So someone was asking me for more Hollywood stories recently.

This one’s inspired by the recent case of a black woman in the audience at a Trump rally who realized she was being seated behind the candidate for the purpose of appearing in frame on broadcasts and, insulted, tried to ruin the shot by determinedly reading a book.

Anyway the story goes that in LA I knew one guy who worked in production on a bunch of game shows. When I knew him he was working the debut run of National Bingo Night.

Anyway, the centerpiece of the set was a super-sized bingo cage and balls that would serve for the drawings that drive the action. Like most game shows, the provision of prize monies - and thus the bearing of risk - was bid out to a bond company, and two bond company stooges on set were the only ones allowed to touch the balls, to guard against tampering.

The problem was that when the cage gadget was introduced, it malfunctioned constantly and would spew these giant man-sized balls all over the set, and then the entire crew would lean back and laugh while these two 20-something goons in suits scrambled around trying to manhandle them back one by one.

ANYWAY, that’s not really what I came here to talk about, the bit that hangs off that news hook is a more general truth about game shows, or any show with an on-camera audience, and that is that those audiences are all rigorously filtered and selected for aesthetics’ sake. The very first step in audience processing is to be paraded before production assistants, who make ruthless snap judgements on who’s telegenically attractive enough to be sorted into the “Pretty Audience”, to be seated in sections that cameras sweep for audience shots, and who’s relegated to the “Ugly Audience” that doesn’t appear in frame.

If you come in a group of friends, they won’t hesitate or apologize to split you up by attractiveness, because after all this whole process isn’t something they’re doing for you, it’s something you’re doing for them.