Reality TV. Troy DeVolld
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the time of the strike, Reality shows were the networks’ only option for getting fresh content on the air, generating demand for shows like John Langley and Malcolm Barbour’s gritty and long-running COPS, which made its debut in 1989. What could be more thrilling and less expensive to shoot than following cops and crooks around with a camera?
While COPS stormed the turf of traditionally scripted drama, America’s Funniest Home Videos made a comic splash when it blasted into living rooms the same year on the ABC network. America’s Funniest Home Videos, from Executive Producer Vin Di Bona, went a step further than COPS with an even bolder premise: Anyone with a video camera pointed on them in the right place at the right time could be a star, and a hilarious family-friendly comedy program could be constructed from viewer sub-missions alone.
Just think about that business model for a moment… an hour of primetime television comprised primarily of viewer-submitted material.
While the format was adapted from an existing show in Japan, Di Bona made it his own with the help of host Bob Saget, whose running commentary on the videos and in-studio audience interactions served to make the content even funnier.
Audiences went nuts for the new wave of Reality programming, even as the networks began to fall hard for the cheap fix Reality shows provided them. Even the biggest Reality shows of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s cost a fraction of what networks had spent on star-driven sitcoms and dramas. Reality show participants could be wrangled at a cost barely north of a baked potato and a handshake at a time when major stars could cost producers sixty, seventy, even a hundred thousand dollars an episode.
When Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray premiered their strangers in-a-house Reality series The Real World on MTV in 1992, they credited An American Family as their inspiration. The Real World, whose inaugural season filled a massive New York co-op apartment with young strangers, was a breakout smash. The opening narrative for the show spelled out its thesis: “This is the true story… of eight strangers… picked to live in a house… work together and have their lives taped… to find out what happens… when people stop being polite… and start getting real… The Real World.”
The Real World quickly became a touchstone for a generation of younger viewers who weren’t even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes when An American Family made its debut and who weren’t finding themselves represented accurately in most sitcoms or dramas of the era. The series was also credited with introducing the “confessional” device often seen thereafter in contemporary American Reality series.8 In confessionals, participants are encouraged to keep private video journals and self-document their thoughts and feelings on camera in a safe area, removed from cast mates and crew.
Concerns that the show could not be brought back for a second season due to the slim likelihood of retaining a cast of non-actors were met with an ingenious response from producers Bunim and Murray: A new cast in a new location each subsequent year would ensure that the drama would always remain fresh.
The Real World’s second season, set in Los Angeles, was arguably an even bigger hit with audiences, and by season three, when a San Francisco home was populated with castmembers like the irrepressible bike messenger Puck and HIV-positive gay activist Pedro Zamora, the show truly hit its stride as the new gold standard for youth-oriented Reality programming. As of this printing, the show has survived 24 seasons on MTV and has been renewed for two more, making it the longest-running program in the network’s history.
Niche-interest basic cable channels grew in number throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s, buoyed substantially by lower-cost models with lifestyle and home improvement Reality shows that could be run repeatedly for weeks, months, even years at a time before going stale. Do-it-yourself home renovation shows, like the ones discussed at the top of this book, had a shelf life that stayed fresh as long as consumer taste in flooring and window treatments remained stable. If those didn’t change every few years, the shows could theoretically repeat over and over until someone came along and reinvented wood, glue and nails.
The big networks, rapidly losing market share to basic cable, joyously milked new cash cows like Survivor and The Amazing Race, shows that far outperformed much of their scripted competition while simultaneously relieving some of the financial strain the networks were feeling.
Contemporary Reality
Reality Television marches on, with scores of new titles cropping up every year. Scholars and critics are coming to grips with the fact that the medium isn’t about to fade away and is now worthy of critical discussion rather than simple dismissal. Yes, more than a half-century after Candid Camera, the genre has finally managed to establish itself as more than a fad to be endured. So pervasive is Reality Television in today’s broadcast universe that in 2003, Les Moonves, President of the CBS Network, informed the New York Times that “The world as we knew it is over.” He should know — he’s the executive who opened the door to Mark Burnett and Survivor.
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