The greed is really pervasive isn’t it? You’d think that getting the more or less the same revenues for what, it’s a small fraction of a scripted show right? You’d think that maybe they’d be a little less inclined to dick people over. Yeah. You’d be wrong.
deltasigma:
That’s pretty interesting. I’m still, I’m not sure what to say exactly. I guess ‘puzzled’ by the whole ‘reality’ tv thing. And I think it’s comical to say they’re not scripted since they stopped production during the writer’s strike a few years ago since it turns out that they do have writers after all. I guess just not in the “scripted” sense. Not sure how that works.
This is not my memory at all. The WGA was trying to claim representation of reality show runners and failing. Therefore the networks could rely on the reality shows during the strike .
Of course, reality shows are not affected at all. Networks have been stockpiling reality material in the event of a strike. The CW network alone has five completed reality series ready to go: the returning shows “America’s Next Top Model,” “Beauty and the Geek” and “Pussycat Dolls Present,” and the new entries “Farmer Wants a Wife” and “Crowned,” about beauty pageants.
What makes you think that they stopped production?
maybe this explains it - “And reality shows, whose writers are nonunion, will become even more of a television staple than they are now.”
I guess some were unionized?
Some reality TV workers were taken into IATSE, which is the main union for crew. This is better than nothing, but it doesn’t give the creative personnel with any specific compensation for their intellectual property the way writers have.
http://artfulwriter.com/?p=186 http://www.thewrap.com/tv/search/apachesolr_search/IATSE%2Breality%2Btv
What it’s like to pitch a show:
There’s no way you can anticipate what the mood in that room’s going to be when you walk in. Sometimes the execs have heard five pitches that day, maybe twenty or thirty that week. Maybe they just found out about some horrible insider political move. Maybe they know they’re dead in the water, new administration coming in. Maybe they’re just dicks. Sometimes they have no sense of humor. No, seriously, no sense of humor as in zero, nada, borderline autistic response to a punchline. There is a TV exec who is so legendarily stone-faced – good God, pitching to this person is literally talking into an empty, silent void while everyone in the room stares at you like they’ve just caught you breaking into their kitchen naked at four am. Pitching writers have collapsed in tears outside in the corridor while the exec cheerfully told the agent that the pitch was the best thing they’d heard all month, and a multi-project deal was on the table.
deltasigma:
maybe this explains it - “And reality shows, whose writers are nonunion, will become even more of a television staple than they are now.”
I guess some were unionized?
No, none were unionized. That quote doesn’t say “some”. It says that the reality shows would stay in production. Which is exactly what happened.