If I Aired It!

In the ever-changing landscape of American television, this decade has held one constant, and that is that no matter how deviant, no matter how degrading, no matter how completely devoid of basic human decency a television program may seem, Fox Television will come out with something ten times worse.CBS gives us Oprah; Fox gives us “The Jerry Springer Show.” NBC gives us “NYPD Blue”; Fox gives us “Cops”. ABC asks “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”; Fox asks us “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” CBS gives us “Survivor”; Fox takes us to “Temptation Island”. NBC gives us “Fear Factor”; Fox… well OK, NBC won that one.

The point is that for the past ten years it’s looked as though there was nothing too disgusting or sleazy for Fox to put on T.V. In fact disgusting and sleazy seems to be their marketing strategy. You can almost imagine this conversation going on with two Fox executives:

Executive 1: This new show is going to be called “Who Wants to Divorce a Man Swallowing a Scorpion?” We’ll offer happily married couples huge sums of money to get divorced on national television while eating dangerous arachnids.

Executive 2: Hmmm… I’m just not sure if it’s disgusting or sleazy enough. Could you show me “Venereal Disease Island” again?

Last Fall, though, it looked for a brief moment like FOX had seen the light. After pressure from local stations who said they would refuse to air it, Rupert Murdock, the head honcho over at FOX entertainment, quickly caved and pulled the plug on a controversial but much anticipated project. The project, of course, was an O.J. Simpson book/interview slated to be titled “If I Did It”, in which (SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: completing the following sentence may cause your eyes to roll so far back into your head that you are actually able to watch your own brain aneurism) O.J. Simpson explains how he hypothetically would have killed his wife and her husband had he hypothetically committed the murder, which he didn’t, hypothetically.

With a single word from Murdock, this bizarre confession from an alternate universe was entirely scrapped. The interview was canceled (I believe it was replaced by “Awkward Duets with Smokey Robinson”), the book was pulped, booksellers were compensated, the ghostwriter had to hand back his commission check, and the jerk who came up with the whole idea was taken behind a small Italian diner and shot.

No one seemed to care, either. No one demanded the people’s right to see the interview. There weren’t any free speech arguments made on talk shows. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn’t march anywhere. Even Johnny Cochran knew this project was a pile of mulch (“if the book is crap, then you must scrap”). The whole thing was dead and buried, and the will of the public not to be subjected to trash had triumphed.

Even when the story tried to emerge from its grave a couple of weeks ago, it was shot down again. Apparently there’s a boot legged copy of the book floating around, Newsweek recently published a controversial chapter, and soon the book is going to be up for sale on E-bay. Yet all of this has done little to resurrect interest in the project.

This has lead to one inevitable conclusion: PEOPLE ARE IN CHARGE OF WHAT’S ON T.V.! You have the power to choose what you watch! (SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: the following is a self righteous rant and may result in fatigue and/or severe migraines) I’m not some puritanical prude who pines for the days when Lucy and Ricky slept in separate beds. I’m not saying Television should reflect the Ten Commandments. But you know, it would be nice if it at least reflected the Geneva Convention (you can’t tell me the U.N. would sanction what goes on a t Fear Factor). I for one feel invigorated by the power of the remote. It’s time we voted for television programming with our thumb! If you don’t want to watch something, turn it off. If there’s nothing better on, read a book or go outside. Stage protests, jam the phones, write your congressmen and for the love of God, send a check to PBS!

That last one’s for me. Every year I send them ten dollars but I really don’t need another Cookie Monster fanny pack. Though, they are great for storing snacks and sodas in while I’m catching up on my latest episode of “Venereal Disease Island.”