Any Idiot Can Have a Reality Show

Adventures in Sunderland

So now it turns out that Laurence and Marianne Sunderland had cut a deal with Magnetic Entertainment in Los Angeles to produce a ‘reality show’ based on the Sunderland family and their compulsive desire to sail around the world alone. (The 17year old brother did it last year).

The title of the show was Adventures in Sunderland.

The usual response by the tongue-clucking crowd of ‘how terrible’ was all over the media.

Parents and child experts had the same nauseated reaction to the news that the Sunderlands, a daredevil sailing family, had reportedly begun filming a reality show four months ago at their home in Thousand Oaks, California. The Christian couple has seven children, all home-schooled, and an eighth on the way. Abby’s older brother had also previously circumnavigated the globe.

Please!

Richard Henne who pretended to put his kid into a balloon, remember him? And those two idiots who tried to break into the White House formal dinner party? Yeah, I saw them two weeks ago on TODAY, which had an ‘exclusive’ interview with them.

The TODAY show exclusive interview was of interest because it turns out that they are in fact going to star in their own reality show, The Real Housewives of DC, which airs on Bravo, which is owned by NBC, which also produces the Today Show.

Quelle Surprise.

So let’s not be so quick to condemn the Sunderlands, (or the Hennes, for that matter).

Their mistake was not that they wanted to have their own reality show (who doesn’t?)

Their mistake was that they didn’t understand what the American people (and the networks) crave in a reality show.

The first rule of a successful reality show is that it has to be about ‘average’ people (someone who single-handedly sails around the world is hardly ‘average’).  The show has to be about things that average people can relate to on a day to day basis. Like being fat and losing weight, or making cupcakes, or how to handle obstreperous children (all the basis of reality shows – and successful ones!) No, seriously. That’s reality!

Laurence, listen to me!

If you want to know what sells for a reality show, you have a machine in your living room that is delivering to you real-time information on what every cable channel is buying.  Turn it on! Watch it!

As you live on a boat, you probably don’t watch a lot of TV….

What you will see is that every successful reality show is about ‘average people’, that is, people that the ‘folks at home’ can relate to as ‘just like us’.  This is what America loves.  People just like us.  Just look at who we elect, for crying out loud. Geniuses? Nope. Average folks just like us… That is how television has destroyed electoral government, but that is for another blog. This one is about telling you how to make some money.

So get your daughter out of the boat. No one, and I mean no one at home can possibly relate to single handing a 40 foot boat across the Indian Ocean in a 40 knot storm. Get your daughter home and start feeding her ice cream and muffins and hot dogs and KFC. Get her weight up around 220 pounds.  You know, so the average American can feel good about seeing her on TV.

Now, get your family off the boat. Have you ever (ever?) seen a Reality Show about boats.. sail boats? Ever?

Yachting and ‘average Americans’ don’t go together.

At all.

I know, I read Cruising World. I know you are not millionaires.  In fact, I read you did this because you were broke.  Well, right idea, wrong approach.  Lose the boat!

Get yourself an average American home in some amorphous suburb that looks like everywhere else in America. Ever see Wife Swap?  Ever see Wife Swap take place on the Upper West Side in Manhattan? Of course not!

You and your wife already have 8 children for crying out loud. Have you ever heard of Jon and Kate Make 8? Of course not, you have been on a boat. Well, you have an even better reality show: Marianne and Laurence make 10. It doesn’t have the same ring as Jon and Kate and eights, but maybe if you slur your wife’s name a bit, Larry and Maryenne make Ten. That’s better. And now all you have to do is… just live a normal life and film it. Voila! TV for the masses! Who needs the boat?

Is your wife a dwarf? Are you? Too bad. If you’re a dwarf that is all it takes to get your own reality show.  And if you’re a dwarf, or have one in your family, all you then have to do is go shopping (see how they can’t reach the Cheerios!), or make dinner (a step ladder to the stove. Hysterical). You don’t see Dwarf Family Sails Around The World, do you?

Of course not.

So stop putting your children at risk…

Just cut off your legs….