WESTERN civilization is apparently on the brink of collapse, and once again we can blame Fox television's Mike Darnell.
Widely acknowledged as one of the most talented reality programmers in town, the normally media-shy TV executive behind "American Idol," "Joe Millionaire" and, yes, even 1995's "Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?" has cast himself as the carnival barker for a new reality show that he jokes could push the culture over the edge. It's called "The Moment of Truth," and it premieres in late January.
A Colombian version of the show, which asks contestants increasingly personal questions while they are monitored by a polygraph, was abruptly yanked off the air this year when a woman revealed she'd hired someone to kill her husband. It's anybody's guess whether Fox's American version will be so lucky with its contestants.
"I've lived with the end of Western civilization thing my whole life," said Darnell, resting his cowboy boots upon an animal skin rug in his spacious Fox office. "I'm fine with it. For me, that's sort of how I live and breathe.
"But let me tell you, your biggest enemy on shows like these is apathy. So what you want is for people to think it's the greatest thing they've ever seen or the worst, most horrible, most terrible thing ever. That polarization is what we're after."
Darnell's imaginative antics are more significant than just one more passing program. In fact, should the strike by the Writers Guild of America drag on much longer, the title of his show could double as a description of this juncture for prime-time entertainment.
With new scripted network shows expected to start disappearing this month, a raft of new reality shows are poised to take over the precious few network openings. If scripted shows go dark and are replaced by reality, the event will make television history.
But will historians someday note of this strike that reality programming merely registered its high-water mark and then quietly retreated? Or will they view it as the beginning of a clear network shift away from scripted and toward reality? Or will the prime-time audience just keep abandoning the networks altogether?
"You reach a saturation point with these reality shows," said Brad Adgate, an analyst at the ad firm Horizon Media in New York. "I'm just not sure how many more of them the networks can put on. We'll have to see."
