A herper's reality check on 'reality' TV
By Jeff Barringer · October 1, 2010 1:01 pm
There's a new breed of animal television show out there, and it's not your friend.
When I was growing up in the '60s and '70s, we had three whole TV channels to chose from -- at least til PBS came along and made it four. On Sunday nights in our house it was always Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom" followed by Disney. If we were real lucky after that there might even be a Jacques Cousteau special. I can almost hear Marlon Perkins nasally twang "I'll be upstream in the duck blind with a pitcher of margaritas while Jim wrestles for his life with the mighty 20-foot anaconda in the river." Big stuff when you're a six-year-old kid.
Animal programming back in the day was simpler, more honest, wholesome (at least onscreen), and viewers were taught to respect animals. Marlon, Jacques, Marty Stouffer and the others of the era really cared about the animals they were working with. I guess it was a different time and a different culture then, with far fewer distractions and a lot fewer media-hours to fill.
Today, the right message about animals has gone by the wayside. While some current and recent shows carry on those traditions to an extent, like "O'Shea's Big Adventure," Nigel Marvin, and of course the late Steve Irwin, a new crop of shows is taking over. These self-described "reality" shows are about animal abuse and misery, about people with mental illness, and about using shock and gruesomeness, and the real suffering of people and animals, to attract an audience.
And if you think the people who make those shows are our friends, think again.
The people who make those shows, including the Discovery Channel, are not just making an advertising buck exploiting people with mental illnesses like "hoarder's syndrome." They're providing fodder for Ingrid Newkirk and her animal-rights ilk, who author pieces like "Hoarders: Stepping Out of Your TV Set Into Your Local Shelter" that use these kinds of shows to make anyone who keeps or even rescues animals look sick and bad. Here on kingsnake.com, the Discovery Channel and its associates are trying to co-opt you into helping Ingrid and her friends hurt pet lovers more. Two days ago, a producer of a show about "animal hoarding" tried to recruit subjects on our new community blog -- read "How many pets are too many?" to see what I'm talking about. The post itself is almost enticing, and sounds friendly enough, but mark my words, anyone on that show will be presented as an animal hoarder and will do themselves, their animals and their community a disservice by participating. The reality of this "reality TV" is they want to present you as the "biggest loser." Their sole interest is selling the show downstream. They won't care if they tear your life and family apart, they won't even care if your pets, or even you, end up dead. Matter of fact, they are liable to make a special about that, too. Hasn't Discovery done that already with at least two of their late stars? Animal hoarding is a mental illness. If you think you or a loved one has a problem with animal hoarding then I urge you to seek help from a medical professional, not a television producer.
