The Situation and Professor Plumpers from MTV's Jersey Shore, the highest-rated television show among viewers aged 18-49. Those are possibly not their real names.
Depending on how many Facebook photos exist of you holding
up a sideways peace sign,* you probably bring a varyingly complex level of irony to Jersey Shore. The MTV reality show is currently the top-rated television program among Americans 18-49, which makes it perhaps the most valuable commodity on television. Americans aged 18 to 49 buy stuff, as Situation and Professor’s decision to wear necklaces and bracelets to the beach indicates. According to the New York Times, 15 of the 20 top-rated shows for that age group this summer were unscripted—America’s Got Talent, Big Brother, The Bachelorette, So You Think you Can Dance, et cetera. That’s interesting, since in a TiVo poll reported in the same article, reality television was also the genre that the most respondents called “overdone.”