ABC describes it like this: "The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart unites two of the most emotionally powerful forces in human life: music and love, as 20 single men and women embark on an incredible journey to find love through music. Singing well-known songs, both individually and as couples, they will look to form attractions through the melodies, find and reveal their feelings and ultimately, fall in love." (Um... ok?)
Given that the current season of The Bachelor has gotten a lot of criticism on Twitter for it being too produced (sold to viewers as "the most dramatic season ever"), this new spin-off seems to come (very conveniently) at just the right time for some freshness in the nation. Do we think this franchise will ever end or will spin-offs work as a saving mechanism until who knows when?
In the meantime...
This is interesting, Raph! I will definitely watch an episode, shamelessly. I would say that the answer might be located in the fact that The Bachelor community is imagined as "a nation". Implied in that definition, then, is dutiful citizenship on the part of viewers to continually watch and participate in the discourse around The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, and now Listen to Your Heart. Similarly, we might view ABC's and its producers as the sort of governmental apparatus of the nation — setting the rules by and frameworks through which the contestants move within and between shows.
ReplyDeleteI'm jumping ahead in the syllabus here, but Chad Raphael's article, "The political economy of Reali-TV" articulates precisely how and why reality television works and continues to benefit the networks, even though it has its drought periods. Essentially, by hedging the material investments in production, reality television can maximize its profits. Spinoffs exemplify this mode of production perfectly. Graphics, sets, costumes, and so on can all be recycled at a savings to the producers. Similarly, you can't discount the value of The Bachelor brand, which with its milk-toastiness, is well known and fairly inoffensive to advertisers. Compound both of those factors with the reality that another program format equals another international licensing opportunity. While that may not have been the case with something like Flavor of Love and its spinoffs like I Love New York, I Love Money, and Charm School, I imagine the general palatability of The Bachelor's normativity will continue to yield spinoffs for quite some time.