The insider term for the goal of those who produce reality television shows, those who assemble the footage into episodes, is a profane one. I learned this from a reality television producer (who wished not to be named so as to continue being a reality TV producer). "We in reality TV talk about 'shit to gold,'" RTP said. This is the mechanism by which some soul is given an opportunity to overcome an obstacle. "The audience loves seeing shit turn into gold." Objectively speaking, they certainly do. READ MORE

America loves TV about polygamy. After four years of the scintillating fiction of "Big Love," we were ready for fact. Or, at least, the reality-TV version of it. TLC’s series "Sister Wives" finally arrived in 2010, and the second season has just begun, as "Big Love" concludes this weekend. Like an elephant with a friendly bird to eat flies off of its back, the two shows have formed a sort of symbiosis. READ MORE

Pop quiz: what's America's seventh-largest metropolitan area and also its number-one most crazy? Here's a story, though, as these sort of things generally are, it's a bit impenetrable. The distilled version: Miami's police chief agreed to let the department star in a docusoap pilot about the hot and steamy life of cops in the City. But then he saw a cut of it, and saw that it was totally crazy—and learned it was produced by the Mayor's son!—and withdrew his participation. What a good guy! Except that was all lies, as his emails later proved. He had already known that the Mayor's son had recused himself from the production—and he'd given the pilot an enthusiastic go-ahead after seeing it, even asking when it'd be screened for the "boys" in the department. And never asked the company to stop trying to sell it to networks. The reason this came to light is that residents thought the dramatic selling cut of the docusoap really painted the city in a bad light, what with it glamorizing the City's war on poor and black people and all. (The video seems to have been yanked from YouTube, but is available in Windows Media form.) The City is, unrelatedly, preparing for a recall election of the Mayor and a City Commissioner because, well... "Car dealer and former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman was angry over a property tax increase and a growing county payroll."

Something about the Palin family inspires conspiracy theories. The latest one is that Bristol Palin has only survived as a contestant on "Dancing With the Stars" because "Tea Partiers," whatever that means (fiscal conservatives? Old people? Oolong fans?), have engineered a way to vote for her in some unnatural or unfair way, whether that be without watching the show or through automated voting mechanisms or, I dunno, planting suggestions in our dreams or something. It's no mere Internet rumor, either—I heard it about it on my morning shows, and it's become a major news story to the degree that both the show's producers and Bristol herself have felt motivated to respond. But here's the weird thing: "Operation Bristol," as it's been called, almost certainly does not exist. READ MORE