NBC is closing in on a deal to produce 13 episodes of a program tentatively titled "World's Scariest Home Videos," according to Daily Variety. The reality-based series will follow in the pawprints of such Fox TV classics as "When Good Pets Go Bad," which just last week whupped "Frasier" in the Thursday-night ratings.

While reality programming is hardly new to prime time, it's territory that NBC has tried desperately to avoid. Just last year NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer dismissed the genre as "snuff TV" and "the equivalent of auto-accident programming on network television" in the Los Angeles Times, adding that "we would never air anything like that."

Of course, viewers clamoring to see an alligator chomping down on someone's head, for example, can suddenly seem quite appealing to a network whose ratings are slumping. "It was probably a difficult decision for NBC, but television is a business built on getting the largest possible audience," Bill Croasdale, an analyst at Western International Media, tells EW Online. "When your schedule is going south and you're in a critical ratings period, you have to pull out all the stops. And one of the quickest ways to raise ratings is to throw on reality-based shows." Better yet, "not only do these shows bring in the most desirable demographic, adults age 18 to 49, but they're relatively inexpensive to produce."

So are we destined to see "When Catfights Erupt!" after a very special "Friends" next year? Maybe not. "Scariest" is being ordered as a backup plan to air on Sundays at 7 p.m. just in case the NBA lockout remains unresolved. "I think this kind of show is a stop-gap measure for NBC," says Croasdale. "In general, this is fill-in programming that's designed to get numbers."