Reality TV in Argentina


September 20, 2002


BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. The reality television era started with an innocuous program on Dutch TV in the summer of 2000. That show was Big Brother, and it ignited a trend that quickly spread through Europe and the United States and through the Southern Hemisphere. Because shows like American Idol and Survivor use non-professional actors, they're cheap and easy to produce, so they're perfect for economic down times. Perfect for places like Argentina. Peter Hudson is a correspondent for Newsweek and The Economist. We called him in Buenos Aires, and he told us reality TV there is just like ours -- and then some.

PETER HUDSON: Reality fever has taken on here as much as anywhere else. We've had versions of Survivor; we've had versions of Big Brother. We've had a show called The Bar which was a number of ordinary people running a bar in Buenos Aires and gradually getting eliminated in the same way as in Big Brother.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's not that they lose a million dollars -they just miss the next round.

PETER HUDSON:That's right. Or they miss the chance to pick up a cash prize at the end of the program. Of course, this being Argentina, the price was paid in municipal bonds rather than in currency but--

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Which brings us to the show Human Resources. I mean this is a show that takes the genre to the next level. Can you describe how it works?

PETER HUDSON: It's basically a competition to win a job; unemployment in Argentina is running at over 20 percent. There's a lot of people who are desperate for employment, and so-- one of the leading channels here, Channel Trese [sp?] has set up this program, Human Resources. Two contestants come on and talk about their lives, talk about what they were working in before they became unemployed, and at the end of the program one of them is, is awarded a job.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:The format of Human Resources which really seems to weigh sob stories against each other rather than talent reminds me a little bit of a game show of sorts that there was when I was a very little girl called Queen for a Day where a bunch of unfortunates would talk about their lives and invariably one or several of them would cry and the audience would vote and, and the winner would win, you know, new kitchen appliances or something like that. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

PETER HUDSON: That, that's - it sounds very similar. I've not seen that show, but the idea is very much the same; if people are not competing for a job, they're competing for a cash prize. The, the common denominator I think in all of these is, is desperation.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now there's another program that seems unique at this point to Argentina. It's called The People's Candidate! This strikes me as yet a whole new advance.

PETER HUDSON: That's right. Argentine viewers are going to get a chance later on this year to vote between a number of contestants and the idea is that the eventual winner will go on and run for election to the Congress for Buenos Aires and stands a reasonable chance of getting elected purely on the basis of all the free air time that they're going to get during the course of the program.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How can a TV show decide who goes on the ballot? Have they created their own TV party line?

PETER HUDSON:They have indeed created their own political party. In order to set up a party here you basically need a few hundred votes; with the number of people who've applied to the program, all of those obviously have to sign up to register the party. With those, they have a good start.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you know what the name of the party is?

PETER HUDSON: The name of the party is the Party of the People.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:[LAUGHS] Good enough. It's hard to imagine the, the disillusion that the Argentineans must be feeling towards their own political system to want to find a congressional candidate using a TV show. You live in Buenos Aires. As far as you can tell, is the situation really that dire?

PETER HUDSON: Certainly people are very disillusioned with their politicians, and I think the TV channel has obviously seen a chance to, to tap into that. The TV channel obviously wants to present this as a sort of noble enterprise as the TV channel argues that it's giving people another avenue to pick a candidate. The political parties here are very discredited, and they tend to have a monopoly over who gets elected a candidate -- the political parties have so much power and so much financing behind them that if you're selected as candidate for one of the big parties, then, then you more or less are guaranteed to get elected.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But if you can fix elections, Peter, can't you also fix a TV show?

PETER HUDSON:I suppose they could; yes. I mean that's entirely possible, but obviously-- one assumes that the TV channel's interest is less in electing a candidate -- obviously whoever gets elected will just be one congressional deputy in-- amongst hundreds -- the TV channel's interests seem more in gaining ratings.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:You know at the height of the reality TV boom here we were inundated with media watchers decrying the coarsening of the culture. Are there similar voices in Argentina?

PETER HUDSON: I think there's a lot of people for instance with the, the people's candidate; there's a number of people who've come forward and said that they - they feel in my opinion quite rightly that the show is cheapening the political process; that it's not really the role of TV stations to be-- trying to fix Argentine democracy. They should report on what's happening. They should investigate, but they shouldn't be trying to run candidates in elections. In general though the state of Argentine TV is so poor that there's very much a feeling that anything goes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Peter Hudson, thank you very much.

PETER HUDSON: Okay. Well, thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Peter Hudson is a correspondent for Newsweek and The Economist. He's based in Buenos Aires. [MUSIC TAG]