Television Reaches New Low – Produces “Hot Girls In Scary Places”

In: Psychology| Updates By: Brian Armstrong

15 Mar 2009

Right after I get done telling people how bad TV is, they go and prove me right.

E! decided to produce a show called Hot Girls In Scary Places.

Yes, you guessed it…this is literally a show where some cute girls go into haunted houses carrying pink flashlights. And….well, they film it.

Somebody actually had to pitch this idea to a room full of executives and somebody signed off on it, thinking it was a good idea, presumably investing a lot of money in it. I mean, can you imagine how this meeting went?

“Ok…well it’s sort of a show about haunted houses.”

“Jim, I just don’t know…I mean it’s needs something raw and fresh, it’s gotta pop on screen.”

“What if we add hot girls?”

“Done!”

Have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy? It actually really reminds me of that…a future in which entertainment is so dumbed down that you can produce an entire TV show with just clips of a guy getting hit in the crotch.

Speaking of which….I’m pretty sure Spike TV has a show that is even closer to that, which is basically about things blowing up. I think it’s actually called “Things Blowing Up” or something like that.

Other signs of our coming intellectual demise?

The other day the news reported that a vampire skull was discovered.

Now this is totally false of course (there was some indication that the people who buried the body thought it was a vampire – which is not really newsworthy – we’ve been well aware that lots of cultures have believed in vampires, just like people burned witches in Winston-Salem etc).

But that is not how the news reported it of course…they strongly implied an actual vampire skull was discovered merely for the sensational value and to get people to keep watching. It was completely intellectually dishonest.

Anyway, as I wrote about a while back the news is an utter waste of time and if you are watching it for any other reason than entertainment value you are kidding yourself.

Mark my words: TV is going to go the way of the Newspaper here pretty soon. When your average YouTube clip produces by some people with zero budget and a little free time is of higher quality than 90% of professionally produced television, people are going to stop watching.

Even today, you can install the StumbleUpon toolbar in your web browser and tell it what topics you are interested in. Then you can “stumble” across different video clips – the results are often better then watching television. Give it a try!

Tags: Psychology

9 Responses

CollegeTownMenus (CTM)

March 15th, 2009 at 6:07 pm

Saw this yesterday, defiantly a horrible show. You can tell there are camera men all around, nothing like MTV’s Fear when it was on back in 2000.

Candy

March 15th, 2009 at 6:33 pm

Could they not even come up with a name for the show? I mean, it’s definitely descriptive, I suppose. I love that.

Ohhh… Stumbling can eat up HOURS of my day. Not that it I got addicted to it and to uninstall it or anything…

Brian Armstrong

March 16th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

True…stumbling is not exactly productive either, definitely entertainment :)

James

March 15th, 2009 at 7:01 pm

I don’t watch TV anymore except to catch the hockey/baseball game … heck, with the way the news is right now, it may be advisable to avoid it for the sake of your mental health!

Brian Armstrong

March 16th, 2009 at 12:04 pm

Yep…it’s downright depressing and is often fear based, trying to scare you to keep watching when in reality there is zero danger or relevance to your own life (a helicopter crashing or kidnapping for instance)!

Brian Armstrong

March 16th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

Speaking of the news being BS, check out Jon Stewart calling out Jim Cramer on his “financial news” show:
http://www.dailymotion.com/search/jim+cramer/video/x8ns1x_jon-stewart-interviews-jim-cramer_news

Matt Thomas

March 17th, 2009 at 7:23 pm

I truly despise some of the things the air on TV these days. Between reality show after reality show, compulsive celebrity stalking about who is going out with (or broken up with) who, or even news that over-exaggerates certain stories to make them seem worse than they are, I am get very sick of some of the things they try to make us watch.

I have a lot of difficulty believing that there is actually demand for some of this unintelligent garbage. This just discourages me even more, since more and more of these shows are actually aired, showing that there actually IS a demand for these shows that require NO thinking.

I hate to say this, but I think the only way around this is to somehow find a way to profit from this, or identify a new and emerging trend that will replace this. I suppose internet TV as you mentioned is probably the best bet.

Flint

March 26th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

I am Flint who is an enthusiastic guy and have developed a site called http://money-making-system.synthasite.com which has information about sites where you could make money. I have written every single word on the site by my life experience.

Phil

April 8th, 2009 at 6:38 pm

I’ll bet you the pitch had more to do with how cheap such a show could be made than anything else

bet they thought plenty of college stoners would watch it

thinking that through, being able to put something like that on air and collect even mediocre ad revenue, probably way more profitable that producing some slick intellectual drama

Breaking Free

Television Reaches New Low – Produces “Hot Girls In Scary Places”

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