In 1978 Chuck Barris created the $1.98 Beauty Show. The negative reaction was similar to Queen for a Day.
But, according to the linked article, $1.98 was a parody and included a disclaimer that teh outcome was pre determined. It actually sounds like something I would watch.
Not a reality show but an awards show so close enough, but the Spike TV 1st Annual Video Game Awards was iirc the first real attempt to put a video game awards show on TV, and yet they pulled the most basic most obvious most “How the fuck did you even fuck this up?!?” mistake an award show could do that literally every single televised awards show has never even thought to make this basic mistake, but the first category of the show was the “Game of the Year”, which is Gamings Equivalent of Best Picture in tbe Oscars. Why would you blow the biggest award FIRST?!? Plus the very first Game of the Year went to Madden NFL Football, which set the tone for the rest of the event by proclaiming only the most widely popular choices would win each category.
Either Discovery or TLC had a program called “I Lost It”, where people told weight loss stories, and there was also a program where (mostly) women got cosmetic plastic surgery. I stopped watching the “I Lost It” episode when I realized that ALL of the people profiled had very obvious psychological issues, for which their weight was only a symptoms (yeah, kind of like “My 600 Pound Life”) and as for the plastic surgery program, most of the people on there were recently-divorced single moms who didn’t have jobs. Maybe they got the surgery free in exchange for being on the show, IDK, but only one that I know of had it done because of trauma (you guessed it, her husband had abused her and she wanted her nose fixed). Those women were getting breast implants, liposuction, etc.
True, but if I recall there was still a big up-roar about it. I recall seeing it and found it a fun watch along the lines of the Gong Show.
New “reality” show coming to TLC:
If you somehow missed the promos, one matriarch is shown supposedly pulling packets of mayo out of a dumpster.
Lemme guess, those packets were never inside any dumpster.
“This is Your Life” (on radio) used to do some horribly exploitative things back in the 1950s - like introducing the Hiroshima maidens Hiroshima Maidens - Wikipedia to the Enola Gay co-pilot, and interviewing Holocaust survivors with the same style of patter as they gave movie stars:
Ralph Edwards
Do you recognize that voice, Hanna? It belongs to a girl who was your friend and companion in four concentration camps. Eva Herzberg, now Mrs. Warner Florsheim.
[APPLAUSE]
Ralph Edwards
Were you and Hanna moved from that first camp together, Eva?
Eva Herzberg
Yes, together with a lot of others. We were packed into cattle cars and shipped off to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. Then we were sent off to the extermination camp at Auschwitz in Poland.
Ralph Edwards
You were each given a cake of soap and a towel, weren’t you, Hanna?
Hanna Bloch Kohner
I don’t remember the soap.
Ralph Edwards
Well, you were sent to the so-called showers. And even this was a doubtful procedure because some showers had regular water, others have liquid gas. And you never knew which one you were being sent to. You and Eva were fortunate, others were not so fortunate, including your father and mother and your husband, Carl Benjamin. They all lost their lives at Auschwitz.
So just like America’s Got Talent, American Idol, etc.
And yet, it lives! Mama June, From Not To Hot, and Mama June Family Crisis, Mama June Road to Redemption all are spinoffs. And they feature a now 15(?) year old Honey Boo Boo. They’re riding the redneck train all the way to the end of the line.
And to think the channel that features L&O reruns fills the rest of their week with this, and Love After Lockup, and Marriage Boot Camp, and Growing Up Hip Hop, and The Unending Family Saga of the Braxtons (whoever they are). All horrible shows, but no where near the WOAT.
Speaking of, the discussion behind Space Cadets seems more intriguing than the real show. Like how it could have been a double-fake, and what was the “Reality” of the reality show. Fascinating. Glad I never watched it. (They actually convinced people they were IN SPACE? OMG)
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition had to add “home edition” because the original Extreme Makeover was giving surgery to ugly people. I’m putting it blunt because that’s not an exaggeration of how it was presented. That went away after some of the extreme surgeries had complications as absolutely nobody could have predicted. That was on ABC.
A possible late entry looking to take the crown:
It’s still not Naked Attraction though, the British Dating Game where a person chooses theirs mates solely based on their naked body appearance, which inevitably always descends into comparing the penis sizes, breast sizes, and butt sizes of the competing naked people.
I am going to say that Survivor is the worst — because it made the @#$%^& genre popular!
I never understood why they called it a “reality show”. If it were a real survival situation, they would have eaten the camera crew.
and there was much rejoicing. yay.
Onward, to the Cave of Caer Bannog!
How much longer before “Honey Boo Boo” appears on “16 and Pregnant”?
I wasn’t sure how old she was. She was born in August 2005 (the original show started airing in 2012, when she was seven), so she does turn 16 this year. 
I watched the first episode. When there was no actual survival and just a bunch of dirty people playing silly games I tuned out. Naked and Afraid is much closer to the concept. The participants are just trying to get through the ordeal. There is no prize at the end. They get paid very little for it. Of course they aren’t going to let them die and they call in medical help if needed but it is just people surviving harsh environments.
Technically more a competition, but still a searing, incisive look into the human condition, between the rivalling Garibaldis, the Fanshaw-Churnleighs of Berkshire, and Jodrell families, all out-vying each other in their own, special ways.
Another family, and more of a doc - the Louds. ETA: (which actually doesn’t really deserve any “worst” rating.)
The Foster family, and particularly the patriarch, was kinda gross.