Wow. Obviously, the media attention is good for keeping people interested and helping to finance the project, but I sure hope they're working on everything possible. By all known accounts, living on Mars will be largely boring, except for the basic risk of danger if something goes wrong.
There's great potential for real drama and tragedy, but I worry about that "reality show" tag, because reality shows tend to be anything but real.
The best part is that it is a private venture. If the governments of the world let them do this and don't give them grief, then a positive trend will have been started, and the militarization of space might be avoided.