Reality

CBS should be ashamed of itself. Taking 40 kids to a New Mexico desert for 40 days of "nation" building, promoting the pint-sized pioneers as the stars of a new reality TV show, and then likening it to summer camp when concerns about child-labor-law violations are raised? Someone at CBS needs a dose of reality. Campers don't sign contracts, and they don't get paid $5,000 stipends. And they aren't prohibited from talking about their "camp experience." The dust-up over the production of CBS' Kid Nation again unmasks the reality of reality shows, which is that all is not what it seems.

Good morning -- David Beckham -- How long before you and Posh have a reality show set in your Beverly Hills digs?

If you miss Jose Canseco - and, really, who doesn't at this point? - for the small fee of $9.99 and airfare to Los Angeles, you can compete for a chance to spend a dream day with Jose and possibly win one of his prized baseball possessions. Even better, the whole thing will be captured by camera crews for a new reality show starring Jose and the handful of fans who come up with the most imaginative and outrageous ideas for their day with the Prince of Performance Enhancement. My first reaction to this was that Jose had reached a pathetic new low, which is no small task.

LOS ANGELES -- In many ways, "The Matrix" represents the next step in high-tech action moviemaking. And, if its target audience of sensation-seeking young males can follow its convoluted plot, the film also might represent a new leap of intelligence for the notoriously dumbed-down genre."

The organizers of Reality, an intervention program for first-time drug and alcohol offenders begun in Carroll County eight months ago, say they are pleased with its results so far."Since August, we have had 115 graduates of Reality and only one repeat offender," said Cpl. Michael Bible of the Westminster Police Department, a program sponsor.The voluntary program strives to teach offenders the cost of their substance abuse to family, friends and community. Bible, George Butler of the county state's attorney's office and David J. Tucker, supervisor of Carroll's Department of Juvenile Justice, were among the first in Carroll to see its value.

If the success of Reality, an intervention program for first-time drug and alcohol offenders, is best measured by the number of repeat offenders, then Maryland's three-year statistics are glowing.The state's 5 percent recidivism rate matches the 1-in-20 repeat-offender rate in Tennessee, where the program began nine years ago. The Tennessee program has had about 6,000 participants, compared with more than 800 in Maryland.Terry Ober, the former Maryland state trooper who was recently appointed Reality's national coordinator, called the 5 percent figure "a proven barometer."

The organizers of Reality, an intervention program for first-time drug and alcohol offenders begun in Carroll County eight months ago, say they are pleased with its results so far."Since August, we have had 115 graduates of Reality and only one repeat offender," said Cpl. Michael Bible of the Westminster Police Department, one of the program's sponsors.The voluntary program strives to teach offenders the cost of their substance abuse to family, friends and community. Bible, George Butler of the county state's attorney's office and David J. Tucker, supervisor of Carroll's Department of Juvenile Justice, were among the first in Carroll to see its value.

LOS ANGELES -- Violence on network television is down for the third straight year, but there's a disturbing new trend in graphic "shockumentary" reality programs featuring animal attacks, police shootouts and car crashes often involving death.Those are the major findings of the UCLA Television Violence Report to be published today. It is the third annual study of violence on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, WB and UPN. The study, which covered the 1996-97 network season, is conducted by the UCLA Center for Communication Policy with funding from the TV industry.

DURHAM, N.C. -- The Maryland Terrapins lost for the sixth time in nine games last night, which sounds pretty bad.They committed a season-high 26 turnovers in an 81-69 loss to Duke, which also sounds pretty bad.But the reality of the Terps' situation isn't quite as bad as it sounds.Oh, sure, they need to play better and win again one of these days to generate some momentum going into the postseason, which begins next week with the ACC tournament.They also have lapsed into the habit of finding ways to lose, as opposed to earlier in the season, when they found ways to win.But the reality is that they aren't playing that badly, and they're still better than most teams.

The All-Star break is a time to look back, take stock in first-half performance and look ahead. It's a time to confess, to compare preseason predictions with what has actually taken place on the field.What was written here in March: The Orioles would win the American League East, barely fighting off Boston.Reality: The Orioles still have a shot. The Red Sox are to the AL East race what the Libertarian Party is to the presidential elections.The excuse: Heck, Boston general manager Dan Duquette misjudged the team, too.What was written here in March: The Mets' Paul Wilson would be National League Rookie of the Year.

LOS ANGELES -- Move over, Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The hot new Southern California tourist attractions are the restaurants, boutiques and tattoo parlors where some of reality television's most popular shows are filmed. Tourists from as far away as Germany fly in to visit the West Hollywood tattoo shop featured in the Learning Channel's LA Ink. Fans of the E! hit Keeping Up With the Kardashians stream into the Calabasas clothing stores run by the show's stars. And sightseers and diners alike jam the pricey West Hollywood eatery frequented by personalities on MTV's The Hills.

Long before The Real World, Survivor, or American Idol, a phenomenally popular reality show was running in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. That show was called A Chorus Line, and it changed the face of Broadway. A Chorus Line focused on the true-to-life stories of ordinary people - in this case, 17 young dancers desperate to establish a toe-shoe hold in their chosen profession. For one woman (named "Sheila" in the show), the ballet studio provides a refuge from her parents' unhappy marriage.

HOLLYWOOD - It's not often a show about modern "dating" brings to mind the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, but watching Bravo's new reality series Date My Ex, which begins tonight, I found myself inexplicably flashing back to Ralph Fiennes as scholar turned disgraced contestant Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show. No doubt this was, in part, a subconscious attempt to remain awake, to relieve the utter tedium of Date My Ex, in which Jo De La Rosa, formerly of The Real Housewives of Orange County, engages in an upscale dating game with - oh, what will they think of next?

Reality show It's Me or the Dog 6 p.m. [Animal Planet]: It's just a shame that this show wasn't around to help Michael Vick. Reality show I Love Money 8 p.m. [VH1]: Oops, Mr. Flip's bad. He thought this was about Manny Ramirez and the Boston Red Sox. Awards ESPY Awards 8 p.m. [ESPN2]: This is a replay of a taped show from last week, so by not watching, you have a chance to ignore the ESPYs for the third time.

Reality starlet Audrina Partridge swears The Hills, MTV's highest-rated show, is real. Truth be told, it has to be. No scribe worth his guild card should lay claim to a show constructed like a doughnut: The center (bland, goody two-shoes Lauren Conrad) holds scant interest -- it's all the surrounding unhealthy ingredients that tempt us: ambitious ex-friend Heidi Montag; her svengali fiance Spencer Pratt; hanger-on Justin "Bobby" Brescia; stern boss Lisa Love. Blogs, tabloids and other media have complained in recent days and weeks about fiction in the reality drama, which depicts Conrad, Partridge, friend Whitney Port and Montag living it up in Los Angeles.

CBS should be ashamed of itself. Taking 40 kids to a New Mexico desert for 40 days of "nation" building, promoting the pint-sized pioneers as the stars of a new reality TV show, and then likening it to summer camp when concerns about child-labor-law violations are raised? Someone at CBS needs a dose of reality. Campers don't sign contracts, and they don't get paid $5,000 stipends. And they aren't prohibited from talking about their "camp experience." The dust-up over the production of CBS' Kid Nation again unmasks the reality of reality shows, which is that all is not what it seems.

Just when Americans thought they had seen it all when it comes to reality television, CBS has come up with a humdinger: Kid Nation. For 40 days in April and May, CBS sent 40 children, ages 8 to 15, to a former ghost town in New Mexico to build a society from scratch. With no access to their parents, not even by telephone, the children set up their own government, laws and society in front of reality television cameras. But CBS, the network that got the reality ball rolling in 2000 with Survivor, had more in mind when it decided to run this social experiment of sorts.

Has Morgan State University graduate David E. Talbert created a kinder, gentler reality competition? StageBlack, a new television program airing on TV One through September, provides ample arguments for both sides of that question. The show takes wannabe actors (and viewers) behind the proscenium arch and provides a peek at the myriad challenges, triumphs - and backstage antics - that characterize live theater. "I probably had the longest auditions in the history of theater," says the easygoing Talbert.

On the outside, Scott Baio looks like he has it all. Good looks, money, friends, a pretty blond girlfriend. On the inside, he's one screwed-up dude. And for viewers of VH1, that's going to make for a lot of fun in the coming weeks. Baio is the centerpiece in the reality show Scott Baio is 45 ... and Single, making its premiere tonight. It's an entertaining, emotional hour built around the one-time Hollywood hunk's quest to find out why he's still single. Oh, how we love to watch stars struggle!

Bravo's Top Chef, whose third season premiered last week, is back with a vengeance. The first casualty was Clay, a self-taught Mississippi chef. His first mistake was misunderstanding the "Quickfire Challenge," in which he was supposed to create an amuse bouche, or a bite-size culinary creation that teases the taste buds. The concept was beyond him, which is strange since the amuse bouche has appeared in the previous two seasons' challenges. The moral of the story is, if you are going to go on a reality show, watch it first.