A recent poll offered up by PopEater poses a very interesting question…and raises a few more. Saying the site has “just about had it” with the “cheesiness” of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, stars of MTV’s The Hills, the site swears to stop covering the pair - if that’s what the public wants.

Citing reasons like “staged mugging, overt irrelevance and hankering for publicity,” the site put out the poll, ostensibly to gauge public feeling and sentiment on the highly-exposed pair. The piece accompanying the poll, however, is quick to amend this seemingly severe promise. The site clarifies that it will “stop covering Speidi altogether (excluding possible break-ups, televised weddings or major scandals)” if the majority of voters ask the site that it do so.

The Hills, a spin-off of Laguna Beach, features several good-looking twenty-somethings pursuing life, love and career - with plenty of drama, backstabbing and break-ups mixed in. Almost four million tuned in to watch the Season 3 finale of the show, and now Season 4 is underway with two episodes already aired.

Critics of the show state that it is highly fake, with cast members being added by MTV and not through any quirks of fate. Other reports say that scenes are staged, edited and directed along certain pre-determined courses. Stars of the show often argue that it’s all quite real.

But now it seems that the industry may finally be throwing up their hands over The Hills. Is the media, starting with PopEater, really ready to throw in the towel and simply give up on this sensationalized show?

The careful exclusions and front-page placement of PopEater’s reader poll could, in fact, serve a sincere purpose to gauge reader reaction. Or…it could just be another way to drum up publicity not just for The Hills, but Popeater, too.

A relatively new addition to the Internet, PopEater is the entertainment-only site created by AOL earlier this year. Today, the site is making a bold statement and issuing a command for their readers to decide the fate of future entertainment coverage - excluding all break-ups, televised weddings and major scandals, of course. Since the media treats almost everything like a major scandal, this still leaves a pretty wide umbrella for future pieces on the very subject the site seems to shun.