Reality shows have been scraping the bottom of the barrel for like 15 years. Remember temptation island? No? Good lord what a terrible concept. Remember who wants to marry a millionaire?
Heres what makes me furious: reality television has extruded its tentacles into every other channel, especially those who want thoughtful programming. The "Learning Channel" went reality mode like 10 years ago. The history channel is now nearly entirely reality programming-- ice road truckers, top shot, ax men, pawn stars, swamp people, american pickers (or whatever), american restoration. So much for "modern marvels," all you get on demand is all that reality garbage.
Animal planet is now all animal cops/animal horders/etcetera.
Discovery-- mythbusters was OK at first, but now all of their shows are based on the mythbusters/fucking crab fisherman archetype.
NatGeo is mostly "lets watch prisoners shank eachother" or "the dog whisperer"
Finally, even the lofty science channel has succumbed, with their asstounding Junkies and survivalist garbage "stuff with hackett" or whatever the hell thats supposed to be about. Yeah, I liked idiot abroad too, but boy did that open the floodgates.