Shaunie O’Neal, ex-wife of retired NBA star Shaquille O’Neal and creator of the hit VH1 show ‘Basketball Wives’, has been telling the world how embarrassed she is by what the show has turned into. She recently told Fox 411′s Pop Tart Column:
“I never imagined it would be a group of ladies fighting and arguing the way that they do. That was never part of the plan. I hate that it has to be a fight or an argument that gives us 4.2 million viewers. I hate that, but it’s something where I’m working as hard as I can to show some type of balance, because it is there. ”
Basketball Wives star Tami Roman, the head mistress of drama, further explains that there is so much negativity on Basketball Wives – stating it’s why the viewers tune in. She also says that, although they film a lot of positive things, it won’t work for ratings and pointed out the failure of ‘Football Wives’.
Shaunie is caught between a rock and a hard place because she’s not the only executive producer. So, I know when she initially went with this concept to them, what ‘Basketball Wives’ has evolved into is not her creative mindset at work. What ultimately ended up happening is that when you do reality TV, the whole thing that drives it is the dramatic aspect. If you have six, seven people who all get along, nobody finds that interesting.
Proof positive is Shaunie tried to express to VH1 that ‘my initial idea will work. People want to see us do positive things. People want to see us getting along.’ And she came out with ‘Football Wives.’ ‘Football Wives’ has since been canceled because people don’t want to see that.
Even with our show, we do so many positive things. There were several tapings with my mom. My mom is battling diabetes, and that was very heartfelt and touching to me, and I felt that should’ve been on the show. Shaunie and I helped put a young girl through a semester of college, I felt that should’ve been on the show. There were aspects with me and my daughter, and Royce auditioning for Broadway, and things that everybody’s going through that are far more positive and far more relevant to trying to put out positive imagery. That stuff does not make it.
They’ll shoot it. If this is your storyline, we’ll tape it. But when it goes to editing, people only want to see the dramatic stuff. Literally, the argument that you see may only happen over a weekend. We tape for four months. But they’ll take the biggest arguments we have, and those become the focal points of the storyline. That is not our fault. We would absolutely love to see more positive imagery, but the audience doesn’t want to see that.
Tami raises some very valid points. It’s sad that we can’t get some balance on televisioin because drama equals high ratings and season renewals. Honestly, would you tune in if it was ‘kumbaya’ during every single episode of Basketball Wives??
