Sarah Hughes, a UK freelance writer who has recently moved to New York, takes a look at US TV's summer of reality. And it's not a pretty sight:
Bruce Springsteen was right. This is not the sort of thought I'm normally prone to but that was before I moved to America and discovered US summer television scheduling.
OK so British summer scheduling isn't great. Talk to Me telegraphs plot developments three hours before they appear; Sex, The City and Me had a great cast let down by a banal script; Big Brotheris still meandering on with no termination in sight but, trust me, these look like masterpieces in comparison to America's 57 channels of nothing. Yes, even Big Brother.
So who is to blame for this scheduling nightmare? It's tempting, at first, to say reality TV king Mark Burnett. Burnett, the man behind Survivor and The Apprentice, has three reality shows on air at the moment. There's Fox's On The Lot in which would-be film directors subject the likes of Carrie Fisher, Brett Ratner and Garry Marshall to their supposed masterpieces. Fisher, Ratner and co sit there, shell-shocked, looking as though they want to strangle Burnett and executive producer Steven Spielberg for getting them sucked into this slow-moving mess.
But On The Lot looks like ground-breaking television in comparison to Burnett's other two shows: Pirate Master and Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?
The former, which can also - unfortunately - be seen on Sky, features a bunch of delusional idiots attempting to channel the spirit of Johnny Depp via the talent of Orlando Bloom.
The latter is a quiz show in which, yes, a bunch of American adults take on a bunch of fifth graders at general knowledge. A small confession: this one is actually worth watching for the looks of disbelief on the kids' faces at how stupid some of the adults are. It also raises the important question: do we become increasingly less intelligent as we get older? It's probably best not to try and answer that one.
And, for all Burnett's flaws at least he is not responsible for NBC's new reality TV series, Age of Love, which began in the US on Monday night and will undoubtedly be turning up on either Living or Channel Five some time soon.
On the surface Age of Love is about the 2003 Wimbledon finalist Mark Philippoussis's search for love. This being a reality TV show, however, the Scud's search is not a simple one. Instead this serial dater of younger women finds himself presented with a group of attractive fortysomethings and told he must choose one as his partner.
The crestfallen, slightly disbelieving look on his face almost makes the programme worthwhile. But only almost, because the programme's next trick is to introduce a bunch of twentysomethings into the dating game and then stand well back as the manicured claws fly.
Nothing makes for great television as much as watching desperate forty-year-olds humiliate themselves on national television to the obvious enjoyment of their vacuous younger rivals.
Meanwhile Philippoussis mutters about the older women's conversation skills while surreptitiously eyeing up the younger constestants' legs.
That NBC have chosen to market Age of Love as a 'social experiment' probably tells you all you need to know about the mind-set of the executives behind this truly dire show, certainly watching it is enough is enough to make you feel like renouncing coachpotatohood.
Forget Springsteen, a summer of American television might yet be enough to make me break the habits of a lifetime, follow the Why Don't You gang's advice and switch off that television in order to do something less boring instead.
