Dieting for the Camera - Reality TV is Always Hungry

Dieting, whatever its appeal on a personal health level for seriously obese individuals, has become an odd source of entertainment. Where weight loss as entertainment used to be limited to earnest experts giving advice on afternoon talk shows, the success of NBCs? The Biggest Loser, now casting its 8th season, is only the biggest in what has become a veritable programming genre

According to Lyle Burwell, proprietor of VPTV, an online directory of application information for reality television, the success of The Biggest Loser sent programmers scrambling for dieting competition series.

Burwell says, "The 500 channel universe of digital TV is a beast that has to be fed. Shows in which average people try to lose weight have enormous popular appeal and they are dead cheap to produce."

Season 7 of The Biggest Loser premiered in January. A national casting tour for season 8 kicked off February 21st and continues through March 4th with the Biggest Loser casting team hitting New York City, Oklahoma City, Louisville, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Charlotte, Nashville, Houston, Miami, Columbus, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.

The same week season 7 of The Biggest Loser premiered, a very similar new series premiered on Lifetime. Lifetime Television's DietTRIBE is from Pietown, a production company primarily known for its work for HGTV. This weight loss reality series takes teams of 3 friends and puts them on a rigorous training and diet regimen.

"Pietown never took down their casting notice for the show, even after season 1 was ready to air. That shows you how confident they are that the show will be renewed for a second season," Burwell reports. "The night the first episode aired, the VPTV casting post got several hundred hits out of the blue, with no advertising."

Even MTV, bastion of the thin, is getting into weight loss competitions. The network has a reality weight loss competition show in development called Model Maker, a cross between America's Next Top Model and The Biggest Loser. They did two rounds of casting, one in the spring of 2008 and another in late summer. The show was looking for tall females with high physical endurance, 18 to 25 years old, who have a great face but need to loose between 30 - 80 lbs.  The grand prize for Model Maker is a $100,000 modeling contract. No word yet on when the series will premier, but if past history is any indication, this show, too, will be a hit.

Other North American weight loss reality shows include The Last Ten Pounds Boot Camp and Bulging Brides, both from The Eyes, a Canadian reality TV producer. A new weight loss series premiering this summer on Oxygen in the US is Dance Your Ass Off.  Like MTV's The Model Maker, Dance Your Ass Off is an attempt to cross two proven reality competitions, in this case So You Think You Can Dance and The Biggest Loser. And finally, last fall 3 Ball Productions was casting a show for people and their overweight pets, so the two can lose weight together.

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