Murders and TV

According to the United States Department of Labor, the average American watches about 21 hours of television a week. Surely it is not just lack of anything better to do that people tune in everyday: it truly the enticing nature of the programming that attracts people to the screen.

In Thursday's Chicago Tribune, there was an article that discusses one idea of trying to combat homicides in Chicago: by making television shows about them. This weekend on a show called 'Crime Stoppers Case Files: Chicago', the Chicago police hopes to gain more evidence about a 21 year old cold case of a young mother stabbed on to death in her home in front of her then 4 year old son.

Police Commander Jay Parrott of the Evanston Police Department hopes that shows like this can spread awareness about the issue. He says, "It's a cold case, but it's not so old that people are not going to remember it. Hopefully we can make some developments on this." I wonder to what extent the show will come across as a hybrid between crime show like CSI and a reality tv program. When the officer said that the case 'not so old', I wonder if that crosses a line between still classified evidence and familial privacy.

Shows similar to this have aired before; it reminds me of '24 Hour Murder Mystery' or even ones about prison lockups. What do you think of this idea of a program? How successful do you think it will be for providing 'more developments' as the officer said?