Like an actor attending endless auditions, the city of Muncie has spent the past month learning just how heartless Hollywood can be.
It took only four episodes for CBS to boot “Armed & Famous,” a reality show chronicling C-list stars’ becoming Muncie police officers.
With the tagline “Real celebs become real cops . . . Really!” the show proved no real match for “American Idol,” and its remaining episodes are airing on VH1.
Mayor Dan Canan said he greenlighted the project because he hoped “Armed & Famous” would widen America’s knowledge of his Indiana city, which has struggled economically in recent years.
“Obviously the show pokes fun at us, but I don’t know any community that has no negative element to it. It was a gamble on our part,” he said. “But this is an opportunity to get national exposure.”
Speaking of exposure, Muncie’s Ball State University got just that when it learned last week that a local porn auteur had filmed an X-rated movie on campus.
It seems a university employee approved the taping, believing the movie would be a horror film, instead of the “horror porn” movie that a California company released two weeks ago.
“We have policies and procedures that if followed correctly could have prevented this,” said Terry King, the university’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. “Unfortunately one of our personnel did not follow that procedure.”
Of course Muncie is not alone in experiencing the highs and lows of the entertainment industry. In other cities where the reality television circus has already come and gone, reactions to the encounter are as mixed as the shows themselves.
Consider when producers approached the University of Nebraska-Lincoln a couple of years ago with the idea of “Tommy Lee Goes to College,” about the bad-boy drummer’s attempts at higher education.
“Tommy Lee definitely has a reputation, and we had to ask ourselves if we wanted his reputation,” said Dave Fitzgibbon, the university’s manager of broadcast services.
Eventually, after numerous conversations with the show’s producers, the university agreed to the project. Two years later, it’s a decision university officials not only defend, but delight in.
“It’s safe to say we realized literally tens of millions of dollars of free publicity,”said Fitzgibbon, who noted that theuniversity still maintains a Web site for the show, which aired six episodes on NBC in 2005.
“We’re a pretty-good-size university here, but we are in the Midwest, and the state of Nebraska is seeing a pretty stagnant population growth. This was one way, a very big way, to kind of put us on the map,” he said. “It did show people on the coasts that we’re not just sitting in the middle of a cornfield.”
While Lincoln wanted, and received, its publicity, the tiny town of Altus, Ark., hoped to gain a new fire station for hosting Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie for the first season of Fox’s “The Simple Life” in 2003.
“I’m still working on it,” said Veronica Post, the town’s mayor, who’s also a firefighter.
What the town got was $15,000 and one “Simple Life” DVD for each household — about 450 copies.
Post wishes she had sweetened that deal.
“I should have negotiated better on behalf of the community,” she said.
Muncie, for example, received payment for police overtime associated with the show and three Hummer H3s as gifts, said Police Chief Joseph Winkle. Producers also compensated some local residents who appeared on film — including criminal suspects — with everything from T-shirts to money, Muncie’s newspaper, The Star Press, reported.
Still, though she feels shortchanged on behalf of Altus, Post said she has not soured on the production process.
“I suggested they bring Paris and Nicole back,” she said enthusiastically. “We’ll get Nicole healthy, and we’ll get Paris to learn a few skills.”
Communities considering their big TV debut should proceed carefully, said Mimi White, a professor in Northwestern University’s department of radio, television and film.
“I think that you are always making a bargain with the devil. And the ability to get exposure comes with obvious and severe tradeoffs — some that are spelled out very clearly and some that are not,” she said. “All sides of the issue have some merit. I just don’t know that towns need their 15 minutes of fame.”
Chicago, for example, doesn’t always succumb to reality television’s siren song. The Police Department refuses to cooperate with shows such as “COPS.”
“The requests come in on a daily basis,” said Monique Bond, spokesman for the Chicago Police Department. “It takes valuable resources off a street. Police really don’t have time to escort a production crew or [let it] film our work.”
The department’s position, which some cynics attribute to a distaste of prying eyes, is a philosophical one, Bond said.
“Law enforcement is not entertainment, and crime is no joking matter,” she said.
But that’s not to say the city is opposed to reality TV — far from it. Rich Moskal, director of the Chicago Film Office, a municipal agency that promotes movie and television production, said plenty of reality programs have called Chicago home, although most operate without fanfare.
“Ninety percent of stuff, people don’t know it goes on,” he said, noting that Chicago’s size allows shows to operate without the hoopla that surrounds filming in smaller locales. In contrast, when production was under way here in Muncie, people were known to intentionally speed down the town’s main street, hoping to get pulled over by one of the celebrities.
Not that Chicago is immune to guerrilla community reaction.
In 2001, protesters repeatedly assembled and even rioted in front of the house where MTV’s “Real World” filmed, blaming the show for gentrification in the Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods. Graffiti, insults and window smashing occurred as well.
In 2003, “Starting Over,” an ABC daytime reality show, had to move its filming location to an Uptown house because neighbors on the Near North Side worried about the show’s impact.
“The second house worked out fine. And we recognized and learned to outreach with the community,” Moskal said. “It’s the kind of programming people love to hate, or just love.
“And unfortunately, reality television tends not to be the cash cow people might think.”
Moskal remembered with a chuckle that when “Real World” wrapped production in Chicago, the crew had T-shirts printed that winked at the problems they experienced with some Chicagoans.
The shirts read: “MTV Chicago. We had a riot.”
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jageorge@tribune.com
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Reality comes home to roost
In 2006, films, television, music videos and commercials filled 1,196 on-location production days in Chicago. Reality television made up about a quarter of that number.
As a comparison, Los Angeles reported 20,654 on-location days, of which 40.7 percent involved reality television.
Beyond cat fights and contests, reality programming also includes travel, cooking and shopping programs. Paralleling the general trends in television, home improvement shows proved particularly popular in Chicago.
— Jason George
Some that stopped by last year:
“Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”
– “Designed to Sell”
– “America’s Most Wanted”
– “Design on a Dime”
– “Grease: You’re the One That I Want”
