Stop the guest musos on reality shows!

Posted by News East Africa at 12:04 Read our previous post

South African Big Brother housemate Angelo grabbing a quick moment of screentime between all the musical acts surrounding his eviction.

Enough is enough. It happens throughout Big Brother and it's happening all the time on other reality shows too: musical guest acts that have absolutely zilch to do with the show. 

It's gone beyond the ridiculous - weekly eviction and results shows are being so dominated by musical acts they may as well not be reality shows. Big Brother ... the weekly shows featured more musicians and dancers than housemates.

So You Think You Can Dance ... I missed this week's results show but last week's results show had a guest musician too. No dancers with them - just them performing. Why?! 

If the contestants were too busy to prepare an extra number they could have had guest dancers on or dancers from previous seasons of the show - something with dancers, anything with dancers. 

Alternatively they could have had more about the reality aspect of the show - something we don't know about the contestants, extra snippets or footage, or even chatter from the audience to get their take on the dancers who were in the danger zone.

With Big Brother the possibilties are endless. Opinions from psychologists, sexologists, body language experts, comic commentary, hook-ups with nominated housemate's families, themed collages of the housemates during the week, fast facts on the housemates, insights from viewers. 

If you ask me the musical acts are a total cop-out. The only explanation for them is that it's much easier to get a musician to perform than it is to put together a juicy reality package.

It's a natural fit for a show like Idols - that's okay - so long as things remain about the contestants and their singing but it's a big problem on other shows. If there weren't so many other music shows you could argue that it's good for musicians and that we get to see them etc but there are tons of music shows and reality TV also needs exposure. Right now it's getting upstaged.

A plea to reality creators: please, please, please give us more reality!