How real is too real for satellite television crime shows?
If you are a big fan of real life crime shows, the ones that take you inside a police raid like Cops or Dog the Bounty Hunter, you may be thinking that all that second hand, already edited for information from content, it just isn’t. t good enough. Instead, you may want to see what is happening at the crime scene as you go. You might even want to be able to go there and check it out for yourself. Fortunately, if you live in Baltimore, you can with the help of SpotCrime.com. This website allows you to get free local crime reports and up-to-date maps of crime scene locations in your neighborhood. If you live outside of the Baltimore metropolitan area, rest assured. The company has plans to expand.
While showing the world what the police are doing live over the internet may seem like going too far, it certainly isn’t as far as showing those images live on satellite television. However, television executives have “gone there” and soon SpotCrime programming will be available to view directly from their home, live. This means you no longer have to wait for the five o’clock news to see all the bad things that happened today, you can go straight to your TV and watch the action in high definition.
Many people think that the service is useful and necessary for local citizens to know what is happening in their city. Others see it as an opportunity to always know when the area police are concerned. That’s right, criminals can subscribe to satellite TV and access the Internet too. While the carefully packaged true crime shows shown today may be outdated, it might be time to take a step back and ask what actually needs to be shown on television.
As the world becomes more and more connected, it is leaning towards going completely wireless. Now, with technology like the iPhone, it is possible to get an application that allows you to see where the crimes and the police are at the moment, even while they are traveling. Sounds like a great opportunity to commit the perfect crime. By taking the phrase “opportunistic” to a whole new level, criminals of all stripes can save precious seconds, once they spend looking over their shoulders, to get the job done quickly and quietly.
Reality TV is certainly entertaining and crime prevention efforts are very important, but at some point satellite TV will have to draw a line between the two. Or at least I should draw a line. As this type of information technology spreads across the country, allowing people to access information related to the whereabouts of the police simply by typing in their zip codes, certain crime rates will change. The question is whether they will change for the better.
Currently on TruTV we can see crime pursuers listening to police radio scanners and heading to the crime scene when something comes across. This seems to be rapidly changing to yesterday’s technology. Hopefully, it’ll take a while for the bad guys to figure it out.