Stuff as TV shows are made on ?

This morning I remembered one of my favourite Shakespeare quotations, taken from his last play "The Tempest":

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

(The Tempest, Act IV,1)

"The Tempest" takes place on a magic island and with these words the "master" and magician Prospero ends the show. Both, the play and this quote, leave a lot of room for interpretation I don't want to discuss here. And the idea that "all the world's a stage" (As You Like It , Act II,7) shines through his plays also at other places. 

In his time, Shakespeare was a star writing  plays that people from all social spheres watched and loved. Today we have TV - and we have things like "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" (= DSDS, the German version of "American Idol"). Of course, this show is not about finding and supporting talented young artists - it is about selling advertising time. After 10 years, people singing wrong notes is not enough to attract the audience's attention, so more exciting stuff has to be staged. In the last season one of the contestants had to go to prison half -way through the show. And just now I saw a magazine informing the bored viewer about the "biggest  fight in the history of DSDS." !!  It is a childish argument between two of the girls - so obviously written into the show by those who make it. Boring, shallow, blown up out of proportion . I prefer Shakespeare  any time...

And yet, it makes me wonder ... I hope we are not such stuff as TV shows are made on ...

(http://www.dsds-superstar.com)