Tube Totally Reality Bites

first there was survivor, now amazing race has hit the small screen and temptation island is scheduled to go on air soon. reality tv is taking over the indian boob tube - vicarious living at its best. you know all about survivor, don't you? anyway, a quick rundown: two tribes of eight members are pitted against each other and need every survival skill in the book to stay alive.but you also need to survive being voted off the tribe with your social skills and whom you make 'friends' with. to the next show: the amazing race, a jerry bruckheimer production, is a whirlwind game show pitting 11 teams against each other in a 25,000-mile race around the world. and temptation island, soon to be aired on star world, is a dramatic, unscripted reality series. four couples travel to an island to test the strength of their relationships before making permanent commitments. over the course of their stay, and through a series of challenges, they each have the opportunity to prove to one another, and to themselves, that they've chosen the right mate. reality tv, it seems, is the name of the game. and if you take a look at the tv trends you'll know why. popular sitcoms like friends and seinfeld, series like ally mcbeal, chicago hope and the practice and games shows like kbc are losing their appeal faster than you can say trp. the creative heads of networks and channels are scrambling for exciting ideas that will entice audiences into staying home and turning on the telly. the answer is reality tv - you live vicariously through the experiences of regular people, in-great-outdoorsy situations, usually at foreign and exotic locales, competing for something as concrete as money or as ephemeral as love. rutger hauer, actor and director, says, european cinema and hollywood have become lazy filmmakers. we tell the same stories, in the same monotonous style.... there's no longer that excitement of wanting to go see a film. i think that's why reality tv has become popular. most people who like watching reality tv are evaluating and wondering about their own capacity to eat a worm or scale a mountain or bungee jump off a rope bridge. which keeps them involved and excited, i keep telling myself that i could do that - but who knows maybe not, says collegian farhad zehar. i don't know what temptation island is about but i'm going to watch it, says smita sen, a fashion coordinator. i found amazing race very interesting, energetic. those guys are really competitive. i wonder if i'd be able to take that kind of pressure, says sunil raja, a fitness instructor. there you go - whether it is sheer curiosity about tackling the elements or people - it keeps people involved. but in the 21st century attention span is calculated in nanoseconds.... who knows how long this will last?