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Reality TV where a good sense of community survives
Monday, February 19, 2001
Click on the "good thing" link at marthastewart.com and you'll find a lovely beaded night-light shade, some cafe curtains made from vintage tea towels and a sprightly floral-print drawer liner that gives a lift to any antique table cluttering up your carriage house.
Go to goodthings.com and you'll find none of the above. You might come across a recommendation for Patagonia's Synchilla fleece vest because it's made from recycled soda bottles. But no frou-frou. No gold-leaf towel racks. No Martha.
Goodthings isn't so much about stuff as it is the stuff of life. CEO Barcy Fisher is hooked on the idea that a company promoting corporate social responsibility and a positive sense of community actually has a place in this world. A profit-making place, at that.
What does this have to do with television?
Fisher, an admitted fan of "reality" game shows like "Survivor," was wondering if people would watch such a program if the contestants were bent on building up their community instead of tearing it down with backbiting, devious behavior and alliance-building power plays. In an essay on the goodthings Web site, Wood Turner, the company's director of communications, writes: "Consider this scenario. You take two teams made up of people of diverse backgrounds. The two teams are charged with a series of more minor goals on the way to one major achievement. An individual team can't move forward until it has successfully completed the prior level. Each of the minor tasks is structured so that it can't be accomplished unless every member of the team has contributed. The intrigue is similar (to "Survivor"), the relationships and conflicts are the same, with just one fundamental difference: The integrity of a community intact is a critical measure of success.
Turner's essay is the centerpiece of an attempt to create "good" reality TV by building a grass-roots movement for programming that teaches us something as we watch people blend their assets to reach a goal. In less than two weeks, Fisher says goodthings.com has received more than a thousand e-mails from people who say they'd tune in a show in which no one gets voted out of the tribe. As of Friday, Fisher says, only 18 said they wouldn't watch. (The site is accepting votes and ideas until March 15 and then hopes to interest a Hollywood producer in the concept.)
Of course, people who find their way to goodthings.com aren't inclined to be cranky cynics. They see the glass as half full even when it's broken. They don't necessarily condemn "Survivor" and others of its ilk just because their producers and contestants glory in backstabbing and lying.
"Most of us agree the show is profoundly compelling," Turner says of "Survivor." "People are incredibly fascinating to watch. ... The problem is they (the contestants) are asked to do something that only the most Machiavellian among us would support -- to function in their own self-interest at the expense of the common good."
Fisher admits the idea of creating a "Survivor"-style TV show celebrating the good things in people is a long shot. "But people said goodthings didn't have a hope of getting off the ground a year ago," she said.
Seattle-based goodthings is still here, financed without venture capital and staffed by five full-timers and a slew of positive-thinking volunteers who believe there's good money to be made from corporate sponsorships and content licensing. And maybe the occasional TV show.
"There are millions out there interested in compelling interpersonal dynamics where the end result isn't taking a prize or breaking up a marriage," Fisher said. "The fad of reality TV has something to it. I think we could make a TV program that is still entertaining, still suspenseful."
With upstart networks such as Pax TV hungry for feel-good programming and producers such as Martha Williamson ("Touched by an Angel") and Brenda Hampton ("7th Heaven") riding the wave of same, Fisher may be on to something.
Martha Stewart might even consider it a good thing.
John Levesque is the P-I's television critic. Call him at 206-448-8330 or send e-mail to tvguy@seattle-pi.com.
By JOHN LEVESQUE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER TELEVISION CRITIC
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