Attention all actors! Beware! Big Television is putting the squeeze on you. The studios are tired of paying your salary. They’re tired of your union, they’re tired of your big dressing room, and they’re way tired of your blathering about how your character needs a more important role (yes, Rob Lowe, that’s you). So they’ve written you out. How? Reality TV! Professional actors are being kicked off the back lots in staggering numbers, only to be replaced by gee-whiz-good-lookin’ everyday Joes from Oklahoma who find themselves stranded on desert islands with 50 eligible women dying to marry them. But first the women all have to walk a tightrope across a canyon in a bikini, while running a four-star restaurant.

A couple of years ago, Tom Hanks said he was “very troubled” by computer-generated actors, fearing they would put him out of a job in the near future. Professional actors are losing their jobs, but the culprit turns out to be a lot more low-tech: everyday Americans! And nonunion everyday Americans at that! The privilege of appearing on the small screen, once reserved for such luminaries as Susan Lucci and Damon Wayans, is now a free-for-all of talentless, good-looking hacks. The California recall candidates look dignified by comparison.

Yet, as I watch some of this Reality TV (I hate the stuff, I swear), I smell a rat. These tanned, handsome bodies I see prancing around on shows like Blind Date can’t all be office clerks. I mean, doesn’t anyone work during the day? Even in L.A.?

Something else must be going on here. And because we’re talking about the TV industry, it’s no doubt something nefarious! So listen close, kids, because here’s where the conspiracy part comes in. Three years ago, even before “troubled” Tom Hanks weighed in, an actors’ strike threatened to wreak major havoc in Tinseltown. No doubt the studios, like most union-dependent industries, were itching to find a more reliable labor source. Enter Reality TV.

Watch enough of these shows (mostly the dating shows, like Shipmates and Blind Date), and you’ll notice a trend. Many “contestants” turn out to be young, new-to-L.A. actors looking for work. Why? Episodes of Blind Date are shot Monday through Wednesday, so you’ve got to be either unemployed or on a flexible schedule—perfect for a new actor looking to get his Midwestern mug on the small screen. Thus, Reality TV has a bottomless talent pool willing to work for free.

Here’s the kicker: There’s a new show in the works at ABC in which a group of writers watches a group of real women who run a real New Jersey hair salon, then writes a sitcom based on their observations—starring the four women but shot on a sitcom soundstage that approximates their actual salon. Trippy, right? Think those Jersey gals are getting paid union wages? Of course not. That’s the point: They’ve re-created a traditional sitcom without paying one single union salary. Yikes!

Consider this promotional pap for ABC’s new reality show, The Dating Experiment: “If actors and actresses on movie sets fall in love because of heightened circumstances, can the same happen if real people are put in a similar situation?” I don’t really know what that means, but if I were a professional actor, I’d sure as hell be watching my back for these.