seriously consider taking some of these suggestions to the networks, so I’d like to know what you all think of them.

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As to The Amazing Race (the only one of your comments I feel qualified to post to), I completely agree. Entirely TOO many artificial bottlenecks.

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Survivor
I still think it’s the best reality show, but the strategy has just gotten way too predictable. Alligiances to one’s original tribe are always strongest, regardless of how many “mix up the tribe” moves they throw in. The tribe that goes into the merge with the majority just picks off the minority.

The two “twists” that I’d like to see:

Day one as usual: form into two tribes. Go through the first reward challenge as usual. But then, before the immunity challenge, the tribes are randomly scrambled. Those new tribes do the immunity challenge, loser goes to tribal council, as usual. The tribes stay as they are through the next reward challenge. But then, again, before the immunity challenge, they are randomly scrambled. This goes on until the merge: before every immunity challenge, the tribes are randomly scrambled (it has to be random, because the “schoolyard pick” approach will still allow alliances to keep themselves intact), and such that there’s never more than a one person difference in numbers.

What does this accomplish? Well, for one, it ensures that no tribe will ever have a superior numerical advantage from which to draw the strongest players. Even better, it throws all alliances up in the air. You can work on your tight alliance-of-five and be smug in your majority control over who’ll be voted out, but then after the scramble you might find yourself going to tribal with an alliance of only two or three; there goes your majority. It would force everyone to play a different game, because no one would be able to be secure in their alliance, because after the next scramble, you could find yourself at tribal council without much of your alliance there.

Follow the lead of some other shows (such as the kids version of Survivor, called Endurance, and Beauty and the Geek) and get rid of the “vote one person out” thing in favor of a “vote for two people to compete head-to-head”.

Let’s try this: Instead of the two tribes competing in an immunity challenge, both tribes always go to tribal and vote for one person. Those two people (one from each tribe) then compete in an individual challenge, loser goes home.

Again, what this accomplishes (besides giving the loser the satisfaction of knowing that he, at least, had a shot at staying, regardless of his standing in the tribe) is again to drastically change the strategy. No longer can you (before the jury) happily stab a tribemate in the back with impunity. You have to put a bit more thought into it, because the person your alliance picks to “vote out” might win the challenge and be back. In other words, there might be (gasp) consequences to your choice of who to try to get rid of, and the players will need to consider that, rather than just “Ok, who do we want to get rid of this time?”

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And that’s why the show is, to me, “The Amazingly Boring Race”.

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Have them do the stunts without safety harnnesses and make them sign a waver for injuries or death.

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Give the audience pies and rotten fruit to whip at the bad contestents.

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Let me just get on my soap box a little here.

Survivor

  1. Only give them water, rice, and flint. This is Survivor, not "minimal equipment camping.

  2. Eliminate Reward Challenges and add “Non-Punishment Challenges”. Tribes compete to not be punished in some way, such as losing the flint or having to move to a new camp, or just having their shelter broke down. Heck, even let the winning team take their shelter or raid their camp. Better than just giving them “Pringles and Beer” or quality fishing equipment.

  3. Mix up the tribes every week. This would make it much harder to make alliances that last. A lot more betrayal would happen as well, which is always good.

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The Apprentice

Have a task be about something other than sales/marketing. There are other skills needed to run a big business! Some of these are indirectly dealt with in the course of doing tasks – like the PM’s ability to delegate and to deal with difficult employees – but others get blown off.

I realize that someone read a spreadsheet isn’t interesting – but I’d like to see a task where they are given $x to complete the task (as they usually are), and the Boardroom consists of going over, okay, how did you spend this money and how did your decisions affect results?

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Considering that American Idol is still the number one show in America, and seems to continue growing by leaps and bounds, I don’t know how much there is to fix. Personally, I’m not so into any reality show, but clearly they’ve got a good thing going with American Idol. Survivor, on the other hand, has been around forever but seems to be much less the phenomenom it was five years ago. Eh, they both bring in money by the Fort Knox load, so who’s going to change anything?

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The problem with constant tribal switches in Survivor is that it would remove one of the most compelling elements of the show: the storyline. Whether it is editing or real, Survivor runs continous “plots” throughout the season that would not develop if people were not interacting with the same people for a long stretch of time.

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American Idol is one of the most successful shows ever. And so far has gotten bigger every year.

Part of the appeal of it is that there is user input which is done in an immediate fashion, and the cutthroat appeal of the voting-off process.

Instituting paper mail-in ballots that judge a performer across multiple performances would probably destroy the show and consequently be remembered as the worst idea in the entire history of television, and I don’t say that as hyperbole. The worst. idea. in the entire 50 or so year history of television.

This is first and foremost a TV SHOW and anything that would diminish the entertainment value of the PROGRAM in an effort make the talent contest FAIRER would be idiotic for the producers to implement.

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I’d say some of the same things about those suggestions for The Amazing Race. Not sure what exactly “reward good play” consists of, seems like doing well tends to be it’s own reward. But taking out all the bunch points would fix it to the point that no one would watch.

Do you really think that’s a good idea for the show? Sounds kind of counter-productive to me.

A problem is that there’s a pretty big element of luck. One good break and next thing you know one team is 18+ hours ahead of everyone else; the race is over and they’re just coasting, no matter how well the people behind them do. It could remove any actual interest. It may not be the purest of competitions, but the whole thing is really a lot more interesting when they’re going directly each other pretty much the whole way. Keeps the stress up. Without bunching, we likely wouldn’t have had a ‘broken ox’ moment; why get upset when you’re two days ahead? Some people watch just for the locations, but it’s only on the air because of the drama.
And the first 30,000 miles always matter. Because if you screw up during that part, you may not be there at the end for the “wait-filled slog”.

I’m sure there’s things you can do. You could lessen the bunches, make them a little less blatant, but you need something to keep the teams fairly close. I’d say just keep the locations exotic and challenges exciting (the biggest problem for the family edition), and it’ll be OK.

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To whom? Even a record-breaking show is still only watched by a fraction of the country. And mailing out ballots to everyone in the country would be prohibitively expensive. Heck, even if you could determine exactly who was watching, it’d probably be prohibitively expensive just to mail to those folks. You could, I suppose, make the form available on a Web page, and have people print them out themselves and mail them in, but even then, you’d still be stuck with several days’ delay at least just from the USPS, plus you’d need to open all those envelopes and process them somehow, which would take a lot of manhours and probably more delay.