Seven Oaks Magazine.

Last week, I had an idea for a new Reality TV show: in one big room, gather up a selection of pretentious television critics, sociologists and post-modernists and have them talk about the aesthetic, social and artistic impact that the Reality TV wave has had; each week, one of them would be voted out of the room to spend the rest of his or her life on some desert island. It’s not that I think that the show would be entertaining – I just think we’d be better off if all those people were living on some desert island.

It’s true that the complaints about the effects of Reality TV on television culture in general aren’t totally unwarranted. There is a certain Horsemen-of-the-Apocalypse quality to fare such as Fox’s wife-swapping Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy or the tragic Swan. I admit that I do think it’s fair to conjecture as to what depths the trend might sink before bottoming out (my personal guess on this score? Paxil House: 15 depressives and obsessive-compulsives are locked in a giant mansion with no hand soap, 12 real prescriptions and 3 bottles of placebos. Expect teary, panicked or monotonous one-on-one confessionals).

But to complain endlessly about this bottom-of-the-barrel, becleavaged decline of civilization is to miss the fact that television is offering some real, intelligent, inspired and progressive contributions to the much-maligned, small-screen medium. Last Sunday’s Emmy awards saw top honours in their categories go to the profoundly engaging and forward-thinking Sopranos (best dramatic series, best supporting actress in a dramatic series Drea de Matteo, best supporting actor in a dramatic series Michael Imperioli) and Jon Stewart’s hilarious, Bush-skewering Daily Show (best variety series). Both shows trade on intelligence, exposing hypocrisy, and challenging viewers instead of pandering. And both are products of the same breakdown in television responsible for Reality TV.

It’s been years since the advent of cable channels like HBO (Home Box Office) broke up the monopolies held by the big networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) over the airwaves and shrunk the sizes of audiences across the board. Television has, irrevocably, moved away from the era when every family on the block was watching the same show at the same time – today, it’s unlikely that the same show is being watched in different rooms of the same house. The outstanding ability in recent years of shows like Survivor and American Idol to pose as shared cultural experiences, and the ability of any show with boobs in it to draw in reasonably-sized audiences has led the networks to use Reality TV as a means of halting the process of balkanization. But while it’s true that the ever-shrinking audiences watching major television stations are leading some to pander, it’s been pointed out by many that the proliferation of channels and airspace has led to the survival of shows that never could have made it otherwise – hence once-upstart HBO is responsible for triumphs like The Larry Sanders Show, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex in the City and Six Feet Under, while the Canadian operation Showcase has brought us the sublimely guilty pleasure that is Trailer Park Boys (and I don’t want any letters complaining that the latter poor-bashes; the only people who don’t think that those caricatures are spot on are people who grew up with money).

Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is an interesting twist on the breakdown story. It’s been years now since CBS wooed a disgruntled David Letterman from 12:30 at NBC to 11:30 against Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show, breaking NBC/Johnny Carson’s decades-long monopoly of late night variety television (for more on this, check out Bill Carters fascinating – if, paradoxically, tedious – book, Late Shift). In the aftermath, we’ve seen everything from the grotesque (Magic Johnson’s short-lived show, or Jimmy Kimmel) to the sometimes engaging (Politically Incorrect with Bill “Why-do-people-think-he’s-left-wing-he-continues-to-defend-the-Vietnam-War” Maher). For the most part, the newly-proliferated late nights spots have featured sycophantic, mediocre entries – I remember listening with particular mirth when a commentator likened Johnson’s train wreck of a show to Joe Flaherty’s Sammy Maudlin Show skit on SCTV.

But the breakdown of NBC’s grasp on late night has created a television economy wherein a progressive, intelligent show like Stewart’s can be a “flagship show” (according to Comedy Central management) for a small network as well as an enormously successful syndication effort showing on channels like Canada’s right-wing CTV. With respect to his success in syndication, Stewart in fact owes to the precedent set by African-American comedian and late night host Arsenio Hall, who, before the Leno-Letterman feud, took on Johnny Carson with a syndicated show aimed at a younger, blacker audience.

So the same breakdown that has series developers thinking up new lows in the realm of Reality TV has also brought the medium great highs in past years, most notably creator David Chase’s deserving winner, The Sopranos.

It seems that both good and bad can come from chaos – or, more accurately, the break-up of monopoly. I think that, at times like these, it’s useful to sit back and reflect on TV legend and Price is Right host Bob Barker’s immortal words: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer/ Things fall apart/The centre can not hold/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” Wait, was that Bob Barker? It might have been Tony Soprano. Or the Blind Date guy.