Reaching for a New Low: A Review of Rock the Cradle

I have to reveal to all of you a sad and painful truth: Lil B. has one of the most false falsetto voices I’ve ever heard, and extended exposure to his lyrical “skills” may leave you writhing in pain, sorely tempted to plant your Rogers cable converter at high velocity into the flat pane of glass on that brand new HDTV you just bought.

Unfortunately for the viewing public, many of the other participants on the American Idol-modelled television train wreck called Rock the Cradle were as deficient in the vocals department as not-eliminated-early-enough Lil B. But just like the five-car pileup on the highway that you slow down for, rubbernecking to see if you can get a better view of the carnage, I dutifully racked up viewing credits for RTC in the hope that it might get better.

The MTV show pitted nine aspiring vocalists against each other; the catch was that all of them were children of MTV stars, artists such as panty-dropper Al B. Sure!, rocker Eddie Money, sultry chanteuse Olivia Newton-John, and dancing machine MC Hammer.

Sadly, the formula for shows like Cradle is no longer the hottest thing on the burner. In fact, it’s more like the formula was left too long, scalded, and then abandoned to a lukewarm demise. (Kind of like the Crocs fad.)

The sight of Landon Brown, son of bad boy pop star Bobby Brown, attempting to sing a Stevie Wonder track with all the elegance of a whining chainsaw, only confirmed the obvious – reality television in all its forms (and particularly the “we’ll make you a pop star!” incarnation) jumped the shark long ago. As the bottom of the barrel gets scraped to a shiny sheen, we the viewing audience are treated -- or, rather, subjected -- to an ever-descending level of quality in our programming.

More recent select-a-singer series that have popped up onscreen, such as Cradle, Girlicious and Rockstar, have permanently rendered the format obsolete, and permanently in the shadow of the success of the Idol shows.

Need to replace a dearly departed key member of your band? INXS and TLC have done it. Want to start a girl group in the Spice Girls/Pussycat Dolls mould? Choreographer Robin Antin has already struck gold with Girlicious, and it’s all about the burlesque to boot! (That one is going to be tough to top for the 15-year-old gawking teenage boy set that loves watching Nichole, Tiffanie, Natalie and Chrystina shake their scantily clad stuff in their music videos.) Maybe you are not really concerned with the hip-pop on the airwaves, and would prefer to rock out? Been there, done that (see Rock of Love). Want to hunt coast-to-coast to find that mega-star in the making? I give you multi-platinum American Idol Season One champ, Kelly Clarkson. Rather search internationally? Well, that’s been done too. Running out of novel ideas? So are the television studios.

What led to this glut of reality television is still at the heart of the issue. Networks don’t want to pay actors to make a recurring series anymore. It’s much cheaper to find a bunch of Joes and Jills gullible enough to sign on to a show with a dubious premise (racing around the world with your soon-to-be ex-partner, finding true love while living in the same house as your competition, deliberately stranding yourself in the rainforest for money, etc.) and cast them for the job. No Actors’ Guild fees to deal with, no multi-million dollar demands à la the casts of Seinfeld and Friends, and no celebrity egos to deal with week in and week out.

At the beginning it seemed to make sense, especially after Survivor proved the format could attract a huge and loyal audience. Everyone dove to capitalize on the flavour of the moment. We got Big Brother, The Bachelor, The Amazing Race, Hell’s Kitchen, For Love or Money, and lots of other incarnations of the formula. And the people watched, and watched, and the studios racked up the dough. Suddenly, reality TV started to muscle in on audiences that shows like Grey’s Anatomy, ER and CSI used to own. The better the shows did, the more of them we got. Even HGTV got into the mix, with shows like Handyman Superstar Challenge, featuring the best and worst do-it-yourselfers in the country. It seemed like there were no limits… until viewers started speaking loudly by voting with their thumbs.

The moment of reckoning is at hand. The reality frenzy is cooling and MTV must have realized it when they saw Cradle’s ratings. The reason why ratings were abysmally low was apparent to anyone who watched the first episode: these kids, sweet as they were, would never have made it far on American Idol. As nice as his guitar playing was, Crosby Loggins is not exactly my idea of the Next Big Thing. And let’s be honest, the only reason he got a chance to be on a show that would allow him to emerge from his father’s shadow and “be his own man” is because he was in his father’s shadow in the first place. No music producer would be looking at Crosby, if not for the “Loggins” tacked on to the end of his signature. The season was cut mercifully short to six shows, down from the eight originally planned.

Reality shows and the formula that guides them need to be poured down the drain, just like the money MTV spent on Cradle. It’s time to pull the plug – for real.

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