I do, however, watch The Pitch on AMC.

For those who don’t know, the show follows two actual advertising agencies as they compete against one another for an important account. At the beginning of the hour the agencies come together in a conference room to be briefed on the project by the potential client company. The agencies return to their respective offices, always located in different parts of North America and nowhere near the client’s headquarters (no home field advantage here). They have one week to come up with a new campaign, and cameras follow them as they wrestle with one creative dead end after another. At the end of the week they each return to the client to pitch their solution and then wait to see who gets the account.

The Pitch is no less contrived than Survivor or The Apprentice, and no group of people on earth is going to be more aware of the cameras and play to them than ad people. The really impressive “pitch” here is the one that AMC must have used to convince Subway, Waste Management and other large corporations to turn their multi-million dollar marketing programs into a game show prize. I’m sure the phrase “millions in free publicity” was used more than once. Who selects the two agencies and the process by which they were chosen is left as a mystery. Interestingly, none appear to have category experience. The intent, I suppose, is to keep the playing field level.

Companies typically spend months conducting an agency search, and the finalist agencies base their pitches on weeks of market research, planning and creative development. Picking two agencies with no apparent category experience (to keep things even) and taking the best of whatever comes out of a one-week creative exercise is a new model altogether. Not one I would recommend, either, judging by the generally low quality of work that has emerged so far.

So, why do I watch this when I find it so difficult to appreciate other shows of its kind? I guess it’s partially because I can identify with the agency people and the crap they have to put up with. It’s also a hoot to watch the agency principals preen and posture while enforcing their “unique” management styles. In other words, it’s fun to watch someone suffer and squirm who, for a change, isn’t me.

Perhaps that explains the popularity of reality programs. The Survivor/Apprentice model lets us watch a mock competition in which people get tricked, humiliated, and outdone – and it isn’t us. In the Jersey Shore/Real Housewives construct: we become voyeurs with a window into excessive and superficial lifestyles that are more dysfunctional than our own. And then there are the documentary-style reality shows, such as Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. These actually do follow real, hardworking people as they perform nasty, dangerous, or distasteful jobs that we (thank God) don’t have to.

I suppose it’s natural evolution from the Jerry Springer “I’m in a lesbian relationship with my mother-in-law and my husband doesn’t know” school of entertainment. There is value… even validation… to be found in observing those who have screwed their lives up beyond anything that you could imagine, let alone do. It makes being normal or just moderately well adjusted seem like a major accomplishment.

These days, perhaps it is.