And there are more such series on the way. One of the most intriguing, Cash or Capture, is scheduled to debut in November on the red-hot Sci Fi channel. Like Wipeout, it is based on a Japanese series - this one featuring a group of contestants competing for cash prizes while being stalked by a group of hunters.
Mark Stern, executive vice president of original programming at Sci Fi, thinks his series will connect with viewer interests on a variety of levels.
"Winning the cash windfall is obviously a big part of the wish fulfillment of any of these games shows or reality shows - especially during times when things are tougher for people economically," Stern says. "But I think the bigger appeal when times are tough is escapism. People really want to be taken out of their lives and transported to other places. They want to escape, to go someplace else and not be in their lives - and I think that is part of the appeal of the larger-than-life reality shows."
Cash or Capture is intended to look and feel like a video game, according to Stern, and that virtual realm is where he and the producers want to take their target audience of young viewers who grew up with and continue to play video games.
Shirley Peroutka, professor of popular culture at Goucher College, sees a definite connection between the TV game shows that feature contestant humiliation and video games in which characters are abused on screen.
"It is not in the least surprising that what teenagers are playing on their computers screens now becomes a successful new form of TV programming," she says. "The combat, the meanness, the one-upmanship, the laughing at others' misfortune of these shows are all there in the video games."
Analysts say the trend will continue - for global economic reasons if nothing else. Such shows are cheap to make, and they travel incredibly well.
As the University of Maryland's Parks puts it, "Ridicule translates across cultures."
Endemol, the company the produces Wipeout for ABC, has opened an office in Turkey where it is now producing a local version of the game show for that audience.
And countries like Japan and Britain offer what seems to be an endless supply of new programming for American TV.
"In exploring Japanese and British reality TV, what I found so interesting about those two societies is that they are so regimented and structured in their social orders, and yet their reality television is pretty out of control," says Sci Fi's Stern.
