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Feb 23, 2003 Like it or not, Reality TV is here... and it's here to stay. Its run on Primetime started as something new to air during the summer instead of reruns. Then everyone was stunned when over forty million viewers tuned in to watch Richard Hatch claim a million dollar jackpot and fifteen minutes of fame as the first winner of Survivor. Then like a bad outbreak of boy bands, Reality TV hit the tube like a massive tidal wave. I don’t know why this was such a shock to anyone when this is a common formula in Hollywood. When something is successful, there are bound to be dozens of clones made in an attempt to repeat what was a stunning success. If something is popular and makes a boatload of cash, it will always be repeated over and over and over and over again until the idea (or fad) is eventually milked for all its worth. Need an example? Look no further than ABC and its primetime airing of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" It originally was something made to bump up the ratings for sweeps that became an overnight success. When Regis and his fancy ties started raking in an amazing thirty million viewers a night, in came the clones. I truely believe the real reason why "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" went off the air to begin with was ABC's fault for going into overkill mode. Airing the show four nights a week was too much and people got tired of Regis and the corny music real quick. Had they stuck to one or two nights a week, I’m sure that show would still be on the air today. But when Millionaire and Regis were pulling in the big numbers, game shows started coming out of the woodworks and filling up the primetime schedule. We suddenly had more game shows in primetime than I would like to remember. Some were good, others were complete crap. Some even say that Survivor was a clone of Millionaire, so if you really want someone to blame for all this reality stuff, it's all Regis' fault! Seriously though, when Survivor hit the ratings jackpot in it's first season, many critics still refused to give it the benefit of the doubt. Many believed that everyone tuned in only because it was up against reruns and that Survivor didn’t stand a chance against new episodes. CBS dared to take the challenge, and set up season two of Survivor to go head to head with NBC’s best lineup: Thursday’s “Must See TV” juggernaut. The new season took on ‘Friends’ and many believed that Survivor would never amount to much against real competition. Once again critics were stunned when Survivor Two beat Friends like a narc at a biker rally not just once, but every week it was on the air. Survivor Two drew in over thirty million viewers a week, more than double the average rating Survivor One made over the summer. It was a serious blow to NBC, yet the worst wasn’t over yet. CBS moved ‘CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’ over from Friday Night to offer an amazing one, two punch for Thursday nights. It was another gamble that paid off for CBS as CSI took over and has basically ruled that 9pm timeslot ever since. However, ever since Survivor Two the ratings have dropped for the series ever since. Survivor Three, Four and Five were decent in quality, but still were never able to meet the success that the second season enjoyed. I’m willing to concede that Friends improved in quality to meet the challenge of Survivor but some believed that the second Survivor was nothing more an anomaly because of America’s love of the “Australian Outback” where the second season was shot. My wife prefers to think a Texas hunk named “Colby” was the real reason why Survivor Two beat Friends week in and week out. That might be the case, but the fact is NBC no longer controls Thursday night and its domination of that night was ended by Reality TV. With this kind of enormous success, more reality shows had to be expected and boy did we get pummeled with a ton of them! We got hit with Big Brother, Temptation Island, The Mole, Celebrity Boxing, Fear Factor, The Bachelor, Man Versus Beast, and of course the recent hits like ‘Joe Millionaire’ and ‘American Idol’. We’ve been hit with so much 'reality' that many people are getting sick and tired of it. Yet the fact is many viewers were sick and tired of seeing the same old sitcoms and dramas that was on their tubes before the outbreak of Reality TV. The viewing public wanted something new and they got it by watching real people do amazing, stupid and even humbling things for money. For some reason viewers love it and are tuning in to the point where often secure timeslots are being ripped away from networks that often took them for granted. That’s the viewers excuse, but what about the networks? What was their excuse for turning their back on art and betting on Reality TV? The answer isn't too hard to figure out. It’s all about the Benjamins. Money. I wish it was something more poetic, but the fact is the execs make more money with Reality TV than they do with sitcoms or dramas. Not only can they draw in great ratings with these shows, but they are ten times cheaper to produce. Actors and actresses take an enormous bite out of the profits, and because of that a show's budget can cost a network much as five to ten million dollars per episode. With Reality TV, you could produce entire season for the same price it would cost to make two or three episodes of Friends. A million dollar jackpot is peanuts compared to the one million dollar per episode salary NBC shells out for each cast member of Friends, and with six stars that adds up to six million an episode for just salary! That means it would cost NBC an unbelievable one hundred and forty million dollars to pay the cast of 'Friends' for twenty- one episodes and that figure doesn't even include other production costs! So that’s the real reason why the suits love Reality TV. Not only will you make a bundle of money from advertising, but they also save a bundle from not having to pay actors and actresses obscene amounts of money. And as long as the ratings stay in the thirty to forty million range, there’s no reason why the greedy executives would ever stop producing Reality TV, especially when they're so darn cheap to make! Profits above everything else. Now that is what I call a genuine dose of reality. Email Peter Lowry: Peter_24601@hotmail.com ------------ Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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