Think today’s crop of daytime TV shows is unfit for human consumption? Wait until you see what’s coming this fall. How about:
A show where a single woman interviews three single guys and then chooses one — as her husband?
A show where people who think their spouses are cheating can have them followed by a private investigator?
A dating game in which hormone-addled teens talk about having premarital sex while their parents listen in horror offstage?
These were among the dozens of syndicated shows TV executives were biting on at the recent gathering of the National Association of Television Program Executives in New Orleans.
The syndication cycle basically plays out in four acts. First a concept is pitched to a TV studio, which signs the producers to shoot a pilot episode of the show. Next, the studio’s sales force shops the pilot to TV stations covering as much of the country as possible. Depending on how many stations agree to carry it, the show is either abandoned or gets the green light (or “firm go”) to begin production, with a launch usually timed to the new fall season.
By the time of the NATPE convention some shows had already gotten the firm go. Some, like the new relationship program starring radio shrink Dr. Laura Schlessinger, sold themselves, with bidding wars between TV stations in some cities for the right to carry the show. Others weren’t quite there yet but were hoping to do enough deals in New Orleans to put them over the top.
Among the daytime hopefuls were eight more reality-based courtroom shows, still more talk shows and a revival of the old game show “To Tell the Truth.”
But the ones that created the most buzz at New Orleans were a new breed that featured a little bit of everything: the intrigue of a dating show, the spice of a soap opera, the high jinks of a game show.
And the one that took the cake — the wedding cake, that is — was “Wed at First Sight,” which audaciously proposes to hitch a bride and groom before a studio audience, following a one-hour courtship.
If this scenario sounds a little familiar, that’s because it happened two years ago in that weird dimension known as the real world. A Minneapolis bachelor who had tired of the dating scene asked his friends to help him find a wife. The nationwide “Campaign to Elect a Mrs. David Weinlick” attracted hundreds of proposals, plenty of media coverage — and a lucky winner, who married Weinlick at the Mall of America before 3,000 onlookers.
“We talked with Dave Weinlick and his wife, Elizabeth,” said Pat Finn, the executive producer of “Wed at First Sight.” “They’re still together a year and half later and still happy. He gave me some advice on how his friends made the recommendation.”
Because daytime TV draws mainly female viewers, “Wed at First Sight” will at first have only prospective brides choosing their Mr. Right. Each contestant will be aided by the “wedding party” — friends, parents and anyone else whose advice she trusts — as well as the Web site matchmaker.com, which bills itself as “the leading online community enabling secure connections between people with similar interests and needs.”
Before each taping, the show’s producers will cull a list of potential grooms who have filled out elaborate surveys at the Web site. From a cut of 10 bachelors, the bride will reduce the field to three. Then the wedding party interrogates the three finalists, a process that’s videotaped with portions played back during the show.
The taping itself is the final mating ritual between the woman and the men — not just the usual round of “Dating Game”-styled questions but also “compatibility games,” half-serious attempts to see if she and he agree on sushi over steak, or boxers over briefs.
Finally, the moment of reckoning arrives, and the bride chooses bachelor No. 1, 2 or 3. The fellow gets down on one knee to propose and then … the show goes to commercial.
During the break — Finn said taping will cease for about an hour — the two parties consult with family and friends and decide whether to go through with it.
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And if they say yes?
“Then we do the ceremony!” Finn said. “There’s an officiant standing by.”
(The couple in the pilot episode, in fact, said “I do.” They were last spotted on the convention floor, smiling and posing for snapshots with TV executives.)
There’s no doubt “Wed at First Sight” was an easier show to pitch to a TV studio because of the media coverage surrounding Weinlick’s real-life courtship. But it was also made possible by the free-wheeling, almost-anything-goes attitude of today’s daytime TV environment.
“The experience of the last 10 years is that people will do anything on the air,” said Tim Brooks, senior vice president of research for the Lifetime cable network.
That trend actually started 20 years ago with Phil Donahue’s boundary-pushing talk show. As soap operas got steamier, talk shows began to borrow elements of the soaps and incorporate them into “relationship” shows, starting with Ricki Lake and veering off into Jerry Springer-land.
In the past two years, the phenomenal success of Judy Sheindlin’s “Judge Judy” has touched off a wave of courtroom programs.
Perhaps it was only a matter of time before some inventive TV producer figured out that court shows, talk shows, soap operas and game shows had all progressed to the point that pieces of each could be assembled in ever-daffier combinations.
That’s the thinking, for example, behind another daytime show that was being shopped around at the convention. “Cheaters” pairs the tawdriness of “Jerry Springer” with the authenticity of a TV investigative team. In “Cheaters,” spouses who think their mates are fooling around on the side can send a detective on their trail. If the gumshoe confirms the adultery, the unlucky philanderer is brought onto the show and confronted.