Reality or Voyeurism?

Firstly, extremely sorry about the delay in the posts... I was in Manila last week and caught a bad strain of flu... forcing me to be stuck in my hotel room for 2 days n 2 nights flat, with just the tv as company... Hence the delay in posting....

Now getting back to what I was saying... Filipino TV is reality TV heaven. Most kids in Philippines learn to say Big Brother or Banker or Wawaweee or No Deal before they can say Momma. Almost all the top rated US reality TV shows by Endemol hav Filipino versions.

From the outside, it looks like harmless entertainment - a fad that will come and go.. but as you look deeper you realize that the reality TV that I was used to seeing is fast changing its scope.
The reality TV which I can remember is KBC - (Who wants to be a millionare in Hindi) - It matched wits to emotional trauma. It was entertaining, informative and yet dignified. There was also American Idol, Apprentice etc etc, which were actually pretty good shows.

However the Reality TV shows i saw the Manila were very different. It was less of entertainment and more of exploitation. It was a sick voyeuristic sort of entertainment in seeing single moms from poor families, whose husbands have deserted them struggling to make a living and hoping for game shows to give them that instant wealth. The anchors and the cameras make all sorts of excuses to make the woman cry her heart out. Case in point - the Filipino version of Deal or No Deal I saw, the participant was a woman with 2 kids whose husband had deserted her and gone abroad. The anchor, a very popular Filipino actress, constantly encouraging her to send a message to her husband, her kids.. and even requesting her to beg to the banker to give her a better deal... Cmon... even a toddler knows that the deals are set on the basis of an pre-defined algorithm.. it has nothin to do with how many kids or husbands the player has!

The woman was sobbing and wailing throughout the show, the anchor seemed to have not an iota of conscience or regret... audiences across the Philippines (including me) watched and clapped for joy when she won some money and that was it...

How different is this form of entertainment versus the gladiators in Rome? Yes.. they had to face physical mutilation and death there, but arent we giving a similar sort of mental mutilation to the participants... Also what happens when society starts hoping on "miracles" like reality TV to give them good fortune... ? An incident happened in the Philippines in 2006 which went unnoticed in international media...

On February 4, 2006, about 30,000 people had gathered outside the PhilSports stadium to participate in the first anniversary episode of the popular ABS-CBN early afternoon television game show, Wowowee. It was scheduled at 1 pm. The football stadium was supposed to be the viewing area of people who were not able to enter the basketball stadium, where the program was supposed to be staged. The size of the crowd was significantly larger than the usual 5,000 who attended previous recordings (although the previous recordings were held at ABS-CBN studios).

It was the show's first anniversary event, and there were prizes offered including jeepneys (Philippine jitney bus), taxis and a top prize of one million pesos. According to a Philippine Daily Inquirer report, most of the victims were from the poorest parts of the Metropolitan Manila and nearby provinces, generally jobless and attracted by the show's promise of instant wealth.

This is what happens when reality TV starts getting too "real". It gets into the heads of people , leading to a form of society that becomes very escapist, non -realistic and non-decisive.

The reason why I am writing this article now, is because this new FORM of reality TV (I would say the ones made by Endemol) has entered Indian territory. Big Boss was a big success, Deal ya No Deal is still running and new shows are on the way. Although I havent seen this level of emotional exploitation in the Indian shows, it is just a matter of time before someone starts doin the Kyunki---- route for the reality TVs also.

So what do we do about all this?

Well for starters, stop watching such crappy shows and use more of the internet :)
Secondly, try to find out ways to break the code... for example, if you guys have seen Deal or No Deal, its very very obvious that its a very simple probability problem.

Find the value that you can expect to earn based on the number of remaining suitcases and their associated cash amounts. Not surprisingly, this is the expected value.

At the beginning of Deal or No Deal, the contestant is presented with 26 suitcases that contain the amounts shown in the previous image, and the expected value can be calculated from the following equation:

E(x) = (0.1*1/26)+(1*1/26)+(5*1/26)

If no cases have been opened, then this value computes to approximately $131,477.54 (for the US version).

You mathematicians out there will already have noticed that the expected value for Deal or No Deal is simply the arithmetic mean, or more simply, the average dollar amount remaining in the cases. Risk aside, accepting a “deal” for less than the mean should generally be regarded as a gutless, weak decision, and the contestant should be ridiculed accordingly. However ALWAYS the banker gives the contestant a deal which is significantly higher than the mean - thats when you close the deal and call it a game.

Now this should also match with how the mean is weighted. For example, if the contestant has 5 cases left that contain the following amounts: $100, $400, $1000, $50,000, and $300,000. The banker has offered her a cool $80,000 to get the hell off stage,what should she do?

A quick calculation reveals that the mean of the remaining amounts is $70,300. The banker’s offer is $80,000, which represents only roughly a 13.8% increase over the mean.

Look a little closer at the reality of the situation. 80% of the remaining briefcases have at least $30,000 less than the banker’s proposed amount in them. The only guaranteed way she can do better than the proposed amount is to actually be holding the $300,000 case, because if she were to remove more cases and reveal amounts less than $300,000, the banker’s offer would likely go up to compensate for the increasing mean. Keep in mind, however, that there’s only a 20% probability of this happening!

So there you take a judgement call and close the deal.

Get more people to know about it.. and someday, someone will walk into Deal ya no Deal with a calculator and walk out with a smirk on his/her face... trust me, that will spell doom for the reality TV industry..

Till then... ill manage with my laptop and my comic collection...