• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 7, 2015

The word “porn” is about to become a lot more prevalent in the titles of TV shows. 

How do I know this? Because I have seen this before: A handful of shows begin turning up that have a word in common, and before you know it, there’s an avalanche of them.

About 10 years ago, the word was “Extreme.” For a time, this was the most popular word in TV titles, as it became affixed to just about everything you could think of -- “Extreme Makeovers,” “Extreme Homes,” “Extreme Engineering,” “Extreme Cheapskates,” “Extreme RVs” and many, many more. The word “Ultimate” also came into wide use at around the same time.

More recently -- just a few years ago, in fact -- the word “Swamp” was everywhere, as producers flocked to the wetlands of Louisiana and Florida to film so many reality shows that TV became swamped with them: “Swamp People,” “Swamp Loggers,” “Swamp Men,” “Swamp Wars” and even “Swamp Murders.”

The “Swamp” craze in TV titles seems to have subsided, but now, here comes “Porn.” Two shows with the word “Porn” in their titles were announced at upfront presentations in the last couple of weeks.

And even if two seems like a paltry number on which to base this blog post, I again ask you to mark my words: There will be more. And besides, we already have “Pawn Stars” and “Hardcore Pawn,” which sort of sound like “Porn.” Don’t they count?

The two shows in question are “Isabella Rosselini’s Green Porno Live!” -- announced by the Ovation channel April 23 -- and “Food Porn,” coming soon to FYI, the cable channel owned by A&E Networks that replaced the Biography channel. “Food Porn” was announced last week at the A&E upfront.

Ovation’s Rosselini show will have the actress/model turned-naturalist examining the reproductive rituals and habits of animals. The word “Green” in the title is used here to reflect this show’s focus on nature. The word “Porno” would seem to refer to the sex lives of animals, although it was unclear from a clip shown at a press briefing whether or not the show intends to air footage of animals caught on tape in the act of propagating their species. This is not new; such scenes have been aired on nature shows for years, if not decades.

“Food Porn” gets its name from foodie culture. It’s a term that’s been coined to encompass the excitement some people feel for the food they eat, particularly in restaurants, where they can be seen ooh-ing and ah-ing over their dishes and snapping photos of them to be shared instantly on social media. “Food Porn,” the TV show, will try to tap into this food/social media subculture, according to Jana Bennett, president of FYI.

She gave a spicy presentation at the A&E Networks upfront. She introduced another food show, featuring a pair of Asian-American brothers named Fung that was titled “What the Fung?!”

“This show brings their unique energy and sense of humor to cover food across America in a fresh and youthful way,” Bennett said of the Fung brothers. “This show is going to be ‘Funging’ awesome!” she declared. 

And that’s another trend that’s growing in popularity these days in the television world -- variations on the f-word, particularly on TV. The best-known example of this was the adoption of the nonsense word “frak” as an f-word substitute on “Battlestar Galactica,” but there have been others. 

These substitute f-words might not be a harbinger that the use of the real thing is on the way on TV. But off of TV -- at upfront presentations, for example -- the f-word is in full flower -- heard onstage at recent presentations ranging from BuzzFeed to A&E.

Okay, I get it -- TV can be a crass business. But when we’re putting on sales presentations, can’t we at least pretend, for an hour or two, that it’s not?