Dr. Ignatius Piazza, founder, owner and manager of the Front Sight Firearms training institute, located in the Nevada desert, has become host and master of a whole new kind of reality show, one where the contestants try to eliminate each other in a rather unusual manner: by shooting one another.

The show is titled "Front Sight Challenge" and airs on Fridays on the Versus (VS) network, which was formerly the Outdoor Life Network. The creator of the show, Dr. Ignatius Piazza, is also the founder of the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute. Dr. Piazza hired a producer and director himself and sold the completed product to Versus network after three months of filming. The show places 40 law enforcement officers in competition against 40 citizens aged 15 to 65. The competitions on the show are designed to test the contestant's skills with a variety of firearms, including handguns, rifles, shotguns and submachine guns. "This is the only show in the world that features our nation's finest law enforcement personnel and highly trained private citizen locked in an epic battle of skill at arms," says Dr. Piazza.

A spokesperson for Versus, which also owns the rights to air such sports as the National Hockey League and the World Combat League, spoke to the congruence of "Front Sight Challenge" with the other programs on Versus. Said Katie Bradshaw, "We are always looking for new programming that complements what is on the network, and this show fits into our overall network field sports programming."

With do-it-yourself web sites like Youtube offering anyone a crack at internet fame or infamy, the age of personalized video has clearly come about. We all remember Time magazine's recent man of the year coverage naming "you" as the man of the year, farmed inside a Youtube video box. With the rising popularity of individualized video and self-produced independent series, it is no surprise to see someone outside the television industry, such as Dr. Piazza, create his own reality show.
Dr. Ignatius Piazza is about as far as one can get from a traditional Hollywood mogul. Formerly a chiropractor, he moved on to creating the Front Sight Firearms Training institute, which offers training courses in handguns, rifles, shotguns, rifles and submachine guns a mere 45 minutes away from the Las Vegas Strip. The institute also offers training in martial arts and other forms of self-defense. Says Dr. Piazza, "After your first self defense firearms training course at Front Sight you will leave with self defense firearms training skills that surpass 99% of the gun owning population."

If a man such as this can move from a chiropractic practice to training citizens in self-defense to reality television, any one of us can do it. If such creations are marketable, as Dr. Piazza's was, it would be unsurprising to see this becoming a new extra-industry trend: independent owners creating entire series outside the Hollywood structure. If the independents can sell the completed series to a network, so much the better. If not, well, there's always the internet.