To know pop culture’s newsmakers lately is to wish for a Hazmat suit and antibiotics. But hard as these characters can be to watch, the ratings reveal it’s even harder not to.
The return of scandal-mired Tiger Woods saw the Masters draw the largest audience for any cable golf telecast in history. Jesse James, dubbed "the most hated man in America" by Entertainment Weekly, has never been a hotter water-cooler commodity. And Kate Gosselin’s diva antics helped Dancing with the Stars beat American Idol for the first time ever.
"The presence of unlikable characters actually gives us a reason to watch," says Matthew J. Smith, an associate professor of communication at Wittenberg University in Ohio. "Heroic characters are less complex and interesting than their adversaries."
This is, perhaps, most explicitly played out on Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, where the scheming of the latter players has proven far more engaging than the holier-than-thou heroes, who draw a mocking yawn from Smith – and, most likely, a good portion of the 12 million people that tune into CBS for the show each week.
But it’s not just the networks profiting from this trend.
Glenn Beck, a political commentator who lobs words like grenades, made $32 million U.S. last year, according to Forbes. Perez Hilton, an incendiary tabloid blogger, also made his name – and a small fortune – on his ability to tunnel under people’s skin, proudly dubbing his site "Hollywood’s most hated." And Rosie O’Donnell has parlayed her dubious reputation as the Queen of Mean into a forthcoming talk-show positioned as the heir apparent to Oprah’s time slot.
As a Canadian pop culture expert puts it, the next best thing to being loved by audiences is being loathed by them.
"Are people going to tune in to generically dislike someone? No, they’re not," says Rebecca Sullivan, associate professor at the University of Calgary. She contends that most of us need ongoing, specific, and preferably juicy justification for paying attention to these people, whose train-wrecks make our own lives look better by comparison.
"I’ve never cared about Sandra Bullock as a celebrity, never saw Jesse James’s show and had no idea about him," says Sullivan. "But watching his degradation has been quite pleasurable."
Gosselin, who’s been subjected to more analysis than the iPad, is another good example. The woman with the wonderwomb (Gosselin has eight children) is being given a new TLC show, called Twist of Kate, despite – or perhaps because of – her reputation as reality TV’s most polarizing personality.
"Her naysayers hope she’ll fade into obscurity because they don’t feel she’s done anything to deserve her fame, or just think she’s annoying," says Kirthana Ramisetti, managing editor of the forecasting site Predicto Canada.
"Yet, those same people will watch her on Dancing with the Stars with the hopes she’ll make a fool of herself. By tuning in week after week, they’re ensuring Kate’s continued success and time in the spotlight."
But while Dancing leverages Gosselin’s boorish behaviour, Twist of Kate will likely place her in a more flattering shade of limelight.
"There’s no schadenfreude factor to be found in Kate commiserating with other parents about how hard it is to take care of her kids and put food on the table," says Ramisetti, who reports that 57 per cent of the 8,564 people polled this week by Predicto.com didn’t foresee a TLC ratings record in Twist’s forthcoming premiere.
Lucky for the cable network, there exists a healthy community of people who, according to Television Without Pity columnist Daniel MacEachern, will tune into a show specifically so they can tear it, or select key players, apart later.
"To some extent, that’s pretty much the existence of TWoP," says Newfoundland-based MacEachern, laughing. "But I think people often overstate how much they actually hate a person. I don’t know anybody who’d admit to owning a single Celine Dion record . . . yet she’s one of the biggest sellers out there."
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