The news is out and the spirits at Spring Break will never be the same. Ghost Hunters producer Craig Piligian is launching a new "spin-off" of the ultra successful show on the Sci-Fi channel. According to an article in The Hollywood Reporter, the new series is tentatively titled Ghost Hunters: College Edition and will feature a group of college kids who will be escorted around haunted locations by an "experienced" paranormal investigator. 
There is no word yet whether the "experienced" investigator will be a member of the current cast of GH or even it's first born, Ghost Hunters International.
Obviously, this is the program that was "casting" late this Summer.
So, the GH brand expands once again with this entertainment version of very serious work. The reality of what a paranormal investigator does will be even further muddled in the public eye as GH now copies the incredibly silly Paranormal State with a group of inexperienced "investigators" fumbling around in the dark and being scared of their own shadows.
Whatever. Honestly though, my group is a member of the TAPS family. Jay and Grant founded TAPS and the TAPS Family and the original work was groundbreaking for the field in creating a large cooperative network. Yet, TAPS has become inextricably linked to GH through cross promotion and the use of the logo. As GH has become more and more an entertainment show and less a reality show about paranormal investigators that name is beginning to lose its luster.
Sure, it still opens doors to places where people are fans of the show or where businesses think being labeled as "haunted" will help their bottom line. At the same time, it makes life difficult sometimes when presenting serious research to those who are not swayed by cable ratings and find Craig Piligian's empire distasteful.
The other part of it is that everyone assumes if you do this you are working toward your own show and you went into the field in order to secure your own basic cable show. It actually can be embarrassing at times to be talking about serious ideas only to have to end up discussing GH, GHI, or soon GH: the college years.
Well, the children of our members have been itching to create SPI Kids, maybe I should call Mr. Piligian and see if he'd like to sign them up for Ghost Hunters: Elementary School Edition.
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2 comments:
In the realm of television there is a most apropos term for the exact moment when a given program takes a inescapable downturn: Jump The Shark. This term references the infamous episode of the once-beloved Happy Days where The Fonz jumps a shark on water skis. To many, this was the very moment when the bells of death tolled darkly and all went to hell. It was the moment when sweet became treacle; when quirky became absurd; and when must-see became must-see-what-else-is-on.
I think Ghost Hunters: The College Years (cute, by the way) will be exactly that. Already, we can see that cable has gorged itself too much with shows that are fast devolving into sad imitations of one another. It has become an endless stream of green-hued night vision close-ups of frightened "investigators" screaming in the night for ratings, ratings, RATINGS!!
Oh boy... sounds like Paranormal State meets Scariest Places on Earth. Perhaps there's a tinge of jealousy on my part for never creating a paranormal college organization.
Still, I'll give it a chance to prove itself watchable. At the very least, it could be entertaining to hear about more haunted places... provided they don't just rehash the same locations done too many times before.
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