I have a feeling that if the quiz show scandals would have happened today, no one would care!
I'm afraid I agree with you. Frankly, I think it's already happened. A few years ago, there was an incredibly minor scandal in the talk show world when it was discovered that some of the guests that appeared on the shows (even the \"classier\" ones like Oprah) were just making stuff up and lying about their problems just to get on television. It had become a game for them, and some had even been on multiple shows with different problems each time.
Critics said we could have another scandal similar to the quiz shows on our hands....and no one cared.
FOX promised that they'd be much more careful about screening future reality contestants after the Who Wants to Marry A Multimillionaire fiasco, and went on to pick a couple with children to play \"Temptation Island\" and an already married woman to play \"Married By America\".........and no one cared.
One final OT example that, in my mind, proves that the era of any kind of television standards is nearly over: Last night, Comedy Central ran \"South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut\" -- a cartoon that flirted with an NC-17 rating for outrageous language and nearly pornographic visuals -- exactly as it aired in the theaters. The only cuts were for commercial breaks. I've been listening, and I haven't heard one peep of protest from the vast Moral Right that's supposed to be protecting us from this stuff.
OK, one more: On the new TNN cartoon block, we're reminded every half hour that \"This show is rated CFFA: Cartoons For F**kin' Adults\". In a climate where this kind of thing goes unchecked, who's going to care that some snotty nosed twentysomething got to play two reality games in the same year?
