Blurring reality

A story in the Google news cache on Survivor, CBS's never-ending reality series set in designer jungles and swamps, opines: "[Survivor is] less a reality series in the traditional sense and more a game show with a long-term focus."

Which sets off some deep thoughts...or some shallow reflections, depending on your POV. Game Show Newsnet, which trounced me and several other sites in the recent About.com Readers' Choice Awards, has long devoted most of its coverage to competition reality series like Survivor, not traditional studio-based game shows.

There's something to be said for this approach. Many reality series are just game shows dragged out of the studio and "enlivened" (or deadened) with a lot of bitching between the contestants. Producers know traditional gamers skew ancient, but staging a game show in a jungle or a kitchen or a burned-out warehouse magically de-grays the demos. So why don't I follow Game Show Newsnet and cover those series as if they were just game shows relocated to some silly locale? Cash Cab puts people in a taxi with some cheesy lights in the roof, after all.

All I can plead is personal preference. I get bored with the trappings of Survivor and other reality series. I like plain competition served up straight in a studio, or what amounts to a studio. Forget the exotic locales and the personal back-and-forth between the contestants. All that stuff just doesn't interest me.