If ever there was a time when television defined the phrase Newton Minow gave it in 1961 — “a vast wasteland” — Monday night prime time fit the bill. At 7 p.m., ABC, NBC and Fox went head-to-head in reality-TV overload. The newest one was on Fox: “Married by America.” According to the USA Today TV listings, it is “a new relationship/reality program that allows viewers to play matchmaker. … [The] newly matched couples won’t actually have to marry; they just have to agree to live together for a while.”

On ABC, a year after running “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” into the ground, it was “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!” — “celebrity” being a term used a bit loosely. The only names I readily recognized from the listing on the ABC Web site were Robin Leach (“Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”), Bruce Jenner (Olympic athlete), Melissa Rivers (daughter of Joan) and Cris Judd (short-lived Mr. Jennifer Lopez).

However, ABC should still get the benefit of the doubt for its selections, since those more informed about obscure stars than I am are probably eating it up.

I would say this is yet another incarnation of Americans’ celebrity obsession, but like nearly everything else in the genre, Europe was doing it first. Whoever says Europe is progressive in its culture might want to take another look at the TV it created before the Americans followed up.

NBC ran a double whammy of reality television Monday night with “Fear Factor” and “Meet My Folks”. The former is on its way to being an elder in the reality-TV genre, being about the only one remaining from early 2002 besides “Survivor.” “Meet My Folks,” sort of based on a funny movie premise (“Meet the Parents”) brought down to reality TV status, is older than “Married by America,” but both hold some of the same ideas. It’s just that NBC keeps the marriage selection in the family, while Fox uses everyone across the country. Whatever happened to deciding on your soul mate yourself?

The only thing more outrageous than the concepts that make it to the air are the ones that aren’t there yet.

You may know that CBS would like to bring a real-life version of “The Beverly Hillbillies” to prime time. According to cnn.com, “Like the premise of the long-running CBS hit comedy ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ about a poor mountaineer and his kin who strike it rich on oil, the idea for the new ‘reality’ series is to transplant a real-life family from a humble home in the backwoods to a mansion in Beverly Hills, California. Also, like the original comedy … the show would try to capitalize on the fish-out-of-water dynamics between the family members and their new upscale environs and neighbors.”

This premise has rankled people all the way up to Capitol Hill. Senator Zell Miller, D-Ga., blasted the whole setup on the Senate floor Feb. 25, saying, “What CBS and CEO [Les] Moonves propose to do with this cracker comedy is bigotry, pure and simple. Bigotry for big bucks.” He followed that up with “They know that the only minority left in this country that you can make fun of and demean and humiliate … are hillbillies in particular and rural people in general.”

With the death of Mr. Rogers last week, we have lost someone who created an oasis in the wasteland. The truly disappointing part is that no one wants to follow him. Instead, the networks would prefer preventing the wasteland from ever generating intelligent life.

So if the networks are insistent on keeping the reality genre, here’s an idea that CBS probably has first dibs on, but the rest can consider:

“Survivor: Iowa”: Sixteen people from the coasts of the country, who wouldn’t set foot in the “Great Flyover,” will do just that for a million dollars. Set in Union Grove State Park, it’s culture shock galore as Californians find gas for under two dollars at the Gladbrook Casey’s, Floridians encounter people who know how to drive, even on slushy gravel, and Northeasterners suffer Starbucks withdrawal.

For maximum effect, it will be set in early March, where the hapless contestants will have to deal with the foreign (to most) substance of “snow” and creatures known as “Iowans,” and being more than 10 miles from the nearest fast-food restaurant.

The final immunity challenge will be making it to Vets Auditorium for the high school state girls’ basketball tournament while dealing with I-235 construction and the most fervent parents in the state.

It may not be the Amazon rainforest or Australia but, whatever its shortcomings, it will be more respectable than being judged as a piece of meat on “Are You Hot?,” if only because contestants will be in too many layers to show anything.