Reality TV facing Reality

Reality TV may have run its course. Surprised? Shocked, are you? Please. Not that I hate reality TV.
Ever since MTV's Real World premiered in the early 1990s, I've been a fan. What a cool experimentation, cool until people inevitably saw the dollar figures and decided to replicate the reality television formula. The Real World has now become a tired, tired soap opera with bad acting with pretty, dumb drunk people.
Worse, celebrities think their lives are worth a reality show. Danny Bonaduce suffers a nervous breakdown on his show. Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston get too real (please, some things we ought not know) on Being Bobby Brown, a not-too-subtle attempt by Brown to resurrect his long-dead career.
And even Lil' Kim, the jailed sexpot rapper, had contemplated doing a reality show.
But all these shows have a sad sameness to them, all manufactured for your entertainment. On Survivor, The Apprentice and other shows, you have manufactured competition, with people embarrassing themselves as if they actually have something at stake. Yeah, I really want a job with The Donald. Would you really do anything for 15 minutes of fame? Reality television proves you would.
Television heads, of course, love these shows because they're easy to make, have cheap production values, and need fewer writers.
And as television heads are apt to do, they put out too much of a good thing, and there's a glut in the market now. How many times can you see variations of the same thing, all the way down to that annoying music and quick edits just before someone is cut from competition? I am partial, though, to Donald Trump's simple, "You're fired," phrase as opposed to Martha Stewart's anemic, "Goodbye."
I would much prefer good writing, good acting, good stories, but maybe I'm just too optimistic.