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RURAL REALITY vs. REALITY TV:
ANATOMY OF A PUBLIC AWARENESS CAMPAIGN

Why media images matter

To have the entertainment industry intentionally create an image of rural people not being able to cope in contemporary society -- that's not the way to build bridges between urban and rural.

Rural Sociologist John Allen
Quoted in the Omaha World-Herald
January 12, 2003

Rural Strategies learned about the proposed "Real Beverly Hillbillies" in August 2002 when CBS announced that it planned to create a reality-television program based on the old "Beverly Hillbillies" situation comedy. The concept was to find a real-life, low-income rural family, put them in an opulent Beverly Hills mansion with assorted luxuries, and invite the nation to laugh as they bumbled through their day.

Criticism of the show's premise was immediate, but the network's response was indifferent. CBS did not answer any of the complaints from ordinary viewers, even when rural elementary school children wrote to the network. Because of CBS's apathy, Rural Strategies, working with private foundations, designed and launched a national campaign to oppose the program and compel CBS to respond.

The goals of the campaign have been to:

• Stop CBS's plan to produce "The Real Beverly Hillbillies."
• Engage the network in a conversation about their service to rural communities.
• And raise public awareness about contemporary rural economic and social conditions.

Apart from the harm of perpetuating negative stereotypes about rural people, the show would also hamper efforts to create more effective rural policies. If rural people are perceived as objects of ridicule or pity, then public policy will fail to address the reality of rural life. CBS's plan seemed all the more egregious because even though rural America's 56 million residents represent 20 percent of the U.S. population, they are entirely absent from the network's scripted entertainment programs and appear only rarely in news coverage.

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