Rural groups threaten to wreck set of reality TV show

Disgruntled farmers have said that France's most popular reality TV show is "degrading and insulting" to the rural community and say they will halt its filming by force unless it comes off the air this week.

The protesters, led by the Peasants' Confederation and backed by the Association of Rural Mayors and the Society for the Protection of Animals, plan to wreck the set of La Ferme Célébrités, or Celebrity Farm, unless France's top commercial channel, TF1, drops it from its schedules by tomorrow.

"This show is an outrage to our country's noble rural tradition," said Jean-Emile Sanchez, who took over from the anti-globalisation activist José Bové as the confederation's spokesman last month.

(snip)

"It is unacceptable that such a masquerade, a mockery, a media circus can be allowed to play with the dignity of the rural community," he said.

In the show, based on the hit US programme The Farm, 14 B-list French celebrities, including actors, TV presenters and ex-models, live in a farmhouse in the Vaucluse region in the south for 70 days without running water, electricity or mobile phones. Daily tasks include milking cows and goats, shearing the odd sheep and helping farm animals give birth.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1209643,00.html

For viewers of the English-subtitled French news program Le Journal, this will come as no surprise. Every day there's at least one pissed off group protesting something or other. My favorite so far is a one-day strike by the country's judges (over pay? over court backlogs?). Garbed in their judicial robes, they gathered together and through all their law books into a huge pile. Next day, they went back to work.

If we truly care about our people, we would invest more into educating them rather than entertaining them.

Yes???

:bounce:

Read in Z-mag several months ago that Venezuela has a public TV station called CATIA-TV that is used to give the poor a voice and visibility in the media. Making the invisible visible and real. Now THAT is a good idea for reality TV.

Make them take two differnet buses at 4AM to slave away at a shitty job for 8 hours...then come home to a crappy apartment, no car, and no money:)

You know, as long as they're protesting fakery of the farming lifestyle, they might as well assign blame where it's due -- e.g. the Connecticut Cowpoke's faux "ranch".

and the other one--that will really piss them off!

Gawd! Was that show awful.