TLC’s new look: sideshows, with a side of stolen cake

TLC is getting ready for its new look.

TLC, the channel that started the home-renovation/decorating trend on TV, only to blow that crown by inexplicably doubling down on the bawdy Paige Davis, has finally embraced a new identity for the channel, spurred on by the success of its unhappiest couple in America, the Gosselins. The New York Times’ Brian Stelter, the hardest working media reporter on the East Coast, has the story:

After several years of floundering, TLC has started to revive itself as a cable channel about extraordinary versions of everyday life. Among the shows it considers hits are “Toddlers & Tiaras,” a new series set in the pageant world; “18 Kids and Counting,” about a family even larger than the Gosselins’; and “Little People, Big World,” about dwarfs and their family members. Noticing a pattern? (via “‘Jon & Kate’ Returns, Buttressing Other Shows” – NYTimes.com)

In the article, a TLC executive calls the reality strategy “a window into real life,” and that’s true, in the sense that the subjects of these shows are real, live people living actual, real lives. Can’t deny that.

But “real life” isn’t the same as “average life” and it’s where TLC and I have to part company. Because TLC’s strategy isn’t about depicting real life, it’s about depicting the lives of “the others,” the lives of folks out of the mainstream; it’s about giving the rest of America a chance to stare at society’s outliers in the privacy of their living rooms without feeling furtive or guilty.

In some cases, maybe a TLC show (such as “Little People, Big World”) gives its subjects a chance to demand respect from society, but that doesn’t mean viewers are granting respect — or that they ever planned to in the first place.

Instead, as we’ve talked about before in this space, these reality shows are really just sideshows, a place for America to see how the other halves live. There’s no cry for respect from the Gosselins for the parents of large families — it’s just exploitation of children for the sake of entertainment. And there’s no peek into the fascinating and little-known world of beauty pageants for the under-8 set (“Toddlers & Tiaras”) — it’s just a chance for us to stare, wide-eyed at what truly awful parenting really is so we can feel better about ourselves.

TLC doesn’t have programming executives, it has carnival barkers.

But wait! It isn’t all depressing zoological zeitgeist on TLC, for they also have the ripped-from-another network’s schedule “Cake Boss.”

[TLC's] Cake Boss, currently airing in its first season, has become one of the hottest food shows on cable and is part of a trend in cake-making reality programs that includes the Food Network’s Ace of Cakes and a new TLC show, Ultimate Cake Off. (via Reality show takes the cake with personality-packed bakery – USATODAY.com)

Ah…now that’s the ticket to not looking like you’re just a machine laundering the blood money of child labor and Barnum-like freak shows: stealing the worst, most boring aspects of The Food Network — meaningless food competitions and reality shows.

From now on, watching TLC’s “What Not to Wear” (which I still adore, by the way, and thank the heavens above it got rid of hairstylist Nick Arrojo — who would want a new haircut from a man who looked like this?), will be the television equivalent of the Berlin Airlift — an exercise in helping the truly entertaining survive while dodging the flak and strafing of the reality show dreck that surrounds it.