The State of Travel Television

If you’ve been reading much gadling, you’ve probably seen us highlight all sorts of new travel shows that are out.
The fact is, the genre seems to be exploding, as small bands of travelers head out to find odd nooks around the world
and to interact with people who have never heard of the Travel Channel.

From Stranded with Cash Peters (where the
eponymous host gets dropped in far off places with no money and no ride home) to the new show
5 Takes which follows a bunch of young travelers
as they make their way across Europe (see, we didn’t used to record this stuff…you just did it), you might say the
travel show genre is undergoing a Renaissance. Whether is is good or bad, well, it depends on your perspective.

Here
is
an interesting article
about the state of travel TV. The article seems to suggest that all these new shows are a
good thing, that they are opening our eyes to places (we, the poorly traveled Americans) that we’d never otherwise see.
But there is the danger, of course, of trivializing these places or, as in the case of
Tara Reid’s abysmal Wild On, exporting the worst part of American
culture to other places. I think most of this stuff is probably good…and needless to say, it would be cool to have your
own show which seems ever more possible these days. But there are two sides to the debate. The question is: which side
are you on?