Television is eating itself. I suppose it was inevetable. At some point, all ideas go bad. Somewhere along the line, there is always someone who finds a way to fuck up a good thing. On the upside, that's what brought us the Nobel Peace Prize awards, so I guess there's always a silver lining.

Sadly, I am the worst kind of hypocrite. The remorseless hypocritical kind. And so while television eats itself, I hand it a spoon.

I'm an actor. I'd put actor in quotation marks, but I have to maintain a certain degree of self esteem. But suffice to say, it's a tough living. So much so that I make my actual living in a bank. It's hard to get work as an actor, and it's getting harder. And I'm contributing to my own need to suckle at the teat of big banking by being one of those idiots who watches reality television. Not a lot.

Ok, a lot. But to be fair, it accounts for an increasing amount of programming. I like to see people apply themselves and their smarts in positive ways. Not so much a Fear Factor fan, more of an Amazing Race fan.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry to all the writers and actors I know, whose opportunity to work has plummeted. I'm assuming the pendulum will swing back in our direction everyone! No need to get into the lifeboats just yet!

Now, don't get me wrong. Reality programming isn't "good" (knew I'd get some quotation marks in there). Not in the least. But frankly, it was time to give the inmates a chance to run the prison for a while. Because really, isn't it better to have something be bad without spending months, and piles of money to produce it? Because there was, and is, some really bad programming out there. Does anyone remember DataMan? Hello? Things were BAD.

I also don't think the only pre-requisite for getting on the air should be either a really badly decorated room, a penchant for eating things better left to landfill, or just a blatant desire to be on television. And as an actor, to place the reality stars in the same column as actors is a little insulting. I don't want to be a Hilton. I want to work in the field in which I am trained.

It's frustrating. I don't think being on TV makes a person any better than anyone else, but for some of us, it's WORK. You don't see people try and do this in any other field. No one's walking into a hospital and saying "I'd like to be a doctor, why not let me take a crack at some of these patients? I've seen ER, I think I could do that".

Actually, that might be a good show.