Welcome to Reality TV

When the idea first occurred to us to turn the search for the next Mahalo Daily host into a reality show, it was totally meant in the spirit of parody. The whole notion was to mock reality shows, particularly how overblown they are and how they pit people cruelly against one another. Hence, me in a hot air balloon with my shirt unbuttoned introducing something called "The Bachelon," or Jason doing his Trump impression in the boardroom.

See, there were always two levels to the whole thing, to my mind. On the surface, we're genuinely conducting a real contest, looking for someone to host the show. But on another level, we're pretending that the contest is this massively important, epic thing, that lives were literally in the balance, and that our competition would feature all the drama and excitement promised on shows like "The Amazing Race" and "The Bachelor."

Now that we've had a month of great shows and two amazing finalists, I think I can safely say that there are two things we did not consider when planning this thing:

(1) Pitting people against one another, even in jest, creates rifts, divisions and hurt feelings;

(2) The reality format itself is powerful, and creates strong emotions in viewers, even when presented ironically

I'm still very glad we did the contest. I think the episodes themselves have been some of the most entertaining we've ever done. Even better, we got the chance to get to know and collaborate with some fantastically talented, interesting and, of course, beautiful women - not just the Final Two, Andrea and Leah, but also Sarah, Nadine, Michelle, Kristina, Lisa, Martine, Pili, Roxy, Alice, Melody...and more. I have a feeling you'll see many of them on the show again in some capacity.

But having said that, I do kind of regret taking part in anything that would inspire this kind of angry, mean, vitriolic comment thread. We never intended to create a show that would turn people against the contestants. ANY of them. The whole point was to celebrate all the talented aspirants, not to make them look bad and unleash the rage of the Internet upon them. MD viewers and fans...please do try to keep your commentary professional and respectful.

This little incident is largely our fault, for blurring the line between fake funny reality show and real reality show too much at times. I hope we can all put it past us as we declare a winner this week and start making new shows.

If we end up not choosing your preferred choice, I'd suggest you at least give the new host a chance...They're both really creative and fun, they both have a lot of enthusiasm and ideas for the show, and I promise you, they're both really genuine, nice people, no matter how a competitive 5 minute podcast featuring my boss might make it seem.