The main issue with "reality" shows...

[Bogie]

The people who watch reruns perpetuate the idiocy.
 
"Wow, that guy is wearing cool sunglasses and a cool bandana, and those cool boots with that cool hair and a cool hat. I want to be cool just like him!"

[MechAg94]

I don't watch the first runs.  People actually watch reruns?

[Bogie]

I keep the TV on in the living room at the other end of the house for white noiseish... I grew tired of the local classic rock station, AKA "Lynyrd Zepplin Zone." Yeah, Fistful - I'm sick of KSHE. And KDHX occasionally makes my blood pressure spike.
 
One of the local free tv stations has a channel that does stuff like Oak Island, etc...
 
Forged in Fire is interesting sometimes, altho repetitive. Ermey's stuff was interesting. American Scroungers sometimes had cool stuff, along with some guy who rebuilds gas pumps and antique toys, and somehow makes money at it. They have some pawn shop on sometimes, but to tell you any more about that, I'm going to need to call a friend, along with a guy who paints hot rods, and there's an idiot who dresses up like something from goth halloween to go kill roaches and hornets.

[charby]

I keep the TV on in the living room at the other end of the house for white noiseish... I grew tired of the local classic rock station, AKA "Lynyrd Zepplin Zone." Yeah, Fistful - I'm sick of KSHE. And KDHX occasionally makes my blood pressure spike.
 
One of the local free tv stations has a channel that does stuff like Oak Island, etc...
 
Forged in Fire is interesting sometimes, altho repetitive. Ermey's stuff was interesting. American Scroungers sometimes had cool stuff, along with some guy who rebuilds gas pumps and antique toys, and somehow makes money at it. They have some pawn shop on sometimes, but to tell you any more about that, I'm going to need to call a friend, along with a guy who paints hot rods, and there's an idiot who dresses up like something from goth halloween to go kill roaches and hornets.

Don't you have GRIT, MeTV or Antenna TV as part of the dot channels for over the air?

GRIT is mostly western movies and western TV shows
Antenna TV is reruns of old and older sitcoms
MeTV has older TV shows and Svengoolie on Saturday nights.

[Bogie]

I tend to switch them up every day or so... Prob with this station is you never really know what you're gonna get.

[HankB]

The people who watch reruns perpetuate the idiocy.
 
"Wow, that guy is wearing cool sunglasses and a cool bandana, and those cool boots with that cool hair and a cool hat. I want to be cool just like him!"

"Cool" is another way of saying "not so hot."

[MechAg94]

You could also set up the TV to play youtube and play long videos from people you like with autoplay turned on.  Give your favorite youtubers some views.

[RoadKingLarry]

If you can play youtube can you stream Pandora?

[Bogie]

With my phone hotspot, I get 30 gigs a month... Amazon, Netflix, etc...

[zxcvbob]

With my phone hotspot, I get 30 gigs a month... Amazon, Netflix, etc...

Your phone probably doesn't count Pandora and Spotify against your data limit. (don't know about as a hotspot) You might want to check into that.  Phone and a Bluetooth speaker sounds pretty good.

[Bogie]

But that wouldn't play when I'm at work. Probably gonna get one of the T-Mobile wireless things... I know this sounds kinda weird, but I don't like other people inside my house. If I get internet installed, installed, it would be in the detached garage for wifi to the house...

[K Frame]

The main issue with reality shows is that there's absolutely nothing real about them.

[230RN]

The main issue with reality shows is that there's absolutely nothing real about them.

Well, viewing them as "drama," you can look past the fakeness of emergencies and whatnot, just as in any fictional drama.

I kinda like the gold mining ones, even with fake broken machine parts and fabricated difficulties like having to take a boat downriver for 111 kilometers to the only store that stocks that flat washer for
 their huge gonklefunking machine which is keeping them from reaching their N ounce goals before the season closes due to weather.

Educational, too, mostly.  Didn't know they wandered around with metal detectors to find nuggets.  Somehow in my iggerance, I thought it was all panning and sluicing. I like "Aussie Gold" and I'm even beginning to understand their language.  See?  Educational.

And even if they're not educational, those ones with the girls vying for supremacy and getting voted out was <ahem> worth watching.

So I kind of look at them as I would any fictionalized drama,  I also like the restoration ones and the pawn shop ones, especially the one in Louisiana which deals with guns.

[Brad Johnson]

SWMBO is currently watching a show about people living in remote parts of Alaska. There are a few moments with really informative insight and a few gems of cold-weather survival information, but most is obviously staged. Not even smartly staged, either. Stupid stuff like gushing about being in virgin backcountry where no one has been while sledding along a prepared trail. Or talking about how hard it is to get through the ice for water in after weeks of -40 temps but there is only five or six inches of ice and they are working outdoors with no gloves on. On one episode was some dude sporting a pitiful looking camp ax and grousing about how hard it is to chop trees for wood but there is a chainsaw hanging in plain sight on a wall in the background.

Brad

[Ron]

The main issue with reality shows is that there's absolutely nothing real about them.

Finally clicked on this subject to post that very thing. I figured this crowd wouldn't miss that easy lay up ...

[WLJ]

I thought it was automatically assumed

[HankB]

SWMBO is currently watching a show about people living in remote parts of Alaska. There are a few moments with really informative insight and a few gems of cold-weather survival information, but most is obviously staged. Not even smartly staged, either. Stupid stuff like gushing about being in virgin backcountry where no one has been while sledding along a prepared trail. Or talking about how hard it is to get through the ice for water in after weeks of -40 temps but there is only five or six inches of ice and they are working outdoors with no gloves on. On one episode was some dude sporting a pitiful looking camp ax and grousing about how hard it is to chop trees for wood but there is a chainsaw hanging in plain sight on a wall in the background.

Brad

I tuned into the show "Moonshiners" a while back. The guys are setting up stills in the Appalachian back woods and running 'shine all over. Their faces are not obscured, but they use pseudonyms so the "liquor commission" doesn't know who they are. They brag about paying no state or federal taxes since it's a cash business. One of the guys got a big, early '70s vintage Pontiac LeMans so he could run up to 400 gallons of 'shine at one time. (Aside from the volume 400 gallon jugs would take up, 400 gallons x 8 lbs/gallon = 3200 pounds. I don't think so.    )

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't catch on that this was all fake for about 20 or 30 minutes - I think it being on the Discovery Channel fooled me for a bit. 

[Perd Hapley]

The main problem is that they take situations like remodeling a house or baking a cake, and invest every moment with ginned-up drama. Or at least, those are the ones my wife watches.   

[French G.]

I blame James T. Kirk. Pretty sure that “Rescue 911” was the show that kickstarted the reality format.