Most desperate thing a tv show has done for ratings?

[OneUmberJoker]

Having influencers on them

It is indeed

The video is Fallon from The Colby’s getting into a spaceship!

Emma Samms was my girl crush growing up - I cried when she got abducted 🤣 Also Dynasty, when there was a mass shooting at a wedding or something? Or when Krystal had an evil look a like 🤣 I bloody loved Dynasty!

I loved John James too 🙈

It was so good, you’d be dying to see the next instalment and then they’d have a long break and leave you with some crazy cliffhanger

810pm on a Friday. I remember being glued! I was more of a Dynasty/Colbys fan than Dallas.

Who was Alexis’s husband? Ooof he was sexy!

ETA Dexter!

For me there can only be one contender, the show Davina McCall did about Poo some years ago. The grand finale consisted of contestants competitively pooing live on stage (in cubicles of sorts), with the first to perform winning a grand. I'm scarred for life.

Bouncer's dream in Neighbours.

A lot of 1990s/early 2000s content on Channel 4 (Sex Box; The Word, TGIF, There's Something About Miriam as mentioned above... ad infinitum). Awful 'reality stars'-type programmes today. I'm a Celebrity is one of the worst - eating the animal parts, tormenting insects, etc. I was going to say that only death and dismemberment were the only boundaries remaining - but I just remembered
Gunther von Hagens and The Autopsy.

Bring back Bagpuss, that's what I say.

I think the sob story element of reality shows are pretty desperate. They get more and more extreme and it's so exploitative and cynical.

I don’t watch tv anymore but years ago I saw a show, can’t remember what it was but the host was Patrick Kielty and he ate a handful of live maggots. Utterly gross.

Definitely Rebecca Loos on that celebrity farm show. I don't think anything else comes close in terms of deliberate acts. And the fact it's still remembered with disgust shows they succeeded in their objective.

That would be an instant turn off for me.

I have no time for vacuous airheads "influencers". They do the opposite of influencing me.

Oh yes Dex Dexter 😍

Anything that uses nudity or sexual content in the guise of ‘psychology’. That thing where couples stay in a house full of swingers and one partner reluctantly agrees to a threesome or something. It’s filmed and it’s cringe. Awful.

Bouncer's dream!

I find a lot of shows claim to portray really life to begin with, e.g. Skins and Waterloo Road but as time goes on the stories just get wilder and wilder to keep the ratings up leaving any semblance of real life behind.

Misery. The long back stories on talent shows. Maternity ward programmes.
It was years before I had kids, but I remember a Panorama expose of a maternity ward, where a woman in strong labour was made to wait in a seat, and the midwife said she should "get a life" (less than 20 years ago so I don't know if she's still working, don't know her age). I don't know whether the people making programmes like that are doing it to expose problems or purely for ratings.

I think it was Percy!

🤣🤣🤣

This is effectively Big Brother's entire MO. The first couple of series were ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, and it really was a genuine, interesting psychological experiment.

However, they soon realised that far more viewers would tune in if they swapped the everyday folk for unhinged and hugely overly-dramatic contestants; and then they ramped it up even more by actively searching for broken, extremely vulnerable people whom they could exploit and manipulate for money and for ratings.

Effectively, they set themselves up as one great big... well, it sounds exactly like the Welsh word for the number five.

Back in the day, it used to be a sign that a show needed higher ratings when they invited Oliver Reed on. Now that role seems to be filled by Miriam Margoyles.

Gillian mckeith going through Tupperwares of people’s poo. People pooing into a Tupperware so that Gillian mckeith could inspect it. Shitty.

Gillian Mckeith or the poo?🤔

Yes, she's become a grotesque parody - like a real-life female Jay from the Inbetweeners.

Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross' late-night chat shows are clearly places for adult comversation and are often rather risque; but MM could really do with a filter that enables her to distinguish between what is a grown-up suggestive story and what is just charmless, boaksome filth.

She's like somebody at an auction who will suddenly enter the bidding and shout up to offer 20 times the current bid, just to make sure that all of the attention is focused on her.

In the early 90s there was a programme called The Word and they had a segment where ordinary people did outlandish things to get on TV for a few minutes.

Some of the things they did included young guys snogging women in their 70s and 80s, drinking beer through sweaty socks and I think I remember someone drinking their own vomit once too 🤢

Licking armpits was a favourite too.