Why Is Reality TV the Ideal Format for Violence-Solving Chicago FIXIT?

by Steve Sewall, Chicago Civic Media

5/31/2018. Back to Part II. Here’s Part I.

So why did we select (civic-purposed) Reality TV as the ideal large-audience format to restore integrity to American politics and government? There are two main reasons.

First, voter-driven Reality TV is instantly familiar and attractive to TV viewers. From the moment Chicagoans first tune in to Chicago FIXIT, they will recognize the format of its season-long search to find viable solutions to the city’s violence epidemic.

Second is the Reality TV’s extraordinary vote generating power. Viewer-engaging, voter-driven Reality TV shows like American Idol and The Voice are the most powerful vote-generating mechanisms ever devised.

• Case in point: nearly 750 million votes cast during Season 10 of American Idol. That’s three quarters of a billion votes. It’s well over five times the total of 136,669,237 votes cast in the 2016 presidential election.
• Also bear in mind that Idol viewers cast their votes in each of the 26 weeks of Season 10. This voting experience is far more immersive than America’s existing ballot-box experience, which lets citizens vote just twice — primary and general election — every two years. And it’s an experience that doesn’t require voters to leave their homes to travel to the polls to cast votes.

Our goal in developing Chicago FIXIT is to create a highly immersive, demonstrably productive at-home voting experience.

An experience that’s focused not on electing politicians of whom so many have lost public trust but on resolving the issues and solving the problems that Americans care about most.

In Chicago, it’s violence. In the State of Illinois, it’s a multi-year fiscal and budget crisis. Nationwide, it’s issues like healthcare, immigration and the environment.

These intractable problems become solvable when a community’s media use their resources to enable citizens and public officials to solve them in settings (programs) that earn the respect and trust of the people.

FIXIT is one such setting, and Chicago FIXIT is a localized instance of it.

FIXIT works in communities of all sizes; it’s scalable to give citizens an informed voice in solving complex social problems in all three communities — local, state and national — of which every American is a member.

The FIXIT format appears at time of widespread disillusionment with American politics and government.

To help Americans restore credibility and functionality to politics and government, it taps deep into power of the voter-driven reality TV talent contests that is now a dominant player in American culture.

As we’ve indicated, this power is rooted in Reality TV’s power to engage TV viewers in two ways.

• It enables viewers to identify with contestants.
• It gives viewers a role — a vote — in determining contest outcomes.

FIXIT works by enabling viewers to identify not with politicians but with problem solvers whose commitment is not to getting elected but to helping a community solve a problem.

In essence, FIXIT is a televised/online Town Meeting, but one cloaked in the garb of voter-driven Reality TV. Call it an evolved town meeting, one that takes the procedural (and off-putting) trappings of the traditional Town Meeting and uses upgrades them, so to speak, using the modern technologies through the complex rules and procedures of reality TV shows and pro sports telecasts as well are presented to viewers in ways that a) maintain integrity and b) are familiar to viewers and c) earn the respect of the viewing audience.

We saw a need to engage and even excite viewers. By exciting viewers, FIXIT is designed to generate the large, loyal audiences needed to secure major advertisers while enabling a community to solve complex social problems as a true community.

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• Our Chicago FIXIT page has more information.
• Chicago FIXIT is a localized version of America’s Choice, our 2006 treatment for nationwide, civic-purposed reality TV.
• A neighborhood precursor to Chicago FIXIT was the multimedia West Side Drug Area Shutdown Project that succeeded in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood in the late 1990's.
• Got feedback? Take take Chicago FIXIT Survey.

Steve Sewall, Ph.D., is a Chicago educator, media entrepreneur and Director of Chicago Civic Media.