Gosh, there are so many new ones coming out and being heavily advertised, such as Fame (American Idol for dancers?), For Love or Money (Joe Millionaire with one-sided knowledge and prize), a show that’s American Idol for kids, an American Idol for comics, etc…
And this is only on top of what’s already been done, such as Idol, The Real World, Survivor, Fear Factor, Boot Camp, Temptation Island, Joe Millionaire, The Bachelor, Married By America, The Bachelorette (??), and the old school shows such as Cops… This doesn’t even take into account talk shows like Springer…
But why the sudden recent explosion?
I know that some of them have been tremendously popular (such as American Idol) , but surely some of them are tanking?
I can think of a couple reasons why they might be so ubiquitous:
Are they a lot cheaper to produce than normal dramas and sitcoms? Are studios just realizing that the risk-reward ratio is thus so much better for reality shows?
Are they a lot easier to attract new audiences, even midway through the season or between seasons? I guess there is an entry barrier to watching shows such as Buffy, because you miss so much in back-story…
Is this field new enough that the networks didn’t understand that there is a demand for such programming, and are now engaging in a bit of reactive marketing, and perhaps overcompensating by flooding the field (think internet bubble…)?
That’s all I can come up with… It’s a really sad phenomenon to me, though, as I can’t stand most of these shows because they’re either too mediocore (in terms of talent) or too normal (i.e. everyday, boring personalities) despite the weird circumstances they’re placed in. There’s some psychological fascination that comes from watching any group of people interact, but most of it isn’t too interesting. Yes, women put up nice warm fronts but can be quite bitchy at times, esp. during competition. How many times do we need to see that? And the more extreme people are often cringe-inducing or just plain sad, and I usually turn away. But I guess a lot of people don’t…
I think it’s a combination of #1, which is true because they’re not paying writers or huge saleries to the “stars,” and the fact that some people will watch anything- as long as it’s not educational.
Yeah, like anything these days, it comes down to the money. They’re cheaper to make, and because they’re so popular, the ad time on these shows probably commands a higher rate than some other shows.
They’re part of the reason my TV viewing time is spent mostly on HGTV and Comedy Central. If I want reality, I’ll go out into the world.
They are incredibly cheap to produce. An hour of prime-time drama costs upwards of $1,000,000 an episode. You could run an entire season of reality TV for much less than that.
They also are immensly popular. Take a look at the top ratings for each week.
In addition, because they’re cheap to produce, it’s easy to make a big profit for the network with only mediocre ratings. It’s also easy for the production company to make a profit (lots of TV shows barely break even – if that – until they go into syndication). Since TV is an advertising medium (the Networks don’t care what they show as long as they can sell the air time), the lure of easy profit is hard to resist.
The economics of the situation ensure that reality TV is here to stay.
Reality Chuck has some good points about the cost/audience ratio of a show. It also indicates why you keep seeing more: the networks cannot re-run these “reality contest” shows, so they’re forced to buy more to fill out the programming year.
In addition, the original Survivor showed that if your show is interesting enough, you can actually run brand new programming during the summer and get an audience. The only thought until then was that summer is a ratings wasteland.
As for genre… TV networks always try and copy each other’s ideas. Witness the rise of sitcoms in the mid 80s a la Cosby show and Cheers… gritty Cop and Doctor dramas… Seinfeld and Friends clones…
ABC bet heavily on reality shows last season and wound up last in the ratings when the shows flopped. Also, advertisers have decided that since the shows are cheaper to produce then the advertising rates should be cheaper for them as well.
Also, some advertisers are beginning to back off from reality shows despite their ratings because they don’t want their products to be associated with them.
I think one reason is that, sometimes, “REAL” people are simply more interesting than characters created by a gang of writers. The denizens of reality shows have ordinary lives that certainly would bore us to death, but when they put these people in unusual, stressful situations, with lots of $$$ at stake, and edit it just right…BINGO.
I think reality TV is so prevalent because it is successful and people like to watch it. In my opinion, there are two key elements to a blockbuster reality television show.
A reality TV show needs you to get involved with the characters and actually care what happens to them. They want you to pick your favorites and hope that they win.
(An optional but very successful element.) A reality TV show needs you to feel like you have some choice as to how it will turn out. That’s why the shows where you vote are so huge.
I can’t stand reality TV. Having said that, I am ashamed to say that I watched the entire season of American Idol this year. Damn!
It’s a very broad genre. American Idol is not anything like Survivor is not anything like The Bachelor. And the audiences for those three shows are completely different as well, so different advertisers. That leaves a lot of gaps to fill, even when you think it’s a saturated market. For instance, UPN figures they are targetting a very specific niche with America’s Next Top Model.
(Also, I wouldn’t cite ABC as an example of anything in TV. They almost ran the network into the ground on that Millionaire show.)
RealityChuck is the most correct, in my opinion. Reality shows are incredibly cheap to produce (with some exceptions; there’s a lot of travel on Amazing Race, for example). You can do a whole season of Big Brother for about what one episode of E/R costs, and that includes the prize money. Sure, the ratings may not be as high, but if you get half the ratings at a tenth of the price, you come out ahead. And one ultra-successful show (e.g. Joe Millionaire) can easily subsidize the relative failure of a couple of not-so-popular attempts (e.g. Boot Camp).
But DrFidelius also has an excellent point, and that’s the total lack of syndication value. Production companies make their money on television in the long term. They assume that the first two or three seasons of a show will be break-even at best, and that the real money won’t come in until the shows can be sold a second time. Nobody wants to see Survivor: Australia again. So while it makes money right now, eventually the economics will catch up to them.
By comparison, there was a spate of prime-time game shows back in the 1970s. Newlywed Game, Gong Show, and so on (both produced by Chuck Barris). It was the same deal: cheap to produce, fad in the ratings, quick cash. Then the bottom dropped out. We had exactly the same phenomenon a couple of years ago when the success of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire led to Weakest Link, Dog Eat Dog, and other prime-time game shows that have, for the most part, disappeared. Right now, the hot trend is the talent contest, following on American Idol. That, too, will vanish eventually.
In a sane world, reality TV would fade to a permanent but not overwhelming genre, like prime-time animation seems to have done. But the short-term profitability ensures we’ll continue to see lots of gambling with the form until it’s no longer possible to sustain. Like everything, though, it’ll cycle up and down over the years.
Don’t be surprised if we see RealityChanel on cable showing old epsiodes of Survivor. Hey, if people can watch Gilligan’s Island a thousand times, they’ll watch Survivor again once it becomes nostalgic. Given he fast pace of fads, that should take about 2 yrs.
I fogot to add that there have been waves of reality shows in the past, too. The Price is Right, The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, Let’s Make a Deal, Queen for a Day…
And I also forgot to add that the biggest difference between then and now is that the winner of Queen for a Day didn’t end up in Playboy the next month. And I think most of us were glad about that.
American Idol isn’t a reality show. It’s a talent show. Star Search has been on for how many decades? Since 1983. 20 years! The only difference is what the winner gets. And it involves the audience (which I guess is why people consider it a reality show) and the TV audience picks the winner.
Seriously though, it really is a brilliant idea. Get paid to let the public tell you exactly who the new top artist is going to be then make bookoo bucks selling that artist to the public. And you even have more artists that are almost as popular and could also sell tons of albums. Brilliant.
