Oprah's Big GiveThere is a trend on television that I’ve been meaning to blog about for quite awhile. I am so fed up with shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Oprah’s Big Give. Corina was watching Oprah’s Big Give yesterday and it only reaffirmed what my thoughts on the show having just heard the premise and not the having actually watching the show. It’s all just a bunch of self-congratulation and corporate product placement.

Extreme Makeover - Home EditionI’ve watched a few episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and it never ceases to irritate me. While it’s great that they are helping needy people with their problems, it feels so phony when they go on shopping trips to Sears and everything in the show is just a product placement and an opportunity for corporations to write off charitable donations. They always build these bohemoth additions onto the house or just knock them down entirely and build an entirely new house. It borders on ridiculous. I can only imagine in these neighbourhoods how well that goes down when the television trailers leave and the 10, 20 or 30 other families in the same area wonder why they couldn’t get on the corporate handout gravy train. Most of these families just need a helping hand, not a million dollar home tricked out with HD televisions and industrial sized BBQs.

Part of what really grates on my nerves is all the self-congratulations and patting on the back. To me you shouldn’t need a marching band and free trips to Disney World to do something nice for someone. But then again it wouldn’t make for good television. The talking head segments where the team of builders say how good it feels to help this family out, or when they are moved to tears by the whole thing are just baloney. These people are just cogs in the corporate machine making fat cash. I’m sure it feels great to be well reimbursed for being professionally generous. And at the end of the day everyone feels good about themselves, especially the corporations and television networks for all the money they made in the process.

Related Links
The dark underside of Oprah’s Big Give
Lessons learned from ‘Oprah’s Big Give’