Having grown up watching Jacque Cousteau and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, I have always found watching television programs on foreign lands and how indigenous animals live there to be fascinating. But seeing how Animal Planet markets its documentary series on meerkats, it seems that, nowadays, learning about about the animal kingdom isn’t rewarding enough.

“Meerkat Manor” is a series that promises to be about more than some critters surviving in the South African desert. In this show, you’ll see love, jealousy, betrayal and vengeance. To help sell this show, the meerkats are given interesting names like Zaphod, Houdini, Maybelline and Rocket Dog. Their actions are personified with human characteristics. In addition, their daily lives are edited into a highlight reel of adventures and tragedies. To make these critters more marketable, the main subjects are part of a group called “Whiskers” while neighboring meerkats who aren’t part of the original group belong to a clan called the “Commandoes.”

It’s understandable that Animal Planet wants more viewers to tune in to their show. But turning an animal-life documentary series into a dramatic, action-packed reality TV show is just plain wrong. Animal instincts cannot and shouldn’t be tied into human emotions. Judging animal actions using society’s moral code of conduct is ridiculous. If Animal Planet wants to be a credible expert on animals, they would do better to present animals as they are and not market them as participants of the “Real World.”

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Filed under: Education, Personal Opinions, Television Marketing