Here's one for the anti-Big Brotherite.
A team of developers, marketers, salesmen, researchers or the like live together in a Commune under the watchful gaze of a few hundred cameras, while the public who watch them submit ideas for products that they wish existed.
The best idea gets to be "The Project" and the submitter also gets to move in. Then the challenge is to progress the project and at the end of a set time the public vote for a winner and a loser, (a stayer and a leaver.) This could mean the Commune balances correctly over time.
At the same time and for perpetuity, the viewers also submit other ideas and vote for the next 'Project'.
Benefits: Cool stuff gets made, ideas get attention, developers win big prizes, items advertise themselves and the voting public pays for most of the ongoing cost.-- youBuildit, Jun 29 2008 Charlie Brooker's Shit TV http://www.zeppotro...ations/shit_tv.html [zen_tom, Jun 30 2008] [+] I like it, but I can see a few problems:
1) It's going to be slow.
2) Why only one product? Have several competing teams, each picking one idea from those submitted, and competing on the basis of first-to-market or a financial target.
3) I hate the formulaic "Big Brother's Apprentice" format of kicking out the loser each show - it's dull.
4) How isolated is your "commune"? How does it cope with manufacturing, marketing etc in isolation? Set this in the real world.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 29 2008 sounds a bit like "Junkyard Wars"-- FlyingToaster, Jun 30 2008 design by committee - great.-- xenzag, Jun 30 2008 //Here's one for the anti-Big Brotherite.//
<rant>Maybe this form of entertainment isn't culturally bereft, and we should all be getting excited about the amount of 'reality' we see on our televisions.
The part that annoys me about "reality television" is that it's not real at all, it's just cheap, and shit. Really, really, unbelievably shit. And yet, people get paid to produce it, newspapers fill their pages with it, and people talk about it as if it wasn't something with absolutely no worth whatsoever.
The main problem I see with this idea is that this kind of reality television is almost exclusively crap - and I don't want to see any more of it. Ever.
I just don't think you can polish the turd of reality television in any way to make it so that it doesn't resemble the gaping wound of vacuous wank that is rapidly becoming the entirety of our televisual vista.
There's already "Dragon's Den" that largely shows footage of idiots pitching their ideas to a panel of squinting twats - and that was shit.
Even more awful, and shit to an almost artful degree is "The Apprentice" where a bunch of idiots continuously fawn over a squinting twat.
The bit I particularly hate is how these shows are so completely void of content, that they always employ some kind of edited 'summary' device where we 'review' the footage of what we've just seen, only with someone talking over it (providing a 'reaction' to their initial reaction) - essentially cramming a repeat into the original programme. I'm just not that incredibly stupid that I need to be reminded of the thing I just saw 5 minutes ago. Mark my words, it's not going to be long before we are treated to a triple-edit where we see some footage, then see someone talking over the footage describing their reaction, before a final cut of someone talking over footage of themselves talking over the footage of the initial incident "Well, when I saw myself talking about the event, I was so like 'Wow, is that me?' ... etc." - when that day comes, I will sell my tv and move into a cave.</rant>
As for the idea, meh - reality tv. [-]-- zen_tom, Jun 30 2008 So, [zen], stop beating about the bush. What do you think of reality TV?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 30 2008 Sorry Maxwell, I just get a wee bit Charlie Brooker sometimes.
But just to clarify, no, I am not an admirer of the reality television format.-- zen_tom, Jun 30 2008 (-) I don't like the "big brother" format on principle. Getting something to market is difficult enough without having one's collaborators picked for their dramatic potential, incompatibility, and exhibitionism.
There are already several reality television shows that satisfy the constraints of the subtitle. (For a very wide definition of "great".) I'm not sure the author is actually familiar with them.
Having a few camera teams follow fledgling companies around for a year might make for a dramatic documentary (e.g. comparing different management approaches, degrees of professionalism, etc.), but without the intrusive, artificial "reality TV" stuff, please.-- jutta, Jun 30 2008 Junkyard wars should be the prototype. There is a lot of juice left in that grape. I liked that the emphasis was on team problem solving and making things, not showing people getting belittled by authorities or crying and melting down.
The problem is that there is not enough Junkyard Wars on TV. Plus the emphasis of that show was big machines. I would like to see small machine / electronic stuff, with an emphasis on the kludge / MacGyver aspects. In fact, Richard Dean Anderson would be a wonderful host. Instead of a junkyard, the contestants could be loosed in private houses, offices, businesses etc to make do with what they found there.-- bungston, Jun 30 2008 [zen_tom:] Like the <rant>expression of disinterest</rant> comments on reality Tv and hope you won't mind if I wriggle just a little out of the path of the more ickky bits of venom, by saying that I intended that the drive of Big Ideas was to harness creative energy in the minds of the wider community. Surely over time, "squinting (and I must quote here to save me time in the confessional...) twats" would be all but eradicated - blood and gore come swiftly to mind precipitated by an inadequately shafted flywheel correctly directed at said S.T.
Oops, digression - I'm back. This sort of thing should grow on it's own. People yearning for the opportunity to create, will be watched (if at all possible,) by people wanting to be the first to consume. Especially if they can see it coming and being developed without them having to lift more than a phone or a credit card.
[Maxwell:] You're right about real world, originally I had thought about ways that companies would buy into the show, vying for intellectual rights etc. (Not sure if that would be possible when the whole world knows the product?) The big deal for them - and I did mention this without explaining the background - would be the ongoing advertising in terms of awareness of the projects. Though that would be a bad thing too, beacause avid watchers would also know about flaws in the design and to what degree these had been addressed.
Liked the multiple product lines, made sense and although I agree about the Apprentice naffness, there ought to be some way to refine the make up of the process and voting critera would probably change to match the needs of the inmates. Instead of "lose the least productive", the members of a team that are working well together could ask the voters for a new choice in leadership or project direction. We all know the money for these projects gets sucked through the phone.
[FlyingToaster and others:] I like the "Junkyard with a purpose" thinking. It may just tip the idea into the lap of a lazy TV Exec. (Actually that comment probably kills off any hope!)
Thanks-- youBuildit, Jun 30 2008 random, halfbakery