Project Audience Tolerance

Sometimes there are just great television concepts that should be left alone. Unfortunately, there is the mindset of “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth over-doing” in the world of reality TV. Because of this, great shows, such as The Mole, and Murder in Small Town X utterly failed. So, when one of my favorite reality shows, Project Runway, was a hit, I was pleased. I’m not usually a huge fan of fashion, but watching the contestants make these amazing creations from scratch was completely fascinating to me.

Not too long ago, Lifetime announced that the 8th season would be premiering on July 29th in the earlier time slot of 9pm. I didn’t think much of it at the time and figured that this was to garner an even larger viewer ship, since 10pm was fairly late. It turns out, this time shift was to make way for the new 90-minute episode format that would be introduced this season. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Project Runway, but how can they expect to get people to sit through 90-minute episodes all season long? They say it’s because feedback has told them people wanted to see more of the designer’s process. Well, instead of making people put aside two whole hours of their day (this is factoring in the half-hour Models of the Runway post-show), they could cut down on the horribly distasteful in-show sponsorship crap and unnecessary build up of each of the challenges.

Personally, I could care less about the inter-personal drama that comes from the designers living together. That aspect has been really poorly dealt with anyway, since the drama is clearly secondary to the designing. There’s enough TV drama there, they should leave it at that. Let’s start the episodes going right into the challenges, have the bulk of the time be devoted be fabrication, then end with the runway show and elimination. There is NO need for it be drawn out for another 30 minutes. Yes, I know it’s all about advertising and sponsorships and all that, but I still believe it’s a poor decision.

In a truly perfect world. The show would be an hour long, with more design time and less crappy sponsorship fluff. Also, those stupid screen-overlay graphics that block half your view of the show would go away once and for all. Honestly, we already know that we’re watching a new Project Runway. Show it once at the beginning and be done with it. We can’t watch your show if we can’t SEE the show. Seriously, advertising and sponsorship has ruined good reality TV.