The most sick 'reality TV' show yet?

[cwej]

Taken from Digitalspy:

Endemol makes kidney competition show
Wednesday, May 30 2007, 10:03 BST

By Dave West

Endemol is making a television show in which three young patients will compete to win a kidney transplant.

The new programme from the Big Brother producer, which launches in Holland on Friday, will see a dying woman pick which of the competitors to give it to. The woman has terminal cancer and has been named only as Lisa.

The Big Donor Show contestants all currently receive dialysis treatment for renal problems. The show will also allow viewers to tell Lisa who they think she should pick with text messages.

The broadcaster which is airing the programme, BNN, has insisted it will highlight the shortage of organ donors and encourage people to come forward.

But Reiner Hofmann, from the Dutch Transplant Foundation, said it was “a scandal”. He declared: “It is no better than selling organs — they are taking advantage of people in a desperate situation for entertainment.”

The new show is reportedly an idea from John de Mol, a founder of Endemol who sold it in 2000 but recently bought part of it back.

That is just BEYOND shocking to me. I cannot believe it's actually being made.

[K@ne]

Yeah I was reading about that today, I can't believe it either. I know we can't stop it, but I absolutely would NOT watch it out of principle.

[David]

I read it and I don't think I could watch it either, it's all so morbid!

[delirium]

How is it "BEYOND SHOCKING" that there is a chance someone could have a prolonged life as the result of a TV show when every year we watch human freak shows with obvious mental health issues for our enjoyment?

It's all about taking a different viewpoint innit?

[wendy the goat]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6699847.stm

[Halli]

Jodie Marsh getting married is worse :D

[cwej]

How is it "BEYOND SHOCKING" that there is a chance someone could have a prolonged life as the result of a TV show when every year we watch human freak shows with obvious mental health issues for our enjoyment?

It's all about taking a different viewpoint innit?

Because they shouldn't be being chosen as the most 'rightful' to the kidney by a TV audience.

I'm not saying the contestants shouldn't have a right to a kidney - I'm saying we're talking about 3 people who are potentially DYING and us choosing who should be given the right to live. :|

That's beyond shocking for me.

[K@ne]

And giving viewers a hand in deciding who doesn't get it is just way too cruel a concept for me.

[David]

And how crushing must it be to anyone to be given the chance of something that can potentially save their life, only to have it taken away from them, it can't help their long term prospects!

[delirium]

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

[cwej]

And how crushing must it be to anyone to be given the chance of something that can potentially save their life, only to have it taken away from them, it can't help their long term prospects!

A good point that I hadn't really thought of. I mean I've seen contestants hit rock-bottom on reality TV because they've lost (particularly in the US shows where they're fighting for a million dollars)... to have the chance of LIFE taken away from you?¬? It's just incredible that anyone could think this was a good idea.

[Sheena]

It sounds FABULOUS to me

I say NEXT we chuck 20 people in a house, one with AIDS and they have to have sex with someone EVERY 24 hours and see if they get it

[cwej]

:D


























So you don't approve then.

[Sheena]

Well of course I don't...it's ridiculous

How do people who have been on waiting lists for ages feel about this ? Yknow, its ALL A BIT ODD

[K@ne]

Sheena thinks he's joking, but Endemol are probably lurking on Moopy right now, looking for next season's programming.

[Sheena]

Sheena thinks he's joking, but Endemol are probably lurking on Moopy right now, looking for next season's programming.

I know Im going to be sat there all night thinking about titles...

[delirium]

It sounds FABULOUS to me

I say NEXT we chuck 20 people in a house, one with AIDS and they have to have sex with someone EVERY 24 hours and see if they get it

Not far off...


Wannabes queued up to conceive a baby with a stranger live on air for a £100,000 prize. The show was a spoof, but what does it say about reality TV?

It started as a challenge - to come up with the ultimate tasteless reality TV show and test the boundaries of the format.

But in just eight weeks, "Let's Make a Baby" came dangerously close to becoming a real show.

Hundreds of reality TV hopefuls jammed the phone lines when the show advertised for contestants, and TV channels from all over the world offered vast sums of money to buy the rights to the series.

"Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine we would get that far with such little effort," says the programme's producer and director, Helen Sage.

The undercover experiment was for BBC Three's current affairs series Mischief. The programme's makers came up with the most "tasteless and morally dubious" idea they could, and a fake production company to sell it.

Let's Make a Baby would centre around contestants - all strangers - living in a "fertility house", with the least attractive being voted out each week. The remaining two couples would then have a race to conceive a child and win £100,000 each.

Comedian Danny Robins was bought in to sell the show
The idea was first pitched to focus groups, all of which agreed it was morally questionable but said they would watch it. "It's completely offensive," said one group member. "Would I watch it? Yes."

More than 200 people - including a gay man who was up for the challenge of trying to have sex with a female - applied to be a contestant. They were not told the show was a fake until after the auditions.

Real reality stars also bought into the idea of the show. Makosi Musambasi and Craig Coates from Big Brother 6 agreed to host it.

Finally, a party was put on at Europe's biggest TV sales fair in Cannes to pitch the fake idea to TV channels from all over the world and test their reaction. Disturbingly, it created a real buzz and several offers came in.

"As a TV producer, I was really interested in the question of how low my industry would go in its bid to attract viewers and attention, the answer is very low indeed," says Ms Sage.

Professor David Wilson, who walked out as a consultant on Big Brother for ethical reasons, says the premise of Let's Make a Baby is morally repugnant and all about cheapening life, but he is not surprised that it attracted so much interest.

"Reality TV is not only reinventing the freak show, it's about bedlam," he says. "It's the TV equivalent of slowing down to get a better look at the accident on the other side of the motorway. It's about getting a view of other people's misery.

"Those who take part are considered odd or bizarre for wanting to do so, but they are merely products of a society that now holds fame above anything else. All cultural reference points are now rooted in being a celebrity, and not attached to having an intrinsic skill."

He says there should be an independent body to regulate reality TV, and is also critical of the psychologists and other academics who take part in the shows and "endorse the programmes with a fig leaf of credibility".

One person accused of taking reality TV to new lows is Big Brother 6 contestant, Kinga Karolczak. Her drunken antics with an empty wine bottle prompted a frenzy of complaints to media regulator Ofcom. Hoping to use the show to boost her singing career, she now feels a victim of reality TV.

"One thing that was stupidly edited has ruined my life," she says.

But the prize of large audiences and the chance of a big reward take over people's moral compass, says Alan Hayling, head of documentaries at the BBC.

"Very intelligent people are operating in a moral vacuum," he says. "The moral of the tale of Let's Make a Baby is, sadly, that it is terribly, terribly easy, over only eight weeks, to show how low reality might go."

So what is the future of reality TV? Will the public lose its appetite for it, will programme makers get a conscience? Neither, and things could get far more extreme, says Professor Wilson.

"The limits of this type of TV are limitless. The other year there was a huge web audience for a film on the net of hostages being beheaded. It is about how deep and depraved our imaginations can go."

And as for Let's Make a Baby? A Dutch television company is currently making a reality TV show called I want your baby, not your love. In it, men compete to be the one to donate their sperm to a single woman who wants a baby but not a boyfriend. Not quite the same, but close enough.

[cwej]

AIDS1 (Am I Dying Series 1)

[cwej]

Bless Makosi - she is a publicity grabbing WHORE isn't she :D

[David]

Hoax or backtrack?


AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch reality television show in which a woman had to decide one of three contestants to whom she would donate a kidney was a hoax, the programme makers said on Friday.

The show, which the programme makers had said was intended to focus on the shortage of donor organs in the Netherlands, was condemned by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende ahead of transmission and sparked controversy worldwide.

[belgo]

I'm pretty sure that was the plan all along. She was an actress, but the three contestants all really needed a donor organ.

Their publicity stunt definitely worked and probably even better than they had ever imagined.

[Agnetha]

I somehow just didn't believe it in teh first place... It all seemed a BIT MUCH