I suppose some news days are slower than others.

With two wars going on, an economy in the toilet and a power grab going on in our nation’s capital, it is not surprising most of the nation turned its eyes to the sky last week for some truly hard news.

We, as a nation, looked upward and saw what we thought was a little boy in a balloon headed toward his demise.

I guess it made me think of two other similar situations in the past that had us riveted to the TV.

The first was Baby Jessica, who was trapped in a well 22 years ago (Oct. 14, 1987) as the nation watched people fight the clock to bring her out alive. The other was golfer Payne Stewart’s ghostly final ride 10 years ago (Oct. 25, 1999) across the country, as the Air Force had to decide whether or not to shoot down the Lear jet that held the deceased bodies of Stewart, his passengers and flight crew that was hurdling toward a crash once the plane would run out of fuel.

Those were real tragedies where lives were in peril, and many others had to put their lives in jeopardy to try and do the right thing to keep others safe. We watched, we cried and we knew exactly what we were watching.

Last Thursday seemed to be shaping up in much the same way and only by the grace of God, things seemed to have turned out for the best.

We all let out a collective sigh of relief when young Falcon Heene was discovered unharmed and safe as a bug in a rug, in what started out as reality on TV, but quickly became bad Reality TV.

As the family’s story collapsed like a lead balloon, we were left with the fact that this was just an episode of a family who wasn’t sure of which side of the camera they were on anymore. They were veterans of Reality TV shows, and this was just a way to up the ante for next year’s season.

So how and why could something like this happen?

It is probably our own fault that we let things like this occur. What started as a niche product a decade ago, Reality TV was unscripted, fresh and different from sitcoms and murder mysteries. It gave us a chance to leer in at people not too different from us and pass judgment from the safety of our own couches. The more we leered, the more we were given to leer at. They were soap operas right on Main Street.

Life in salons, restaurants, real estate offices, bakeries, motorcycle shops, tattoo parlors, crab boats and the cabs of ice road trucks became more than just occupations where people try to put food on the table. They were now the places where conflict between hairstylists or chefs was treaded with the same attention as those rescuing a baby from a well. Rescue the baby or be voted off the island.

They now say Reality TV has pretty well killed off acting (unless actors are willing to act like real people acting like actors on Reality shows).

I suppose the first reality TV show might have been the Simpsons — the O.J. Simpsons that is.

All of America tuned in for the show about an ex-football player who was wrongly accused of killing his wife and then spent every episode chasing a one-armed man (or was it a one-gloved man) around a golf course (no wait that was The Fugitive). In the Simpson trial, the defendant, lawyers, judge, jury and witnesses all BECAME the show and all put forth Emmy-worthy performances. I suppose when Kato Kalien can become famous for eating french fries, TV was well on its way down the slippery slope to Jon and Kate publicly fighting over their eight.

There was a time, back in the pre-historic days of TV when one could flip on the tube and watch Gunsmoke’s Marshal Matt Dillon and deputy Festus administer a little frontier justice to those who had walked off the path of the law-abiding.

I wish Matt Dillon was still around today, he would have dealt with the Heene family in the right way. He would have shot down the balloon, punched out Falcon’s mom and dad and then he would have gone over to the Long Branch Saloon for a beer with Festus, Miss Kitty and Doc — in private.

Hey, wait that might be a good plot for a new reality show — Frontier lawmen and the people they drink with. I’ll call the networks.

n Todd Lancaster has been working hard to cover all the fall sports teams still playing in their respective tournaments. He’s also a talented cook, making several dishes from scratch. E-mail him at tlancaster@washtimesherald.com.