So Brazilian politician and TV host Wallace Souza is suspected of having people murdered so his crime program, Canal Livre, could be first on the scene. All in the name of ratings. (Also in the name of eliminating the competition. Allegedly, Souza is a drug trafficker and the deceased were his competitors. But let’s focus on murder in the name of ratings.)

To quote “elpookie”: “Brilliant!” (The punctuation is elpookie’s.)

The story, which I first heard on NPR, has been widely reported. elpookie read and commented on the Associated Press’ story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Graham” commented on Sky News’ website: “This would make a great film, it has it all. Someone buy up the rights to this story quick. You can’t make this stuff up. …”

And this morning, on mediabistro.com, Pandora Young wrote, “We’re sort of shocked FOX didn’t think of it first.”

Hopefully, FOX and the other 24-hour television news outlets are preparing to trot out a bunch of talking heads to discuss the subject. And I assume, when they do, that I’ll get a call to be one of the talking heads, because I’m an expert on the subject.

In my novel ExecTV (2005, ENC Press) — “the book the Vatican refused to comment on (even though we asked)” — reality TV is fast-forwarded to its logical extreme when “an unemployed documentary filmmaker extraordinaire arranges to have an execution broadcast live on pay-per-view television, in as flamboyant a form as his bizarre vision can conjure to amuse the masses.” (The publisher’s words.)

Brilliant, yes? (Yes.)

With regard to Pandora Young’s piece “Killing for Ratings” and her comment, “We’re sort of shocked FOX didn’t think of it first,” Ms. Young et al. should realize that Wallace Souza didn’t think of it first either. And let’s not forget that his program showed viewers dead bodies, not the murders themselves. Had Mr. Souza asked my advice I’d have told him to broadcast the murders live. Talk about ratings!

I mean, the dude is immune from prosecution as long as he’s in office. So why not take advantage of that?

But Mr. Souza didn’t ask my advice, and now it’s too late. His show is no longer on the air. At least he got rid of those pesky (other) drug traffickers.

I’ll just wait for producers from CNN, FOX, and MSNBC to call. Once they do, it’ll just be a matter of time before one of them takes my idea and runs with it. There’ll be a shitstorm of angry debate about it, which will boost ratings, make a few suits (and me) a lot of money, and effectively eliminate the competition.

So, my advice to network executives (in Graham’s words) is: “Someone buy up the rights to this story quick.”

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