Recessions are like wildfires– they are destructive in the short run, but ultimately necessary to clear away the dead wood and rubbish. Companies get bloated and inefficient in boomtimes, then purge when the economy corrects itself.
In an ideal world, the first guy to get canned would be the least valuable. The all-knowing boss would rank all of his employees in terms of salary-weighted output, then estimate his budget shortfall and can the appropriate number, starting from the bottom of the list and working his way up. In reality, politics and superficial evaluations determine layoffs.
Fox doesn’t like it. In a forthcoming “reality” TV show, Someone’s Gotta Go, employees at struggling small businesses vote on who gets canned. Camera crews document the whole affair, including candid interviews and lots of (presumably) over-dramatic build-up.
Needless to say, Someone’s Gotta Go is already stirring controversy.
Regardless of the perversion of the idea — a network benefiting from the misery of others — this thing is going to be a hit. People who have recently been fired will watch it out of schadenfreude. People holding on to their jobs will watch it like a train wreck.
I, for one, am counting the days until fatal consequences work their way into reality TV. Our voyeurism have come a long way since The Real World. It’s only a matter of time until the reality TV version of The Most Dangerous Game, where men hunt other men for sport.
Until that day, I guess we’ll all have to watch people get fired on Fox. It’s far from escapist, close to home, and maybe just perverse enough to be entertaining.
