Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.
Sharon Vuong and Corie Hensen, Executive VPs at NBCUniversal Entertainment, discuss why unscripted content is TV secret sauce. Nick Viall, Founder of Envy Media, talks about his efforts in creating content with his podcast and YouTube channel.
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. Producer: Paul Brennan.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Yes, indeed, everybody, buss Tioburg Business Week are live at screen.
Time as this power or fourth hour four five.
I both count krol Maslumton stand amag.
We're live at Nios Studios. This is our second annual screen time. I've been bringing together those folks who are making content, but it's coming through so many different creative vehicles, if you will.
And yeah, we're going to talk about it for the next sixteen minutes. We have been, but we're going to.
Get into the conversation.
Yah h James here at screen time in this area's Shopdog. Last night, we're from Brian Roberts. A little earlier, Wizard and co founder and former CEO Mike Moore High was just on with us in the last few minutes. The right lineup of people only fans CEO it was on as well.
The actions just no.
Stop this, it's non stop And in just a moment we're going to get to the executives behind the voice Love Island USA, the Traders.
Two top perret content creators. They've created so much when it comes to reality and own scripted television. We're going to talk with them over Hennessy Universal. They'll join us in just a moment on it.
When it comes to reality TV, another great voice, Nick Bail, He's been on the Bachelor, of The Bachelor Wrette, He's got his own podcast.
They dig deep to do what goes on in a reality TV.
And it really goes up what really.
Happens when it comes to reality TV. And then we have been talking a lot about the ones to watch. Nick is on that list.
Yeah, so too is the CEO.
Of two B and Julie Sued And if you're in the media world, especially in New York, it's a familiar name because she was at video for years. Our Bradstone is gonna be catching up with her. We're gonna catch up with Brad a little bit later too.
All right, let's get going in this hour.
From The Bachelor, Bachelorette to the Kardashians, Housewives, American Idol, and so much more.
Reality and unscripted television.
Television is a much seed, much seed is must see for so many. Came up with a statistic that was on PBS. They noted that almost eighty percent of adult TV viewers watch reality television.
We have two inside. It was based on a book.
We have two insiders who have led the way truly, truly when you look at their backgrounds when it comes to successive explosion of unscripted television.
Corey has an executive.
Vice president of the Unscripted Content Competition and Game Shows an NBC Universal Entertainment.
Also at NBC Universal is.
Sharon bum who is Executive VP Alternative Programming and Development Development. As we said, there's the creative team behind so much of the NBC portfolio.
There's so much. I could go on for about.
An hour about what you guys have done. First of all, welcome, well for wealth. What's fun in about unscripted TV?
Real fun about entertainment?
Yeah, but it wasn't always something that people thought about, right, that could be an explosed But tell us about kind of how it has evolved.
Oh gosh, I mean it's evolved from PBS series through Cops, through you know, into a real world, into the big formats like Big Brother and Idol and Survivor, the ones that launched the genre, and I think it's just continued to evolve. There was obviously a big spike in all of the cable affair, you know, with all of the docu soaks were prolific across cable, and I think the big formats are back now.
Traders Love Island obviously are crushing it.
We found this really great balance where people don't talk about it as a guilty pleasure anymore, which I always was.
That's a win.
That's a win, yeah right, because it's not guilty.
It's just good entertainment.
And I think there's there's great reality shows and there's great scripted shows, just like there's some not great reality shows and some not great scripted show.
It's like there's something for everyone.
But it's I mean, we pinch ourselves every day when we get to come to work on.
I was even surprised to hear a shout out from Tim Walls during the presidential debate a couple of weeks ago. I think you said you're missing dancing with our stars.
He said that, yeah, so close.
Yeah, I think he said that I have to go back and looking the transfer, maybe dancing with us. I don't know what he said, but we understood when he got it.
The cultural guys.
Yeah.
You know, one thing that I was thinking about when when we're preparing for this is Carol and I were talking yesterday like reality show from for me is like Real World because that's there.
I grew up there in ninety nineties MTV.
Seeing what happens when you know, strangers get together.
Yeah, I know what happened to create all the same vintage.
We get it.
Yeah, but that was before Instagram. It was before Facebook, it was before Twitter, it was before you know, you have fans right now always traveling with concent creators because they're getting a behind the scenes view, like their own version of reality to their audience is a way to connect with them. How do you balanced that going directly to the fan versus a show a platform like you find it at NBC Universal.
Yeah, we think it makes the content richer because it's another kind of avenue for the story.
To play out.
So you know, for instance, on leve Islin, you have the story that plays out episodically. Then we have a whole content team that manages the social story as well. So we show moments, we tell stories, we show interview byes, we showed photographs that you won't see on the main show, and it becomes this symbiotic relationship that keeps pushing the main show forward, pushes back to social. So it ends up being a three sixty kind of experience for the fans, and I think it's really important you get more. It's almost like for the Rabbid fan base, you can't get enough. I think whether they had life being Layer yep, you know, yeah, that's twenty four to seven.
It's kind of amazing how you can dice and slice it, right, Yeah, in terms of reality or unscripted.
Yeah, a lot of our shows too. We've created sort of worlds and bubbles that the contestants are living in, and so this is really just sort of like that outside I feel shado what's.
Going on in real life, and we love being part.
Of that conversation every day and really sort of creating the conversation from social, which again to Sharance point, feeds back into the show and it becomes this twenty sixty experience.
I am so curious about how you guys figure out what's going to be a good unscripted series, Like, how do you go about the process, how do you scout it out? How do you scout out the people that you maybe want to have in that environment.
It's very similar to when you watch a show.
You hear a song, yeah, you get a Curt Veiling fealing and I think that I wish it was perfect science because it's not. But there there are things, but you know, avenues that we take where we're always look at international formats. That's a place where we can find for content domestically from the producers that we hear pitches from. That's a place we mind for content. Sometimes we go into the closet and we get it.
In rush off old reinventing IP or working with certain auspices where you know that that Saint Jordan Peel came in with a reimagining of Scare Tactics, which is like a fan favorite crank show, and through his lens it became a totally different show.
And so you're sort of just you're making.
Calculated bets basically, and they're they're not all going to win. And I've also I've seen really great shows not perform and I've seen mediocre shows perform really well. So it's it's not a perfect science. We wish it was, although then we wouldn't have a job.
You would just you know, perfect.
What's something you passed on doing so well.
Out okay shows? Yeah.
So, so when I was the commissioner at CBS, Corey was over at Fox and a little Korean show or came in called Mass Singer, and we watched the tape and I thought, this is it's a little a little weird what but it's it's people a mass And even though I we felt like it was something interesting, it wasn't white for us. But of course it ended up being a massive hit on Fox.
But that's my That show is my mistake as well, because we passed on it the first time it came in, and then it came back around about two years later, went and it had fallen fallen out of development I think at like MTV, and it came back to us and we bought it the second time around. So I like, it's a mistake with a happy ending.
Yeah so, but I think they happened.
With American Idol too, that people passed on American Idol before it found its home.
Most is our legendary Why.
Is it though?
Like what is it that you see that you're like, okay, not so much well and something that you say, Okay, I'm going to greenlight this.
I mean timing, it's obviously every thing.
Yeah, what your opportunities are on the network or the platform, and where you can put it and what you can partner it with.
And what talent is interested in it and available.
I mean that was you know when we did do the Mass Singer, that sort of we got really lucky Ken John his parents actually had watched the original Career so he knew the show so we didn't have to explain the wax premise.
He's like, I got it. And same thing with Jenny.
McCarthy that she just she understood it right away. So it's just a lot of it's timing. The traders. For example, that show, the producers talk about what they've been pitching it for ten years or something or like developing, redeveloping it, pitching it six years.
They were pitching six years.
And I will say with the panel shows like who's on that panel makes or breaks it right?
So of getting that right talent mix is just killer and making it.
Alchemy Yeah, it's it is, and there's not really a great way to test it.
Yeah, you're sort of trying to fill these different roles.
You know, you want this person that comes from this genre, and this person that's going to bring the humor, and this person that's different combinations.
Like, I'm just curious how you do that with high profile talent or higher profile.
I was gonna say, it's tricky when you have sort of yea big you know, celebrities. It's not like we could say, hey, riab Us, sit down in the chair and give us an audition.
It's like she's a legend.
She's getting the chair, So we don't know.
We we try and sort of matchmake a little bit as much as we can. You know, with this Dear's Voice panel that we're so excited about.
Obviously snoope Don the Olympics.
We had been chasing him to be a coach on the Voice for many, many seasons. The timing was perfect, he could transition seamlessly into it.
We knew he and Raba would have a good ripport.
There was a lot of respect there and you know, to legends he when came up at the same time in the same area.
Yes, they had a history, and.
I think Michael Bublay was the sort of the question mark because he didn't really know any of the other panelists very well coming into it.
But he and Stupid off and now there's this romance that's blossoming there.
So sometimes though, yeah, sometimes you sit there and those panels are meeting for the first time and you're like, ooof this is not a dinner party I want to be at anymore.
And we ask viewers like pick up feeling going on? Sometimes that's fun.
Yeah, sometimes sometimes that works too, but it doesn't.
We're Bloomberg. We talk money. We love talking in money numbers.
Do you have any extra like we can have a different department.
Though certainly looking for more question.
Yeah, I guess the question that I have is about the cost equation with this type of content versus like a half hour or an hour of something stripted. If you think about, you know, the days of Side Belt and Friends and the days of like thirty Rock in the Office that's so called, Like you know, those those half hours or twenty two minutes of script and TV that have now taken.
On a life. If they're off on the streaming platforms.
How would you characterize the investment in those versus the investment in the season of reality.
I mean, it's a longer answer because I think we obvious we don't know the intricacies of the scripted deal models.
But the big difference is.
That the studios sort of take on a lot of the burden up front for scripted, whereas on unscripted we pay one hundred percent of the cost up front, and so our shows don't have as much see legs on the other end, because oftentimes you know the results of the show, you know who won, you know when the person was eliminated, so there's not always a lot of tail on the show where there could be. For Seinfeld, you can watch an episode twenty years later and I still rest. We still are and we still are. But that being said, our costs are are far less in the long term, and we can find a lot of efficiencies in different ways. We can shoot back to that seasons, we can make the cast smaller or bigger. We can shoot twenty episodes and get a better amwork like but there are all these different lovers that we can play with.
We can partner with the those different creations, which we do often now like on traders. We parted with the BBC in the UK, right, we created a hub with that castle, so that castle has become a location for both channels.
So okay, million trillion dollar question, is it really unscripted? What's the balance? Like tell it? Does it really just go like everybody does their thing?
Or to help us understand, I'm a favor fan of.
Like a lot of reality. I just think it's human nature. You get to see dynamics, but.
It's not turned on the cameras and just catch what you can.
There's a lot of work and three production that goes into setting up the framework that we then and the worlds that we then put the contestants into.
But at the end of the day.
They are themselves. They're not actors. We are not writing scripts for them. In our competition format series. There are game rules of play, there are FCC rules like we we cannot write the script for them.
All we can do is produce sea situation right.
And and put people into that situation, and it's all about how they ran to the situation, into one another in the situation.
It's it's real a social media player today in the sense of when you're in when you're editing, you're finding those moments to cut, to promote on social media, to bring in an audience that wouldn't necessarily be tuning in without that.
Sort we we have.
We work closely with a team internally at the company NBCU, but also outside resources that create a story, like we're saying earlier, that go hand in hand with the story that's happening in the episode.
And so there's a whole.
Cycle of content that's happening and being built, edited and put together with the whole plan that gets released as we put the as.
We release the episodes.
So it's we were saying earlier, it's now. It's particularly on the Island, it's a fifty to fifty proposition. It's fifty percent what's happening in social is important to fifty percent that's happening on the script.
All right, So I want to ask what each of your favorite unscripted program is to watch.
I mean, I think we're one of ours, gonna say we're a biased, Yeah, so I would say one of ours.
We would probably both say the trade traders, the.
Traders, and yeah, well that isn't yours.
That isn't I am a like we both like I'm a long long Phantom survivor, very long fan brothers.
Yeah, I'm a Dancing with the Stars loyalists and dancing with our stars.
I'm sorry, let's go back, all right. It's a favorite.
Scripted program or normal traditional, not an unscriptured Yeah.
Well you're I I my most recent obsession. I always loved Game of Thrones, which makes sense that we love Traders.
Yeah.
And I loved Lost in the Olden Days, and I love Succession, which makes sense because all these tenants are in our own scripted shows of strategy and murder.
That's hard, Yes, that's right, have out for you, Corey. Oh gosh, we.
Watch a lot of live television, live sports in our home, not always by choice, you know, everyone on the couch, but that's what that's what it's on.
I mean, watch a lot of like one hour dramas.
So for us, it's about like escaping from the day to day. So gosh, I know this sounds like a really dated answer, but I loved Ozarks.
We always have.
Law and Order on in our house constantly on a hope, so I.
Watch it was a really dark moment for me.
Do you think sports there was a room ward that with more reality are on scripted just quickly or do you do orders at heart?
I think the two are very complementary. They're lives, they're spontaneous, you don't know the outcome. They're real people doing what they do, achieving at their highest levels.
I think it's a really great compliment.
Coury Sharon, thank you so much.
Thank you much.
Fun it's me you.
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Well, our next guest from screen time. Well, he has been cast in The Bachelor, the Bachelorette. I want to make sure I get him all right, Bachelor in Paradise.
He's starting to podcast back in twenty nineteen.
It has since become a must stop place for reality TV personalities.
Their fans want analysis of what's going on.
It's the kind of thing I'm very interested in the backgrounds and what's going on. His weekly recap episodes tackle the most popular shows, The Bachelor, Love Island, The Real Housewives.
A favorite of mine. I'm just going to disclose and Summer House. How have I missed though all this?
I don't know.
Maybe I'm just involved in too much news stuff.
He's among the twelve individuals singled out and included in the Bloomberg screen.
Time Ones to Watch list.
He's also founder of Envy Media that's developing other podcasts. We're so delighted to have with us. Nick Faiel, he's actor host of il Files. He's here with us at screen Time.
Welcome, Welcome, thanks for having me. Good to be with you, So good to.
Have you here. Your YouTube channel, let me throw out some numbers.
One hundred and ninety thousand subscribers, but maybe even more more than two hundred thousand people follow your podcast on Spotify. You have more than a million followers on Instagram. Why do you think you are so popular?
I don't know, you'd have to ask.
I guess I suppose my audience, but I think, you know, we try to be as authentic as we can on our show and just you know, give the people a little bit of the insight into reality TV, pop culture and things like that, and so hopefully people find us entertaining as well as a little bit of informative when it comes to some of the things that they're really.
Fans of, you know, like reality to via pop culture.
On Okay, so Carol kept asking us guess whether or not it is actually reality TV, reality TV, whether or not it is unscripted.
They're over at NBC Universal, Sharon Bung and Corey Henson. They've done a lot in terms of unscripted television and reality TV, so.
They know this one.
Yeah, careful with your answer, because they're still right over there. I think when it comes, but but you have a unique position because you were part of so many shows.
You have in part of so many shows, so take us behind the scenes.
Well, I think when it comes to reality TV, every show is different, right. You have like reality TV love competitions like The Bachelor, Love Island, Love is Blind, And that's a very kind of different structure than say you're ensemble episodic shows like Rabo Housewives. I think for the most part, every reality TV show wants to be as real as authentic as possible, and so I would say in reality it's more stage than scripted, you know, as much as possible. The conversations people are having are truly authentic. They're not they're not getting scripts or lines or things like that. But but scenes are stage, so to speak. And so like The Bachelor, Love is Blind, Love island very controlled byronments.
You don't have your phone, you're kind of off the grid, so to speak.
And so within that controlled environment, they're very good at creating situations that are very intense, that create a lot of drama and fun things to watch.
We've heard stories about alcohol being involved in this stuff.
How about alcohol being.
To sort of get people to loosen create an environment to what extent.
In my experience, it's they're casting adults first and foremost, people who are old enough to drink and it's available.
You know, I was never encouraged to drink more.
I was never you know, certainly insisted to drink more, but it was always available. There is a lot of downtime, There is a lot of hurry up and waiting. Obviously, people who might happen to consume alcohol if they're nervous and things like that. So that can create a lot of situations where people might over consume. But I think over the years, I got the impression I've been out of real TV in terms of being behind the camera.
But it sounds like a lot of production.
Companies have made the appropriate changes to limit people's consumption. That being said, it is available, it's there and you know, if you're someone who over consumes that might be you know that might happen.
Can I ask you, though, before we kind of move forward, is were you ever.
Plodded into doing something or did.
You ever feel like you were edited incorrectly?
Yeah?
Wells certainly when it comes to like the edit.
There's a lot of control that shows have in terms of how they can frame a story together.
I think for the.
Most part, shows want to tell the story that happened, but they also have a limited time in which to do that, and so they are kind of simplifying arguments and things like that. So for the person involved it might feel they might feel a misrepresented. I think for the sake of the audience, you know, the people telling the story is trying to create the story. At the same time, no one's making you do or say anything you don't want to do. I always describe producers as the friend who wants you to buy the boat, you know, Like the producers aren't there to give you sound advice. They're there if it feels good, do it type of thing, and so they want you to be as honest with how you feel in the moment.
So if you ask them if you should buy the boat. They're gonna tell you.
Hell, yeah, it's great to have a friend with a boat.
It's great to have a friend with a pool.
Yeah, you know, it's nice to have that friend. So that's kind of how producers are.
And I and I always say this, you know, I've never heard a reality TV star blame the producers.
When they look good.
Yeah, they're always like, yeah, that was my line. But when things don't go well for reality TV stars, I think producers are often an easy scapegoat. But you know, listen, sometimes those those grapes are legitimate. I know what it's like to be behind the camera and like watch the edit and go, I don't remember it that way. So it goes both ways, and I think there's a there's arguments being made on both.
Sides your podcast. Are you always thinking about having a viral moment?
Like tell us about when you're in the process and your guys are digesting you know, an episode or certain happenings.
Like yeah, how do you want how do you shape that?
I mean, in terms of producing our show, we just want to have conversations that people are interested in having with us, right, Like, you know, we want to basically create a show that is like we're friends in our room having a conversation about our favorite content. You know, I'm also a big sports fan, and so our our audience who are fans of pop cultural, real TV and relationship are watching reality TV the same way some people might watch a sports game, and so we want to cover that and have those types of conversations that they are interested in having and breaking down and things like that. So we want to have those authentic conversations that people are interested in. And the virality of content that you make usually will follow, and that's kind of how we focus.
On It goes viral, right, Oh, of course, who doesn't. Who doesn't love a viral moment?
When it comes to viral moments are a good sign that you're talking.
About the right things.
We'll involve, but you know, consistency matters, and the more you're consistent with your message, the more chances you'll have of going viral.
It's pretty incredible to see the way that careers have been made with opportunities given by reality TV. I think you're a great example of chat. Are you more likely if you're on a reality TV show to have a career made or a career broken.
It really just depends on what you're doing.
I will A lot of advice I give to my peers coming off of reality TV is I'll let them know that going on reality TV gives you incredible access and no credibility, where like, for example, an entertainer in music or you know, an actor, they usually.
Will get access and credibility.
Access is great and it gets you in a lot of rooms, and then from there on it's up to you to kind of show the credibility that you should earn. And so that's the focus I've had, and I think if you stick to that and show people who you know are excited to bring you in the room because they're fans of the show and they want to ask you all the questions you guys are asking me, is it real?
Descripted?
Things like that, Those are opportunities that I use to, you know, gain the credibility to grow my build and build.
My career doing a podcast.
Was that something you thought, yeah, this makes sense next or did you think about different things?
I mean, I do acting, I do hosting, and I try to be kind of you know, have my hand a lot of buckets. But podcasting something I you know, I saw a lot of people have success in I don't enjoy I do enjoy talking, I can be I like being analytical, and so I saw the space of something I thought I could excel in, and once I started my show, I really enjoyed it, had a passion for it, and then just tried to continue to build and see where it togo.
With the It's interesting because you're able to leverage something that an opportunity you had and so called traditional media to reach fans directly.
Yeah, you know, sort of go around those traditional media channels. I'm wondering.
You know, here we are talking about the future of media at screen time, trying to understand the different ways.
To reach people.
A big part of the conversation earlier was, you know, with the CEO of Only Fans and they have a platform where people are able to go directly to their fans, the future of reality TV. Do the networks have as much power as they've had in the past.
I think in general, traditional media across the board probably has less power, just because of the platforms that give you know, creators like me access to you know, start creating content, and if you have a work ethic and a good idea and the follow through to build on that idea. I think, you know, the sky's the limit for kind of anything. So I just think it kind of levels the playing field. And I think it also it challenges legacy media media to.
Keep up and be more innovative. I think in the past, I think legacy media.
Had the advantages of the kind of just doing what we always did because it worked for them. And now you know, they're seeing you know, healthy competition and people out there, you know, challenging them to move a little faster and a little bit be a little more innovative.
You know what's kind of.
Cool if you think about podcasts, it's like kind of old time radio, right, we just listen to an incredible conversation. Sometimes there's bells and whistles, sometimes it's just people talking around a table. It's just unbelievable kind of how it's taken off. Envy Media. It's your company that you've started. Now you're helping other people do podcasts. Is there a certain type of talent podcasting that you're looking to do?
Tell us about that.
Yeah, So, you know, starting Envy Media, I was just trying to build off of what the Vile Files was which is again, you know, a big part of my audience or people who love watching television that will love watching reality TV. And so the first show I produce is disrespectfully with Katy.
Malodey and Danny Kathum.
They have their you know place in reality TV. A new show I'll be announcing shortly our ladies also in the reality TV space. And so I think enmy media, we're trying to kind of build what you know, ultimately, like what ESPN is for sports, and kind of build a you know, an environment that every one of our shows is going to have a similar type of audience of people who enjoy this type of television, enjoy this type of content.
So we want to be fit focused. We're not just trying.
To launch a bunch of random shows. They'll all be centered around you know, reality TV and the people who love them.
How's the sales process going with getting these shows picked up.
In terms of selling the shows, Yeah, it's going very well.
I mean I have a great partner and lips in who sells my show and the shows that we also produce, and it's been great. And again, you have to have a lot of our audiences are millennial women, and it seems like the advertisers enjoyed those audience as well.
As much as we enjoy them.
And we'll continue to, you know, work with those audience members because they've been.
Great to us and we really appreciate them.
Are you done with reality TV yourself in terms of.
Being behind the camera.
Yeah, it really depends on what it is in terms of love competition shows. I'm happily married and have a kid, So that's that's great.
I mean sounds like a reality show.
Sure in terms of you know, you never say never because you never really know what type of shows might come out or you know.
Obviously, I'm doing a lot.
Of hosting and things like that.
I hosted a reality show and Patty Staying or not too long ago, and so.
I'll always have my place in reality TV.
I'm always looking to produce content maybe make shows myself, so I'll always have a hand in it.
But I don't know how much competing on reality TV I'll do.
I'll we do it.
I totally get it. Nick, thanks for dropping by at all. Congratulations under success absolutely, thank yeah.
Nick Files, who's actor hosted The Vile Files. Straight ahead. We're going to get another name from the Bloomberg screen.
Time ones to watch Sliss.
This is something we're highlighting, who's beating some of the giants in the streaming race while giving away content for free.
That's a model that's coming up next