Fox asks adoptees 'Who's Your Daddy?'

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2004-12-18 02:49pm

Is it customary for O'Reilly and company to complain when this sort of stuff airs, or do they usually sit it out?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-18 02:53pm

Remember, folks: the same masses of mindless TV viewers who have catapulted Reality TV to the top of the ratings are "The People" whose moral authority is invoked in order to legitimize governments and social policies

Faqa · Post by **Faqa** » 2004-12-18 02:57pm

And the censors don't TOUCH this shit. Emotional pornography is left untouched, while the slightest boob-flash or swear word and they're all over it....

Personally, I think the bottom lies around a show I've heard of that has CHILDREN SWITCHING FAMILIES, with cameras around, of course....

Fuck.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-18 03:19pm

The censors don't touch it because it's not sexual. It's possible to be depraved in an ethical sense by being incredibly exploitative and crass, but American right-wingnuts care only about sexuality and nudity. You can expose children to any kind of sick ideology you want according to these wackos, but not to sexuality or nudity.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2004-12-18 03:41pm

Wicked Pilot wrote:Is it customary for O'Reilly and company to complain when this sort of stuff airs, or do they usually sit it out?

'Course not. The No Truth Zone (tm) and O'Lielly's pretentious "offended on others' behalf" schtick only applies to extreme anecdotal cases of children being screwed by sinners (government bureaucracy, gays, &c.). Discussing the degredation of American popular culture by the conglomerate that employs him is verboten.

dr. what · Post by **dr. what** » 2005-01-04 01:28pm

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but this stupid show was finally aired....

NEW YORK - The network that brought you Homer Simpson took fatherhood to a whole new level Monday night. Fox aired a tear-soaked reality special, "Who's Your Daddy?", that reunited a woman with the former Marine and his old high school girlfriend who gave her up for adoption about 30 years ago.

"Thank you for having me!" the woman, T.J. Myers, said between sobs at the end of the show, which drew howls of protest from adoption advocates. She earned $100,000 for correctly identifying her birth father from seven impostors.

The program oddly echoed ABC's "The Bachelor" series, with T.J. set up in a luxurious mansion among male suitors. It probably wasn't coincidental that she was a buxom blonde, slightly ditzy, wearing a slinky black evening dress.

She asked the men questions — what two things would your friends say to describe you? — and put them through moves on a dance floor because Fox told her that her dad was a champion disco dancer back in the day.

The show even tried to establish its own catch phrase, when T.J. had to eliminate contenders: "I feel like you could be my father," she told those who stayed.

More tears flowed during the show's 90 minutes than in two months' worth of soap operas. It had all the elements of prime reality cheese: burning candles; T.J. watching her potential dads on a hidden camera; her father standing in silhouette behind a door, his identity waiting to be revealed.

Down to the final two, T.J. asked both men why they had given her up for adoption when she was six weeks old. They both told her stories — the impostor even handed her a stuffed animal — but only one was the truth.

If she had chosen an impostor, he would have received the $100,000.

"T.J's father has a surprise that will blow her away!" Fox announcers said, building up the suspense. The surprise was ultimately meeting her birth mom, who's no longer with her birth father, and his three other daughters.

Except for a brief mention at the beginning of the show, the man and woman who raised T.J. from infancy weren't discussed. That's one of the reasons the special drew outrage from adoption advocates, who worried it would trivialize a deeply emotional experience. The National Council for Adoption pleaded with Fox's 182 affiliates not to air it.

Only one station, WRAZ-TV in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., kept it off the air. Instead, the North Carolina station ran an independently produced special with people talking about their adoption experience.

"We just don't think adoption is a game show," said Tommy Schenck, WRAZ-TV general manager.

Bill Lamb, general manager at WDRB-TV in Louisville, Ky., didn't have high hopes for the show, but didn't want to judge it before seeing it.

"I think it's just another one in a long line of tasteless Fox shows," Lamb said. "How do you differentiate one from another anymore?"

Fox Television Studios has filmed six separate "Who's Your Daddy?" shows, but the network has not yet scheduled any of the others to air.
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Wow--only one station actually had something resembling scruples.....

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » 2005-01-04 01:43pm

Superman wrote:How long until "The Running Man" comes to TV?

Those boys in the Executive Branch are still struggling to come up with a solution to their problem of what to do with 'detainees' that they don't want to bring to trial ...

The Running Jihadi!

Conan O'Brien runs suspected terrorists through a thrilling gauntlet manned by retired professional athletes armed with a variety of deadly implements.

Axis Kast · Post by **Axis Kast** » 2005-01-04 04:07pm

I thought much the same thing - another tasteless, two bit reality show.

Until, that is, I read a recent editorial in Newsday from an individual who had been adopted. She argued that while the premise of the show was essentially tasteless, it at least gave one individual the extensive financial resources necessary to locate her lost loved one. "Finder's fees" can range up to $3,000 or more, depending on the length and comprehensiveness of the search process.

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2005-01-04 04:24pm

I'm not sure how much it costs just to even open adoption records. Most states have them sealed by court order, and it takes a court order to open them.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2005-01-04 09:14pm

If it makes anyone feel a little better about humanity, the show was apparently a flop.

Link

Fox's Daddy Doesn't Draw Crowd

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/4/2005 11:21:00 AM

Fox's much-maligned Who's Your Daddy reality special was no match for "Who's your top college-football team?" -- the Nokia Sugar Bowl Monday night -- or Fear Factor on NBC, or Still Standing on CBS, for that matter.

All the controversy surrounding the show, which paid a woman $100,000 for the privilege of having to choose her real birth father from among eight possibilities, wasn't enough to drive many of the curious to the spectacle. since she wound up picking correctly, she and Fox and viewers were spared the sight of the teary-eyed woman investing all that emotional energy in the wrong dad.

CBS was the top network for the night, with a 5.5 rating/14 share average, primarily on the strength of new outings of sitcoms Raymond, Two & a Half Men and CSI Miami. NBC was a close second with a 5.3/13 for Fear Factor; Las Vegas; which had a strong second place at 9-10 with a 5.3/12; and the premiere of Medium, which ran a strong second to CSI at 10.

ABC was third with a 4.6/11 for the game, in which Auburn completed an undefeated season and staked some claim to the top spot, though the actual BCS Champion will be decided Tuesday night between USC and Oklahoma.

Fox came in fourth with a 2.2/5 for Daddy and a repeat of That 70's Show. As is the case with most reality "payoff" shows--ones where there is a "reveal" of somekind at the end--Daddy built steadily toward the unveiling, from a 1.8/5 in its first half hour, to a 2.2/6 its second, to a 2.9/7 for its third and last.

UPN came in fifth with a 1.5/4 for new episodes of One on One, Half & Half, Girlfriends, and Second Time Around. The WB was sixth with a 1.0/2 for repeats of 7th Heaven and Everwood.

Which probably means they'll try it again, but with midgets, a year later.