REALITY BITES – part 1

What do you call REALITY TV? The Real Housewives of the OC or NY or Spokane or wherever they're from? AMERICAN IDOL and Nashville Star? Gladiator and Survivor? Project Runway and Design Star? Breaking Bonaduce and Celebrity Rehab? Oh the list goes on…. Well guess what they are all REALITY shows. Even talk shows and game shows are considered REALITY.

AH, I remember when it all changed. A new little show to hit the airwaves with a striking host dropping 24 contestants onto an island and saying ‘Fend for yourselves.’ Nobody knew what was going to happen to these people. The Network, initially, didn’t know what was going to happen to these people. What a long shot and very intriguing for all involved. A game show that isn’t REALLY a game show, but it is, and it plays out more like a soap opera than a game show. What more could we want, we have the best of both worlds. Those mad Executives took a leap of faith and we caught them in a collective cushion that sent TV, as we knew it, reeling. I don’t know if we initially begged for more, but they fed it to us. They dangled that MILLION-dollar prize in front of us like a rhinestone covered carrot.

I know, I KNOW there is another reality show that was before SURVIVOR. But this show hit it big on a little cable TV network that grown ups didn’t really watch. Can you guess? Yep, it was MTV and “The Real World”. But only kids and 20 nothings watched. How did it work? They made a bunch of culturally different 20 nothings live together for a few months to see if they could “create a business”. It quickly became a hit about the “younger generation”. Don’t get me wrong, and do not underestimate the “younger generation”, because “The Real World” really held its own for many years and was a HUGE hit for the cable network. It’s reason for kind-of not succeeding was the network it was on and the demographic of its watchers. That’s it. However, in a few years the style would be retooled and re-aged to appeal to the masses, and THAT worked. Well, and the fact that it was cleaned up to work on network TV.

OK – hold on, maybe I do have a bit of unknown knowledge about REALITY TV and this won’t be as much of a rant. Here goes. SURVIVOR or “The Real World” were NOT THE FIRST REALITY SHOWS.

WHAT? I just heard the collective gasp. Yes it is true. SURVIVOR may have made reality TV IN VOGUE but the original was “AN AMERICAN FAMILY” on PBS. When?

This is the kicker – 1973. “An American Family” was a 12-episode mini-series chronicling the lives of the Long family from California. (Wow they call 12 episodes a mini-series, now we call that a whole season.) The fascinating part, it was about a REAL family dealing with REAL issues, divorce and the eldest sons homosexuality amongst other things. And you thought that Billy Crystal’s portrayal of Jodie on SOAP was the first gay boy on TV. However, notwithstanding the 10 million viewers that tuned in to watch the Longs live their lives, the genre did not catch on; but the impact that the genre made on the TV industry was ten fold. Gone were the days of Jan breaking the family portrait because she forgot to wear her new glasses. We wanted to see our sitcoms and our dramas have REAL families with REAL problems. And it worked. Now even the fluffiest of shows have their “Very Special Episode”.

Now back on track. The first season of SURVIVOR was slick; it was about the contestants learning how to live on the land and trying to figure out how to work together to win the ever-coveted immunity idol. Yeah there was a bit of backstabbing and game playing going on, but it was about the human spirit and what tenacity we have as people and how we really live and what we would do for a little pocket change. Then HE won. And it changed all right.

Suddenly the common man, and when I say common I mean COMMON, had won. And then he became a celebrity. The talk show circuit, magazine articles and radio interviews hoisted this COMMON man from Middletown, RI to stardom. The floodgates were open

ed. Anyone could be a STAR. No talent needed, just be you. No matter who you are, we want to watch YOU to see if YOU will make a fool of yourself.

Then came season 2. SURVIVOR has a new style. There is a little less of the GAME and more about the people. More about how they care about the other people. Not about their families, their lives or how they play the game, but about the other contestants bathing habits, how they wear their Survivor tee shirt or what is one of the male contestants doing by himself in the woods. A little more whispering was gong on. And “the Alliance” was born. This show about learning to live with one another and learning to band together as a team to live in a remote part of the world with nothing had changed. Now it was about lies and whispering and backstabbing and the ugliness that we all seem to hate in our REAL lives.

STOP – STOP it right now…DO you know there are as many producers and writers on reality shows as there are on sitcoms and dramas. YEAH – for REAL.

Nothing that happens on REALITY shows happens for no particular reason. EVERTHING has a reason. The telephone call from the girlfriend just about the time that the guy is ready to kiss the gal in the house that he is attracted to. Coincidence? No!

My own personal experience: While working on a talk show I witnessed an ASSociate producer bring a girl to tears just before she was to be interviewed. Just because? NO. The ASS. Producer ,more or less, told her that the audience was going to laugh at her when she went on stage. The guest gets upset and starts to cry, cue host, “Sweetheart, don’t cry. Your not THAT ugly.” Did the host know that the ASS. Producer was in there moments before with the guest, again, NO. But we got some good TV. Ugly girl cries the host seems sympathetic and we are drawn to it like a bug to the big purple light. ZAP.

We talk, as a society, about how we feel that we have no feelings anymore. How we think that people are ruder than they were ‘when we were younger’. Why life is not as simple as it was. Why our kids do NOT respect their elders. All of these questions are being answered by so much of what we watch on REALITY TV. On one show we had a young deb and her friend steal from a local store to give the farmer and his wife a gift. After being caught, sadly enough, they were not punished neither on nor off camera for their actions. Guess what people, it was all set up. A writer wrote it and the girls did it and made it out as funny as our children watched and we, the adults, laughed. What message is that sending?

More and more we are leaving the sitcom, with it’s family values and happy endings, to watch a world were people dislike each other for who they portray themselves to be in a world that is created by cameras, lights, producers, directors and writers.

I know I can’t change the world but please the next time you see the whisper cam or the confessional closet and the contestant raising that eyebrow because they have something to say about someone, remember that there is someone out there in life who may be saying something about you. Do we want to promote that? Do we want to live in that world?

Not me.

THIS IS BEAU TALKS, AND

AFTER THESE MESSAGES, WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK.