My two favorite network TV shows (actually, the only two network TV shows I watch) are back, and with an extra dose of diversity. First up, Survivor is back and as I’m sure you know if you’ve kept reading past the word Survivor they’ve divided the contestants by ethnic background. In order to do that, they had to find 5 asian-americans, 5 african-americans, 5 hispanic-americans, and 5 white-americans to appear. They have never had any problems with the white-americans, but they had to recruit extra hard for the others. Interestingly enough the 3 teams that weren’t made up of white-americans immediately worried about representing their people, as if 5 random strangers thrown together for the entertainment benefit of all americans really did somehow represent everybody of that ethnic background.
The Amazing Race launched it’s tenth season last night and while not explicit, they too seem to have worked overtime to assure diversity. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The problem is that after Survivor voted off a black man, The Amazing Race took only 1 show to get rid of the Moslem AND the Hindu teams – with Phil reminding us when the Moslems got the ax halfway through the show that they promised the contestants surprises. Yeah, like early handicappers were picking those two guys to go all the way.
I suppose it’s a sign of progress that a big network like CBS can go out of their way to have minorities suffer embarassing losses on their flagship reality series without worrying about repurcussions.
