American Ninja Warrior v. Wipeout

On Monday, NBC aired their second installment of the show American Ninja Warrior (it originally was a Japanese game show, then the US picked it up on some channel called G4 and then NBC started airing it this year) and I couldn't help but think that this is just NBC's response to the awesome show Wipeout.  Considering Wipeout has been on the air since 2008, you have to assume they get pretty good ratings, so NBC is just trying to get in on the "Watch People Bust Their Asses on Obstacle Course" market.  However, I noticed a huge difference between the two shows.  ANW (I didn't feel like typing out the whole name of the show but this sentence explaining that seems to defeat that) makes their obstacles so that the contestants competing can actually complete them, while Wipeout has no intentions of letting their contestants make it through unscathed.  You see, ANW has an obstacle course that is supposed to test the contestants upper-body strength and if they are in ridiculous shape, they can complete the course.  But Wipeout's course is built in order to watch fat people get their fat asses handed to them.  And do you know what?  It is so entertaining to watch.  In other words, Wipeout holds the crown for the Best Obstacle Course Game Show and I don't see anyone knocking them off the mountain any time soon (plus I was half-watching Jeopardy! while writing this and one of the answer/questions was 'What is Wipeout?').  Also, it doesn't hurt that Wipeout is only a one hour show and AWN is two hours and gets extremely boring when they only have the one obstacle course the entire time (update - it turns out that only the first episode was two hours and the rest are one hour long, but it's still the same obstacle course each time with very minor deviations).

"This is Jill Wagner.  She used to be Wipeout's sideline hottie, but she quit to pursue acting and they replaced her with Nick Lachey's wife.  She is terrible.  Bring back Jill!!!"