“Real reality television, as presented by J. Edgar’s Private Eyes, on Cheaters!”

Add one teaspoon of Love Connection, a dash of Jerry Springer, and a cup of COPS, and the outcome is a spicy television program seen primarily late at night on weekends.

Every week, Cheaters profiles two people who suspects their love interest is being unfaithful to them. After sharing his/her story to a national TV audience, the producers send out a private investigator with hidden cameras to record the significant other cheating on them with another person (usually, it’s the accuser’s best friend or relative). After the P.I.’s gather enough video evidence to prove that there is infidelity going on, the show’s host, Joey Greco (it had been Tommy “Grand” Habeeb up until the middle of the 2002-03 season), along with the person suspecting cheating and a camera crew ambush the unsuspecting couple in what usually ends up as a Springer-esque confrontation. Greco is on the sidelines trying to get some answers on why the original relationship went wrong, and updates the audience on the outcome of the incident at the end of each story.

Panned by critics as TV adding on to the decay of human society using video voyeurism , Cheaters has gone on to attract a cult following amongst insomniacs and college students looking for free pornography, even if it’s for only three seconds and blurred out by the censors.