Jon Katz thinks the pervasive cameras an microphones at the XFL premier were too much. According to Katz, “this may be a good example of how technology can take us places we don’t really want or need to go.” I think what Katz misses and what other critics and supporters of the XFL have missed is that the XFL’s competition is not the National Football League.
The XFL’s real competition is “Survivor” and other pseudo-reality programs. Do people balk at seeing cameras invade people’s personal lives? Then explain the popularity of “Survivor” or its knock offs like “Temptation Island” or even reality-based shows such as “Cops.”
As Business 2.0 noted in a profile of the XFL, the NFL has been moving in the XFL direction in recent years. Vince McMahon says he’s going to mic dozens of players? Hmmm, suddenly Monday Night Football starts equipping a player with a microphone and replaying the highlights at halftime. Then CBS courts disaster when it put mics on several players at the beginning of the Super Bowl only to have them utter a string of expletives (hadn’t they heard about seven second delays?)
The difference is that the NFL existed prior to television and sees itself as an entity completely independent of its media coverage (which is sometimes taken to absurd levels by sports writers and commentators who go on and on about sports as if it is anything but entertainment). There’s no way that the NFL would allow the sort of access the XFL is based upon — at least not until it is forced to by the economic situation, and given the relatively strong ratings of the NFL in recent years, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
The problem the XFL faces it that unlike other reality shows, which are usually heavily edited to create compelling story lines, the XFL occurs live in real time (allowing for the delays to edit out the cursing). The only other completely live reality show on NBC, “Big Brother,” also had incredibly high initial ratings before it sank like a stone. Of course it didn’t have the sort of structure that a football game has and it didn’t have the constant display of juvenile sexual fantasies either.
Whether or not the XFL will satisfy American’s craving for reality shows or whether it goes down in an already oversaturated market remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that there is a market for such voyeuristic, intrusive shows.