Mary's Great Ideas: Tim's Idea for a TV Show: "Who Buys that Crap?"

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January 13, 2006

Tim's Idea for a TV Show: "Who Buys that Crap?"

Tim has been a veritable font (fount?) of great ideas lately. Here's one I particularly liked (note: I changed Tim's terminology to make it just a little more prime-time friendly):

"focus on the the crap

focus on the people who buy it

e.g., i saw a kitted blanket that had a picture of a
ram standing on top of a mountain. show the host
standing next to the blanket, and he/she says, "who
buys this crap?"

host interviews several people, all of whom say
something like, "i'd never buy that," or, "i'd never
buy that crap."

host finds someone who says they like the picture of
the ram on the mountain.

host offers to pay for half of the cost on the
condition that they can interview the person AND go
into their home and look at, and talk about, all of
their other crap.

host makes the person think that they're on some
Martha Stewart interior decorating show.

host goes into home. whenever the person turns their
back on the host, the host looks into the camera and
starts to laugh."

Mary adds: I would definitely watch that. My only suggestions would be to make it more like a hidden camera thing, where you wait until someone actually buys it, then you jump out and say, "Surprise! You're on "Who Buys That Crap"!!" and the people would be so thrilled to be on teevee, they'd let you come home with them even if you didn't pay for half.

The beauty of it is: it could have an anti-consumption message, and maybe eventually it would make people think twice about purchasing horrible crap? Or anyway, you'd see crap at the store and you'd think: "There's no way there isn't a hidden camera somewhere." HGTV would love it.

Posted by mary at January 13, 2006 10:21 AM

Comments

The mind boggles.

This is a pretty interesting idea... maybe not for a whole series of shows, but at least as a skit on SNL or Mad TV.

Like they say, "There is no accounting for taste." That being said, it must be really bad if the stuff you produce is so bad nobody buys it. That would be the universe saying, "You've made megacrap. Black velvet paintings are selling like there is no tomorrow, but aint nobody gonna buy this crap."

I think a spin-off of this show has to be, "Who Watches This Crap": a t.v. show that highlights the worst of last weeks television.

Steve

Posted by: Steve at January 14, 2006 7:56 PM

Hey, Mary!

This is a site that will take a song or musician you submit and build you a streaming playlist of music based on similar qualities.

http://www.pandora.com

The site also lets you build stations based on these playlists and mail them to other people.
My only gripe is that you can't refine the playlists, weeding out selections you don't like and giving more weight to selections you like.
Still, it's pretty cool. It's free. I've been listening for two days while I've been working on a project, and I've found seven new artists to check out.

(If you wanted to be a loser, you could install Audacity (free), capture the audio stream on your computer, then cut it up and save as separate MP3s. Easy, free music!)

Borders should do something like this, intead of those crap listening stations. People come in with their various listening devices with an FM transmitter, go to a kiosk and select an artist or song, then the kiosk gives them a FM frequency to tune into where their playlist will play for whatever the statistically determined time period is (that terminator between buying customer and leech). Or, Borders could have select picks that people stream.

Thataway the customer is moving around, browsing other stuff, and not standing in the middle of the freaking CD rack other people want to look at.

I haven't tried anything besides pop/rock.

"Half a Week Before the Winter" by Vanessa Carlton is whack.

Ashlee Simpson just came up on my station. Urgh.

Posted by: Ronald at January 18, 2006 10:55 AM

Teem cant spel or punxuate when hes riting emails in a hurry

Posted by: Teem at January 20, 2006 11:24 AM

We just had a great "who buys that crap?" encounter--a couple at the gross hostel we just left had bought a model ship made out of cow horns and were trying to figure out how to pack it so that it wouldn't get broken.

Posted by: melissa at January 28, 2006 2:50 PM

P.S.: Nobody has purchased the blanket of the ram standing on the mountain.

Posted by: Teem at February 13, 2006 5:04 PM

January 13, 2006

Tim's Idea for a TV Show: "Who Buys that Crap?"

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