Flavor of Love
Public Enemy's Flavor Flav choosing a girlfriend from twenty women he had renamed things like New York, Hoopz and Pumkin, and handing gold clock necklaces to the ones who stayed. Its 2006 second-season finale drew 7.5 million viewers, the biggest audience VH1 had ever had.
Flavor of Love grew out of two earlier reality shows, The Surreal Life and Strange Love, the second of which had followed Public Enemy's Flavor Flav and his relationship with Brigitte Nielsen. Created by Cris Abrego and Mark Cronin and produced by 51 Minds Entertainment, it premiered on VH1 on January 1, 2006, with a format similar to The Bachelor. Twenty women moved into a mansion in Encino, California, to compete for Flav. He gave each one a nickname, saying he remembered nicknames better than real names. At each elimination the women who were staying received a gold clock to wear around their necks, with their picture and nickname behind the hands, and a contestant's real name was revealed only when she was sent home.
The first season ran ten episodes and was won by Nicole Alexander, known as Hoopz. Its runner-up was Tiffany Pollard, whom Flav had named New York, and the third-place contestant, Pumkin, spat on her shortly after being eliminated. New York returned for season two, which premiered on August 6, 2006, to 3.3 million viewers, and finished second again, this time to Chandra Davis, or Deelishis. The finale that October drew 7.5 million viewers, which Reality Blurred reported was more than any other show in VH1's history and 27 percent more than the first season's finale. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, relying on VH1, called it the year's highest-rated non-sports show on basic cable, then ran a correction. An episode of TNT's The Closer had rated higher.
New York got her own VH1 show, I Love New York, in 2007, and the formula spread to Rock of Love with Bret Michaels, Real Chance of Love, Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School and I Love Money. The third season of Flavor of Love opened on February 11, 2008, to 2.8 million viewers, and Multichannel News reported that its early numbers were down 8 percent from the season before. That May it was announced that the third season would be the last. The show ended on May 26, 2008.
Similar items
Survivor
The CBS reality-competition show that premiered in 2000 and kicked off the modern reality-TV boom. Contestants are stranded in remote locations, split into rival tribes, and compete in challenges while voting each other out at Tribal Council. Host Jeff Probst's iconic catchphrase "The tribe has spoken" and the show's tagline "outwit, outplay, outlast" became part of the cultural lexicon.
America's Next Top Model
Tyra Banks turned the fashion industry into a weekly elimination bloodsport: makeover meltdowns, impossible photo shoots, and a panel that could end a dream with one photograph. And in 2005 it produced the eruption that outlived the whole series — "we were all rooting for you!"
Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica
MTV's cameras moved in with pop's most photogenic married couple and struck gold in the very first episode, when Jessica Simpson stared at a can of tuna and asked, "Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish?" Newlyweds turned domestic squabbles about laundry and Chicken of the Sea into appointment television — and made Nick and Jessica bigger than either of their music careers ever had.
Joe Millionaire
Fox's 2003 prank on The Bachelor: twenty women competed in a French château for a bachelor they were told was a millionaire, who was actually construction worker Evan Marriott. If the last woman standing still wanted him after the reveal, the two split $1 million. More than 30 million people watched the finale, and the sequel proved the trick only worked once.