Tonight, ABC airs the second installment of their new summer hit, Wipeout. The show’s premise is quite simple. People compete in an obstacle course where they subject themselves to a nonstop cavalcade of slips, nose-dives, and pratfalls for a cash prize of $50,000. The teasers alone should be tagged, “Must Pee (while you’re presumably laughing) TV.”

Or not. Since when did the networks let The Three Stooges program their schedule?

I know what you’re thinking: if it’s so bad, flip the channel. That would be a fine argument, until you pick up your remote. Competing for America’s viewership are at least three more similar slices of utter moral bankruptcy.

NBC has their revival of Celebrity Family Feud (the only true surprise here–Joan Rivers actually has other family members to count aside from a daughter I was convinced was a homunculus).

While the CW serves up another nerd-humiliating season of Beauty & the Geek, Fox’s battle royal with its own hit, The Moment of Truth—the ultimate act of pure human degradation cloaked as a game show. This one features contestants responding via lie detector about scandalous events in their lives better left secret.

But when a network flashes a stack of cash, America comes running in droves. So what if some poor schmuck sits there spilling the truth about his one-night-stand with Mommy’s sister. This makes for good television, dammit—and we can wash away our guilt when he wins the $100K!

None of any of these huge television success stories come as any surprise, since we as a country have been in love with the “game show” since the beginning of television.

The $64,000 Question was a number-one fixture in the 1950s, until a game show scandal revealed the show was fixed. America felt betrayed…almost like the wife hearing about her husband’s infidelities on The Moment of Truth. But at least the wife will walk away with at least half her husband’s earnings. America isn’t so lucky.

These programs and their infinite kin have become the junk-food pop culture of our generation. And just as junk food packs on the flab and clogs the arteries, so has our brains atrophied by the mindless patter of these so-called “hits.”

Our attention spans have become sadly conditioned to the ultimate in “Short Attention Span Theater” when watching television nowadays. Watching a show like I Survived a Japanese Gameshow requires very little brainpower. It takes almost nothing to become invested. There’s no puzzles to solve and no trivia to even answer.

In there lies the ultimate problem. How is a scripted show, with three-dimensional characters and carefully crafted plots supposed to compete with a program you can watch and follow in the corner of your eye while making dinner, checking your kid’s homework, and performing micro-surgery?

This is yet another one of the reasons scripted programming continues to languish. How can a viewer become invested in the intricacies of a show like Swingtown, when it’s faster, easier, and instantly gratifying when Elvis Presley’s ex-wife tries her best to hippy hippy shake shake whatever she’s got left on Dancing with the Stars?

We simply can’t bother to become invested in anything that doesn’t feature a million-dollar prize, a fall-in-the-mud pratfall, or an entire home makeover within the first five minutes it’s on the air.

The sitcom has been dead since Friends left the airwaves. Since even before the writer’s strike, sitcoms, as well as the one-hour drama, has barely been hanging on by a thread. I suppose the true test will be what happens this fall when erstwhile hits like Heroes and Lost finally return.

Will really anyone care? Or will it simply be The Moment of Truth for scripted programming?

Note to networks: Try this concept next season and see what happens: Scripted Programming for the Stars.

You know something? It’s just so out there and retro, it just might work.