Ok I’ll admit it, I have been completely addicted to The Bachelor: Officer and a Gentleman, on ABC. It’s a ridiculous show that’s entirely entertaining to watch, and even more fun to torture my boyfriend with. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s basically a reality show where one man gets to date 25 women, all at the same time, and week by week, he whittles them down, to ultimately find and propose to his one true love. And TONIGHT, in the season finale, the bachelor will have to make his final decision! I can’t wait. (One sidenote: Wouldn’t it be cool to have a reality show with one man dating 25 women, where the women thought they were vying to be his one true love, but really the show was about seeing how long the man could go on dating 25 women at once without pissing them off? It would be called, “The Player.”)
The online component to this show is pretty much non-existent, but I think there’s a huge opportunity here to integrate with a personals site, such as Yahoo! Personals or Match.com. The Bachelor, as well as all of the female contestants, would create profiles. Users could then log on to see who matched up the best with the Bachelor, based on the site’s matching system. Users (mostly females) could then see how well their profiles matched up with the bachelor, and then access profiles of local bachelors who are similar to the one on the show. There could also be an ongoing component which is actually used to select the next star of the reality show by polling women about who their favorite local bachelors are, as well as letting women throw their own profiles in the ring to be a contestant on the show. And then, of course, as each woman gets kicked off, her profile is featured prominently on the site so she can immediately continue her own search for true love.
I don’t get addicted to television shows too often, but in these rare circumstances it would be really great to see an online component that took advantage of the micro-community of loyal watchers in a way that was more engaging and interesting than a message board.