HeeneFamily

As Barbara Walters prepares to show viewers her annual list of the 10 Most Fascinating People of the Year (pictured, featuring Lady Gaga and Walters) in a special airing tonight, we realized that TV gives far too much airtime to people at the other end of the spectrum. With that thought, here are the year's 10 least fascinating people on TV. Let's all try to make it a New Year's resolution that we won't be talking about these people's overexposure again a year from now.

As far as well-orchestrated publicity stunts go, Balloon Boy, aka Falcon Heene (yes, that's his real name) takes the cake.

Playing into the public's fear of child loss and endangerment, the storm-chasing Heene family first reported their six-year-old boy Falcon as trapped in a homemade helium balloon, floating at altitudes nearing 7,000 ft -- thereby setting off a frenzy of media coverage intensely focused on the supposed flight of this very young boy and a distraught family eagerly awaiting his rescue.

But the story gets better: It was all a hoax, a carefully schemed sham created by Falcon's parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene -- who captivated a global, news-hungry audience only for sheer thrill ... and maybe a potential reality show deal in the process.

Well, you sort of knew that this was coming, didn't you? The mother of balloon boy, Mayumi Heene, has admitted it was a hoax. The Heenes knew that Falcon wasn't in the balloon, that he was hiding in the garage. The entire boy in the balloon fiasco was a hoax from the get-go. Her court affidavit confirms what everyone has suspected.

So, this was just another desperate attempt by the family to get on television. Honestly, have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?

I say that because if these parents have even a scintilla of sense, couldn't they have projected what was going to happen when the balloon came down? Couldn't they have seen that there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?