ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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[ yodeling ]

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Reality TV Part Three

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Reality versus Scripted TV

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[ dog barks ]

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Why has reality TV become so popular with networks?

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I would say there are two answers to that. One is money.

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It is so much cheaper

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to produce a reality show for every reason.

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- You don't -- - Talk about the economics...

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You don't have to pay celebrities

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a million dollars an episode like The Big Bang Theory guys just got.

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Most reality shows don't have unions so you don't get strikes involved.

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You don't need a set.

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You just are in a house.

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You don't need lots of props and all that jazz.

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It's kind of like

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put these people in a house and tape them and see what happens.

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Essentially, if you can save six million dollars an episode

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by not having these big Oscar-winning --

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or, uh, Emmy-winning actors on it,

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then you're gonna save a lot of money.

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So, just to interrupt you.

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So the framework on a series --

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If you are producing scripted programming,

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I think that today's budget

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is about two million bucks an episode.

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So you're gonna be thinking

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44 million dollars plus development costs,

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let's call it 50 million dollars

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for that for a series.

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I got to imagine a show like The Bachelor

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- or a show which is the high end - Right.

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can't cost more than

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8 million, 10 million? You know what I mean?

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It's a fraction.

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But there's no back end or rerun

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that you get.

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How does that play into the economics of the business?

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I mean, that's one of the things that I'm not sure

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everyone's thinking forward about.

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One of the questions

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that people ask a lot is

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does reality TV have lasting power?

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And the answer is no.

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You're answering this right now.

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No one goes back and watches old seasons

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of The Bachelor or old seasons of The Amazing Race.

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You don't do that because you know the outcome,

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you know where the fights are.

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And you kind of get bored.

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You've seen these people --

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They're exciting maybe the first time you watch them

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versus watching, as you said, I Love Lucy

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or even more recent things like Friends.

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These are characters that are

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so compelling that you can watch them over and over again.

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The Bachelor is never going to go into syndication.

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I hadn't thought about it, but I guess, yes,

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the economics of it in the end

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will not pan out the way that people are thinking they will.

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But cheap and now is the way that people wanna produce stuff.

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Cheap and Now, that's a great subtitle for this course.

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[ pen writing ]

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Why is reality TV so popular with viewers?

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I think at this point people will and do watch

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literally anything.

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We think of the time when you couldn't have

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married couples sleeping in the same bed together.

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- And now we -- - Mary Tyler Moore.

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Right. And now we can watch, like you said,

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Naked and Afraid.

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People dropped in the middle of nowhere

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literally completely naked.

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So I do think that this --

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We've just kind of lost our sense of shock value at that.

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I don't think that that is unique to TV in any way.

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It's the same way that

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movies are more violence-packed and there's more nudity

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and all that.

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I don't think that's unique to reality TV,

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but the fact that these are real people,

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we're watching them, it does become kind of voyeuristic.

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We usually reserve that term

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to talk about watching people in sexy, intimate settings.

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Sometimes it's broadened to just mean

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watching people in their personal, intimate lives.

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But it is voyeuristic.

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We're literally watching people walk around naked.

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We're watching people have incredibly intimate moments.

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The Bachelor and Bachelorette, the light goes out.

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- Yeah, honeymoon suite. - The fantasy... Yeah.

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We know exactly what --

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Sometimes the light goes out and the light comes back on

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and then there's fireworks exploding --

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It is -- The metaphors are thinly veiled.

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So we know exactly what is happening

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and no one seems to be

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that upset about it.

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Why isn't that shown?

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So, take the honeymoon fantasy suite.

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We show a lot of other things.

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Do you not think that there's a competitor out there

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to The Bachelor who's gonna wanna say

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to the cast members or whoever they are,

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"The camera's everywhere. No holds barred."

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- It's a little bit like Big Brother, basically, - Right.

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- except in the showers, I think, and nothing else. - Yeah.

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Yeah. I think you would probably have to pay

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your participants more to do that.

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That would be my guess.

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But there is still,

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I guess, some sense of propriety?

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On Andi's season of The Bachelorette,

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after the final rose,

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one of the guys confronted her and said,

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"If you didn't love me, why did you make love to me?"

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And she just -- Her jaw dropped

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and she could not believe he had said this

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on national television.

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Meanwhile, we all know it happened.

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No one is shocked

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that the bachelorette is sleeping with all of the men.

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But once it's spoken out loud,

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it kind of breaks that barrier of

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these are real people and these are their lives.

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But they signed up for it.

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[ pen writing ]

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What are some reasons networks prefer reality TV?

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What's a major difference between scripted and reality programing?

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Why is reality TV so popular among viewers?

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Was this just scripted or was that reality?

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