Southerners Rebel Over Hillbilly Reality Tv Show

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Get a poor family from the rural south and relocate them in a Beverly Hills mansion, complete with staff and pool, and then film it as part of a reality series called the Real Beverly Hillbillies.

Yesterday the rural south arrived in Los Angeles but not in the way that the television network CBS had intended.

The "hillbillies" turned out to be a campaign group from Kentucky who have coordinated a nationwide protest against the programme, claiming that it demeans poor southerners.

"It's not that we can't take a joke," said Tim Marema of the Centre for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, Kentucky, yesterday. "And it's not an assault on reality television."

The objection was to the selection of a "particular group of Americans for ridicule".

The centre hoped that CBS would abandon the idea. To this end, a delegation arrived for a meeting with the president of CBS, Les Moonves, in LA yesterday.

CBS had announced the plans for the programme last year as the latest in the feverish race to come up with a new reality programme idea.

One enthusiastic CBS executive tried to sell it to the media by saying: "Imagine the episode where they have to interview maids."

This remark formed the basis of the centre's campaign and has brought them thousands of supporters from across the country.

CBS have been contrite, saying that no offence was intended and no family had yet been signed up. No decision had been taken to cancel the project before the meeting.

The conference between the delegates and the television executives might have made a good reality show in itself but there were no plans to film it.