I'm a Cops fan from way back. Like, on the old school season one tip. Boyee. It was mandatory viewing on Saturday nights in college, and watching the "men and women of law enforcement" dispensing hot, creamy justice provided just the inspiration I needed to go to the Continental Club and commit aggravated battery against my liver.
Now in its 17th season, its ratings aren't the best. Granted, they were never Cosby Show equivalent, but the show hovers in the 80s on the Nielsen scale. I don't see it going away anytime soon, partly because it and The Simpsons are the longest running non-news shows on TV right now. And Cops probably costs 1/100 of the increasingly moribund Simpsons.
But the show's getting stale. No matter how many specials you shoot at Mardi Gras or Sturgis, people get tired of seeing the same garden variety drunk drivers, wife beaters, and meth-/crackheads every week.
Cops is unlikely to change the formula, and thanks to watching more TV this week than I think I have in the last year, I've decided John Langley and Malcolm Barbour need to jump on the newest crime-o-vision bandwagon: namely, making a show based solely on Dateline's latest premise of luring pedophiles to an alleged meeting with an underaged kid and showing them getting busted. Last week's episode, subtitled "To Catch a Predator...Not the Cool Kind from that Schwarzenegger Movie," rated higher than The King of Queens, 20/20, or The Amazing Race.
All reality shows depend to some extent on your dislike of one or more of the participants. People hated Richard Hatch in Survivor, or the models in Amazing Race, or Joe Rogan on Fear Factor. But there were always those you found youself rooting for as well. Even with Cops you could usually find some pity in your heart for the guy who had a few too many and took a leak in the wrong alley. But an all-pedophile show would unite the country in hatred. It's like using Nazis as the villains in your movie, it's guilt-free schadenfreude.
Obviously you'd need some changes to the format. Instead of having Stone "Temple" Phillips or whoever coming out to interrogate the pedo, use a real kid as bait and let the child's family get an uninterrupted 30 seconds to "talk" with the guy. Then, after filming the dude crawling out into the driveway while bleeding from his ears and spitting out tooth fragments, have the cops come in and make the arrest. They could also film in different cities, and have audience interaction. "Guess Which Pedophile Makes the Most Money?", for example, or voting for the most shocking act unrelated to actual molestation, like the guy this week who brought his own six-year old kid with him the meet-up.
I'm not denying such a show would only acclerate our descent into the abyss, but I need the money, and expect a producer's credit for any shows that come from my idea.
"Obviously you'd need some changes to the format. Instead of having Stone "Temple" Phillips or whoever coming out to interrogate the pedo"
How about having some really really big wrestler/biker/ex-con come out and sweat the bejezzus out of the pedo. Instead of outright ulte-violence, we could see the pedo piss his pants.