High Stakes

Extreme ratings versus extreme need:

NO reality television program has played for such high stakes: three nervous candidates will be competing in front of a prime-time audience this week for a life-saving kidney operation, as the Big Brother format gives way to The Big Donor Show.

The macabre contest will be broadcast in the Netherlands on Friday.

...Lisa, 37, a terminally ill cancer patient, has agreed to donate a healthy kidney.

She was unhappy about anonymous donation and wanted to establish a connection to a deserving person with kidney disease: that way her family could feel that her death had helped to keep someone else alive.

But how, said Lisa, could she choose one life over another? How could she make the process less random?

The choice has been left to the television audience. A short film will be shown about each candidate depicting his or her life, family and friends.

...Politicians across the party spectrum are enraged and flabbergasted.

The issue is to be discussed this week in parliamentary question time, with pressure mounting on BNN, the private broadcaster, to drop the show.

...The broadcaster, whose target audience is young people, has a reputation for being provocative. Its track record includes showing an anchorman taking the drug LSD, a supposedly educational program on sex, entitled This is How You Screw and a weight-loss competition Help! My Dog’s as Fat as Me.

There is more than a sliver of suspicion that it is exploiting illness for ratings.

...“The contestants in the show have a 33 per cent chance,” said Laurens Drillich, BNN chairman. “That’s a much larger chance than if they were on the organ waiting list.”

Although some politicians are calling the show unethical, the main argument is that it violates good taste and is pushing the boundaries of acceptability.