As a proud student at UCLA, I go to great lengths in supporting
those who have gone before me at this fine institution. Thus, I
took one for the team, sacrificed my Sunday night, and watched
Brooke Burke, a former Bruin and current host of E!
Entertainment’s “Rank,” count down the 25 sexiest
women.
It was a grueling half hour in front of the tube, but nothing
short of a natural disaster could have pulled me away from my
obligations to this school. Somewhere between grabbing a bag of
chips and applauding J-Lo’s absence at the top spot, I
noticed that countdown shows like “Rank” have become
more prevalent in television these days. Apparently, the powers
that be have ruled that we shall be fans of TV lists.
We as Homo sapiens are inclined to do two things: categorize and
list. We like to slap a label on one cheek and then slap a number
on the other cheek. To make matters worse, at some point in the
space-time continuum, TV producers discovered our perverted
obsession and capitalized on it.
I was disturbed, outraged and downright shocked by the number
one choice, Jennifer Garner (J-Gar to her friends), as well as the
motives behind countdown shows. I felt manipulated and exploited.
So here’s my list of the top 10 things you should know about
TV lists:
10) Entire shows devoted to lists have historically found a home
in year-end programming because the year’s top 50 music
videos are obviously all we think about during Christmas and New
Year’s.
9) The grandeur and success of millennium retrospectives like
ESPN SportsCentury’s “50 Greatest Athletes” and
VH1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll”
gave TV producers the green light to experiment with full-time
countdown shows. Unfortunately, VH1 unleashed a series of
monstrosities including 100 Greatest Dance Songs, Love Songs, One
Hit Wonders, Background Dancers in Michael Jackson Videos, and
Prog-Rock/Art Rock Artists of the 70’s (OK, I made up the
last two).
8) Nobody really cares about who is number one, but rather
who’s not number one.
7) TV lists created from poll results rather than expert
opinions are not worth your time because you already know the
popular choices. Polls are democracy at its worst.
6) In a countdown of countdown shows, the best would have to be
A&E’s “Biography of the Millennium,” a daring
and detailed list of the 100 most influential people of the
millennium.
5) The number of things listed is often a multiple of five with
10, 25, 50 and 100 being the most common choices.
4) The commentary for each selection never reveals the reasons
why number 66 is better than number 67, or why number two is not up
to par with number one.
3) Nothing riles you up more than a dubious ranking that shakes
your faith in humankind. The Backstreet Boys have one of the top
ten pop songs of all-time?
2) Brooke Burke is the greatest countdown host in the history of
countdown hosts.
1) TV lists are cheap and lazy attempts to insult the
intelligence of the audience and fill up space that was empty due
to a lack of creative ideas.
Chang’s list of the worst list shows are MTV/Rolling
Stone’s 100 greatest pop songs,VH1’s 100 greatest
artists of hard rock and VH1’s 100 greatest dance songs.
E-mail Chang at dchang@media.ucla.edu.