With the inexplicable popularity of Animal Planet's absolutely ridiculous "reality" series Finding Bigfoot, it's not too surprising that another cable network would try to milk the ol' cryptozoological cash cow, and today we got a tug on the Sasquatch's metaphorical teat.
Spike TV announced today that they are set to offer the largest cash prize in the history of television, albeit one that has no chance in hell of being paid out. The new one-hour reality series 10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty (try saying that title five times fast) will feature contestants vying to provide "irrefutable evidence" of Bigfoot's existence, and thus claim the titular 10 million bucks. The prize is being backed by prominent insurance firm Lloyds of London, so if nothing else, we know the prize actually exists.
Those competing include scientists, zoologists, expert trackers, and of course "actual bigfoot hunters". If that's considered a real job, I'm gonna start putting it on my resume. After all, how could anybody prove that I haven't been paid to track bigfoot at some point?
The first season of 10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty (deep breath) will be comprised of ten sure to be exhilarating episodes, and will be shot in various locations throughout the USA. No premiere date has been determined as of yet.
Will you go in search of Spike's 10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty? Am I the only one that thinks that Bigfoot should get rich by claiming the bounty himself?
I've read about that before B_S. It doesn't surprise me that there were no takers, it's hard to continue to make money lying to people if someone proves you're a fraud publicly. Then again, it didn't seem to stop that John Edward guy (the psychic, not the presidential candidate). Wasn't famous skeptic James Randi involved in the offer you mention? I seem to remember him talking about something like that in an interview years ago.
Skeptic Magazine used to follow the story of a famous $1,000,000 award for any person who could demonstrate any supernatural ability. The award would have gone for mind-reading, acting as a medium, casting a Wiccan spell--literally anything supernatural.
Not only did no one win the award in the ten years it was up for grabs, no one even attempted.