Catfish: The TV Show is over and that has us wondering about the future of broadcast television. Earlier this week, Variety reported that MTV was choosing to let Catfish go out to pasture. The beloved reality dating series chronicled different hopefuls looking for love and getting fooled by faceless people on the Internet that they mistakenly trusted. For so many seasons on the basic cable network, fans were tuned-in to see Nav Schulman and the rest of the crew uncover the truth about long term relationships.
One of the funniest things about Catfish: The TV Show is how tightly the concept is married to the rise of cable TV networks in the early 2000s. Catfish: The TV Show comes along at a time when things were getting ready to kick into overdrive over on MTV. In the late Aughts, Jersey Shore is cresting, True Life is having extended day in the sun due to more people never having access to the network time up while favorites like Real World and Road Rules come to define the reality component of America’s entertainment appetite. It’s not hyperbole to say that this is a perfect storm for everyone involved.
Saying goodbye to Catfish
Even good things have to come to an end though, and MTV pulling the plug on Catfish: The TV Show definitely feels like it fits the bill. One of those easy discourse markers in any given year is someone opining about the lack of music videos MTV proper. I don’t largely disagree with those takes, but it’s important to remember that even dating back to Catfish‘s heyday on MTV, there just hasn’t been that much music television in your programming strategy for more than two decades now.
Catfish, maybe more than Jersey Shore, is the shining example of what the network basically exists as now. There’s interesting dating reality show content with little in the way of playing music videos. After all, we’re not in the 90s anymore, and the viewership that MTV is focused on doesn’t really miss how things used to be. In fact, one of the ways this all functions is that none of them are actually aware of how this all gets done.
Catfish: The TV Show is over, so Nev’s selling houses now?
As is often the case in TV, the idea of a renewal being a sure thing is hopeful, at best. For shows that run as long as Catfish: The TV Show did, the chances of getting to continue get further and further away with every day that passes without a phone call from the network itself. As those days stretched on, Schulman decided that he wasn’t just going to sit there and wait for word of his execution. Instead, he was going to get into the real estate business like his dad.
“I had the sense the show wasn’t going to get renewed, but there was never anything communicated to me,” Schulman told Variety. So, he decided to use that celebrity status to try and make some sales. He’s got a couple of kids and that takes precedent over showing us the messy side of online dating.
Nev mused, “TV is unpredictable. If I’m being perfectly honest, as a responsible adult and father of three children, and someone who takes my role in this family as the provider very seriously, I thought I should have another source of income.”
Folks, that is as bleak as it gets. A basic cable TV staple basically telling us that he had to find a side hustle, in addition to being on freaking MTV? It’s enough to send the mind reeling. But, In more ways than one, This whole situation with Catfish: The TV Show really illustrates where the business of television is right now.
It’s not enough to make some of the money…
For a lot of the people running a show at these massive networks, it’s not enough to be a stable success that’ll bring in a moderate, but slightly smaller audience every year. They want a massive hit that is somehow immune to the ravages of time. There’s just one small problem with that strategy: That show basically doesn’t exist. Even forebearers in the reality TV realm have had to tweak their formula over time to maintain viewership. Far bigger franchises than Catfish have found themselves soul searching in the wake of the streaming era.
Perhaps more darkly, the cancellation of Catfish: The TV Show is another ring on the dead tree that we use to carbon date the monoculture. While streaming has offered ever more options and opened our eyes to so many great projects, It seems like the common fabric that was holding us all together was television? Or maybe movies? Either way, the fact that most people in the United States don’t congregate and talk about their favorite media anymore. (Unless it’s to dunk on it in some form or fashion…) has left us all reeling.
It increasingly feels like we have to get back to some form of commonality to have a little bit of normalcy return. Now, will that directly come from something like Catfish‘s approaches to online dating? Maybe not, but its presence certainly didn’t hurt.
(Photo Credit: MTV)
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