Reality TV Peeps Should Blog

Last night Bravo aired an episode of Queer Eye UK, which is eerily like the American version—especially the opening trailer, which features the British queer eyes doing exactly what the American ones do in that little montage. Does it have to be so identical?

But that aside, the show's subject was a guy who wanted to become a television personality, so the Queer Eyes gave him a website to help him look more professional to potential employers. That's cool, but I think the queer eyes dropped the ball a bit when they didn't give their project a blog. Today, if you go to Barra Fitzgibbon's site, it doesn't look very up to date. The Queer Eye episode on which he appeared was probably filmed weeks or months ago, and it ended with the strong suggestion that his tv career was about to really take off, yet Fitzgibbon's website offers no updates about what has happened to his tv career since. I'm guessing that's because Fitzgibbon doesn't know how to update the site, but if it had been built around a blog, he could have been updating it regularly with ease. Next time, Queer Eyes, give your guy a blog!

More generally, I suggest to anyone who goes on a reality tv show who would like to "capitalize" somehow on the 15 minutes of fame it provides: Get yourself a blog! Fans of the show you were on—your fans!—might love to get to know you better, and to follow your post-show progress. I'm not talking some PR site where you just promote yourself relentlessly, but a real, honest blog where you talk about your life, and where part of your life happens to be that you were on a reality tv show. And even if you don't want to parlay your reality show experience into some sort of film or television or celebrity career, you could still connect w/fans and possibly have some fun w/a blog. With Fox set to kick off an all-reality-tv channel, I'm betting the reality folks w/blogs will be the ones w/the greatest post-show success.

Posted July 16, 2004 05:52 AM | meta-blogging tv land