One of the local TV stations trailed a piece for the 10 o’clock news. Naturally I’m going to comment without having actually watched the program, but that doesn’t seem to adversely affect most bloggers, so… The terrifying dilemma facing the residents of Minnesota, they probably breathlessly reported, is that the Vikings are playing the Packers (the most sacred of games) on Christmas Eve. In case the dilemma isn’t immediately obvious, the problem is that Christians may be torn between the football and the other activities that may be expected of them on the 24th.

I’ll admit I’m pretty unsophisticated, religiously speaking, but I fail to see the dilemma. If you’re a godless heathen (me) then you’ll be watching the football (me), and if you’re a Christian (not me) you’ll be extremely happy to be at church (also not me). The only real source of concern is if you are uncertain in your faith, and I’m going to guess that my local news channel didn’t have a report on the conflict of ancient faith with commercial modernity in contemporary Christianity.

Yet another non-news, time-between-ads-to-fill fluff piece. As you would expect from a multi-Emmy winning station.

A couple of days ago I accidentally saw a trailer for ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (I’m not providing links; I don’t want to encourage you). Now I’m a fan of reality TV. In the UK some years ago there was an excellent show that took you behind the scenes at Heathrow airport. You were seeing a week of work edited down to 30 minutes, so of course it didn’t show the hours of tedium inherent in any job, but within that constraint it was, well, real. Contrast that with Survivor: Trip to the Mall or whatever the latest installment is. Some people may find this stuff amusing, and given the ratings apparently millions of people do. And fair enough, but it’s not reality.

Anyway, I have to admit that even though I’ve only been able to tolerate one episode, EM:HE (I made that up, but it’s kind of cool don’t you think?) is my favorite. Not because of the entertainment, but because it helps people who need help. The trailer described an episode where the team radically remodelled a family’s house to protect their daughter, who has some medical condition that makes her allergic to sunlight. Instead of spending millions of dollars finding someone to help Donald Trump berate somebody for being less of a tosser than ‘The Donald’, they did some good for someone who has to live in a distressing version of actual reality.

So I was feeling warm and fuzzy toward this programming style. Not something you’d expect to last, right? Sure enough, today I see some nonsense from Fox called “Who’s My Daddy?” The conceit of this show is that a group of middle-aged men are gathered together, and a (pretty, of course) young lady has to work out which of them is her long-lost father. I’ve seen shows that brought estranged or otherwise separated family members together, and while the use of it as entertainment was somewhat disturbing, they coverd the background pretty quickly to get to the point. And the point of course was to do a nice thing for someone, and let us all share in the “Aah” moment.

But to make a gameshow out of such fare? A freaking GAMESHOW?!