US TV arranges swayamvara, draws viewers, protests

Judging from the impressive ratings the Fox Television Network scored with “who wants to marry a multimillionaire,” particularly among young female viewers, the answer is a resounding yes.

The Tuesday night broadcast — a bizarre cross between a beauty pageant, the quiz show “who wants to be a millionaire” and ”the dating game” — drew a total of 16 million viewers in the midst of the February sweeps, when ratings are used to gauge future network advertising rates.

And by the last 30 minutes of the two-hour show, a third of all women aged 18 to 34 who were watching television had tuned in to the special, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research.

“At the end of those two hours, if you turned down the volume of your TV and you listened real carefully, you could hear western civilisation crumbling around you,” said Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Centre for the Study of Popular Television.

“Every part of our intellectual heads tells us … There’s nothing about this we should like. There’s so many things wrong with this picture,” Thomas said. “But in the privacy of your own home, it’s absolutely fascinating. This is the kind of junk that television is so good at delivering.”

The show’s spectacle was certainly compelling. An initial field of 50 women ranging in age from 19 to the mid-40s was quickly winnowed down to ten semi-finalists, then to five finalists, in a competition that included interviews, a compatibility quiz, and parades of the contestants in casual clothes, bathing suits and, for the final five, wedding gowns.

Answers to the questions were graded with the help of the multimillionaire’s relatives and close friends.

In the end, the mystery bachelor — introduced as real estate developer and motivational speaker Rick Rockwell, 42, of San Diego — emerged from his booth to choose one of the five finalists as his bride to be. It turned out that Rockwell was also a stand-up comic who had appeared in three direct-to-video sequels to the cult film Attack of the killer tomatoes.

The lucky bride turned out to be Darva Conger, 34, an emergency room nurse from Santa Monica, California, who served in the gulf war. As the four runners-up in white were escorted offstage, Rockwell proposed to Conger on bended knee. Then after a commercial break, the couple exchanged wedding vows and set off on their honeymoon.

Officials at Fox, a network that specialises in innovative shows like Married … with children, The Simpsons and Ally Mcbeal, already are planning to rebroadcast a one-hour version of the show on Tuesday.

Some feminists were appalled. “I think the show brings gutter television to a whole new low,” Elizabeth Toledo, a vice president of the National Organisation for women said on Thursday.

“It perpetuates some of the very negative stereotypes about women and men. It sends the message that women should do whatever it takes to pursue financial security through a man and that a man’s greatest asset is his financial well-being.”

But Mike Darnell, the creator of the show and the reality-television specials When animals attack and When good pets go bad, said he was looking for a compelling format, not pandering.

“Millionaire inspired me,” he said. “So I thought, `what else do people wish for? They wish for relationships. And I wondered if there were a way to combine the two.”

If Fox opts for a second installment of the show, Darnell added, he wants to make it with a multimillionaire woman choosing a mate from a field of male contestants. While the element of wealth boosted the interest of viewers, Darnell said true romance would prove the most important factor for Rockwell and Conger.

“Right now, they’re on their honeymoon. I don’t know if they’re getting along. If they don’t get along, I don’t think they’re going to stay together, regardless of the money,” he said.

That is probably true, given that Conger, like all the contestants, signed a standard prenuptial agreement before the show.