By Arnold Pickmere
Just how low can you go with television programmes?
Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, shown recently by the Fox network in the United States, must have come close.
That was the one in which Darva Conger, aged 34, was selected from 50 potential brides, who preened and paraded in front of a self-made millionaire who watched hidden from view.
The women introduced themselves, were asked some Dating Game-style questions, after which Darva found herself married to San Diego comic and real estate developer Rick Rockwell, 43.
The show attracted massive criticism, a big audience and produced a stampede of future applicants to the Fox Website (which crashed).
It didn't last of course. Pretty soon it emerged that a former fiancee of Rockwell had taken out a restraining order after claiming he beat and threatened to kill her.
A Philadelphia critic described the show as a cross between "spin the bottle and a cattle auction."
And the candidates who missed out, People magazine reports, were also relieved when the millionaire hove into view on their backstage monitor. The room erupted with "Whew. God forbid it was me," one contestant recounted.
Such tacky shows (to be shown on TV3 on March 31 at 7.30 pm) are blamed by the big American networks on the need to try to stop their audiences drifting to racier, no-holds barred offerings on a multitude of cable television channels.
TV: Fox viewers taken to all-time low
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