Really? no, Really?Survivor: Borneo – the very first season of Survivor, debuted on Network Television in the year 2000. And with it, reality TV began to transform America’s television industry.
25 years later the Hollywood Reporter proclaims that “Reality TV is on Life Support.
Sure, shows like Love is Blind, Real Housewives and new, up-and-comers like The Traitors are still very popular. But at the same time, more and more reality shows are being canceled, less episodes are being produced, and dramatically smaller budgets are being offered for any of it - indicating to both audiences and industry leaders alike that reality shows may be becoming extinct. Really, no Really!
Today, the guys will be talking to Emily Nussbaum, a Pulitzer Prize winning television critic and the author of: Cue The Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV. She’ll reveal some of the reality behind reality television and how much of it isn’t reality at all. Plus, she’ll discuss the long history of the genre, and the practicalities and impracticalities of its success and possible failure. Which leads me to say this episode of our show should be called: Reality. No Reality!
In 2014 she won a National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary and in 2016 she won thePulitzer Prize for criticism. She’s written for The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Slate and The New York Times.
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IN THIS EPISODE:
- Is Reality TV dead?
- Reality TV was birthed by radio “audience participation shows”.
- Alan Funt was a sneaky guy with a hidden microphone that invented prank shows!
- “Cinéma véritéto” to Abject Bull$%*t - Defining Reality TV
- Non-Disclosure Agreements are WAY worse than you think.
- Most morally compromising? The Bachelor!
- Why Jason doesn’t think he’d do well on Survivor.
- Punking the guy who made “When Animals Attack”.
- Live Executions? Really?
- “Don’t try this at home!” born on Woody Frasure’s “That’s Incredible!”
- Forget Reality TV for a sec, will TV survive?
- Don’t miss Jason on Netflix’s “The Electric State”
- REAL REALITY TV SHOWS OR FAKE? Jason stumps the panel.
- Google-HEIM: The most watched TV EVER! EVER!
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FOLLOW EMILY:
Website: emilynussbaum.com
Instagram: @emilynussbaum
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FOLLOW REALLY NO REALLY:
Now really, really, really well and welcome to really know really Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden to remind you that our show survives on subscribers.
That's the reality, so please subscribe. And speaking of reality and surviving Survivor Borneo. The very first season of Survivor debuted on network television in the year two thousand, and with it, reality TV began to transform America's television industry. But twenty five years later, the Hollywood Reporter proclaims that reality TV is on life support. Sure, shows like Love Is Blind, Real Housewives, and new up and comers like The Traders are still very popular, but at the same time, more and more reality shows are being canceled, less episodes are being produced, and dramatically smaller budgets are being offered.
For any of it.
Really, no really, Today, the guys will be talking to Emily Nussbaum, a Pulitzer Prize winning television critic and the author of Q the Sun, The Invention of Reality TV. She'll reveal some of the reality behind reality television and how much of it isn't reality at all. Plus she'll discuss the long history of the genre and the practicalities and impracticalities of its success and impossible failure, which leads me to say that this episode of our show should be called reality no reality and now here are two guys who sense of reality has been unique for as long as we can remember, Jason and Peter.
So I've come to believe because I know our topic today is about reality.
Tvager I may.
Be watching more reality TV than scripted TV at this I may be one of those people. So when I go on the road, right, when I'm doing shows and I'm on the road, I hate being alone.
I hate being without my wife.
So if I'm in the hotel, I have the TV on, and there are channels that are just you know, back to back reality right right right.
I'm never watching a scripted show.
So what do you want the reality show you're into?
It could be anything. It could be. Uh, sometimes it's it's a game.
Sometimes it's I've watched things that I would not watch in my home. So I'll watch a little bit of the Kardashians. I'll watch a little bit.
Well, I would have never paid you for a Kardashian.
Well, I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated, but.
It's all fake.
It's off stage it's all I understand that I'm fascinated.
I don't mean to be derogatory.
I believe that these women have found real contributions to make that are that are making them famous and wealthy. But initially, if you said what is the individual talent of any one of them?
I'd go I couldn't tell you.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why they're on my television set. They're not actresses, they're not singers, they're not dancers, they're not you know, So what is the talent that you would normally bring to a television show. So, given that there is no obvious talent and the way we think about talent, they have built an empire on television. And it fascinates me because it wouldn't be something that I would normally have watched.
But they are a phenomena.
Some people are watching them, and so sometimes I put it on to go what.
Are we I didn't realize that Survivor was the less moonvest Okade Survivor because they had stuff embedded in advertising embedded in it already. If it bombed, it made money. But Survivor supposedly kicked off the reality the reality let me.
Just tell you my cousin Jonathan has been on it three times. He's been a contestant three.
Is he a star because of that? The people recognize him.
Yeah, he's got big notebariety and you know, and he he.
Was very good, you know, because they swear, you know, they're not going to give anything away. So we would have viewing parties any season he was on, and you know, as we were watching an episode, he couldn't tell us what was going to happen, but he could talk about anything that happened up to what.
It was like, and he would.
They kind of made him a little bit of a villain at least the first time he was on, and there would be a thing where, you know, he won a reward for food and then it looks like he's just going and everybody's starving, right, and they're all.
Going, oh, he's a jerk off.
And what they took out was he went, I'm willing to show anybody want anybody, anybody want to think because I know we're all starving to anybody and they're all like, no, you want it.
Man, fan square and you know he's like you sure, you know?
And all that's out and he said, you know somebody who'll say something and then they'll cut to a reaction by somebody else, and he goes that that statement and that reaction, we're three days apart. So because they have to do it, they're building a story that doesn't exist talking about reality shows.
The reason we wanted to do this episode is all of a sudden, we start saying headlines in the Hollywood Reporter and all of the trade papers. Has reality TV finally taken spinal bow? The death of reality TV? With ratings plummeting. What this means for the future of unscripted television. They're now ordering less, less episodes, they're bagging a lot of it, a lot of it's not happening here anymore. And a lot of the people worked in that industr we were freelancers and are just in dire straits at this point because it looks like either reality TV is over or it's going to change. So we wanted to get an expert who could talk about it. And Emily Nusbaum, who is a Polisher Prize winning critic, which I got to ask you about a critic. Yeah, you're that good at criticism, right, So nobody at home can even beat you because you used a superlative.
No one has you.
She wrote a book about the reality television industry from beginning to now called Cue the Sun, which is from the Truman Show. The fact that Kimry had not did not know that he was in a perpetual reality show. And she has devoted a lot of time to examining reality TV. So who better to have on than her to tell us if TV is.
She also be able to tell us when none of our shows were able to stay on there?
Do you think she can do that?
Almost every episode you tend to bring up our failures, and I don't look at them as failures.
I didn't say failures. I said they didn't stay on there.
I looked at them as almost success to Jason.
Success, She might have the answer, not half half empty, handful still pretty empty?
Yeah, and you know how I know they didn't. They weren't huge successes. I'm not making any money, nothing, but I'm proud of a bunch of stuff we did.
I'm proud of this. I'm good for you.
Wow. Wow that hurt Okay, hmm you sip with that for men?
Yeah?
Wow? That one was like a real gut fund or even in the nuts that hurt probably probably probably Jason and I always to the joke that when somebody tells you something erk showering, whatever, the most diminishing thing you can do is, hey, remember when I my entire family and that tornado down Sundry probably probably probably means nothing. Let's say hi to Emilina's bum Hi, Emilina's bum.
Hi, emilyas we should do it.
You know what. I was going to sing it too, because if you say.
It, it's off. It's almost like Frank, wello to our show.
Nice to meet Youaz, thanks for having me.
Oh absolutely so the premise. We keep reading articles lately in the Hollywood Reporter everywhere reality TV is dead, celebrity is not. Has reality TV finally taken his final bow? The death of Reality TV? With the ratings plumbenting? What this means for the future of unscripted television. Since you are a critic and you wrote the defenditive book on reality television, Que of the Sun, we figured you may be a good place to start to say to ask is reality to TV dead?
Before I answer this, I have to give the caveat I always give when people ask me about the prospects for any television genre, which is just to say, if I knew anything about economics, I would not have gone into art journalism television criticism for ten years. But I know medium amount about the business. I don't think reality television is going anywhere, and the main reason is for the reason I wrote about my book, which is that it was created to cost nothing. I mean, it was invented initially as a way not to pay writers and not to pay actors. So there's definitely a big bump going on in Hollywood in general, like in terms of production for TV. But it seems to me that there's been one thing that's been going on with reality TV the entire time it's existed, and then in the book I write about it all the way back to radio to nineteen forty seven. It's that people are constantly predicting that it's a fat and it will dissolve any minute now. So that's why I tend not to trust any current prognostications that it's about to dissolve. But the other thing about it is it's just turned into something else. The whole Internet is reality television, right, So I guess it depends what you define it.
As Well's funny we did an episode about that where we had on the Woody Fraser who created That's incredible because we kind of nailed reality television back to that. And it started out with food eating, you know, the Nathan's hot Dog eating contest and the fact that the Carnival, food eating, Wild West shows, magic shows all were are out there and that was the public with the public use for entertainment. Then all of a sudden that all came to television with the original reality shows, you know, people shooting bullets at each other and doing all that. I know in your book you're talking about Alan Funt, which I loved, and we'll talk about that in a minute, and Canon camera. But then it morphed into and now we are the Carnival and that everybody with the Internet, we're providing the talent.
Yeah, it's the ultimate dream where everyone is just their own reality producer.
Right.
But Yeah, when I wrote about reality television in the book, I basically had to come up with a definition because there's all these different versions of what people consider reality TV and what they think it goes back to. And honestly, even I when I started writing this book, had this kind of grand idea like I will write, you know, a nonfiction book about the history of reality TV, I will include it. All that was impossible. And I also I think like a lot of people thought of it as something that went back to like Survivor or the Real World is really what I thought as And then yeah, that's incredible, and all of those shows also fit into it. And when I ended up writing about it. At the beginning of the book was radio, which I really didn't know that much about, and it was only once I started doing the research that I started.
We'll talk about that for a minute, because that blew me. I never even thought about that having come from radio that the originally out that Alan front. Actually it was Candid Radio that started this genre in a way.
Yeah, it was Candid Microphone. And when he made Candid Microphone, which was this Banana's strange show that was popular but very divisive and unnerving because it was really the first prank show. Was all the things you'd imagine for what became Candid Camera, but it was really new thing. It was actually part of a larger trend on radio that wasn't called reality radio. It was called audience participation shows. And the first time that I realized I had to write about this was I was, you know, I was researching Candid Microphone and Queen per Day, which the book begins with these shows that are sort of like proto reality TV on radio, and I found this article that was basically like, what is this disgusting trend? What is these audience participation shows where regular people are going on They're making fools of themselves. It's destroying the industry. It's a strike breaker, and it shows that the entire country has become just a place of narcissists who want nothing but cheap attention and who want to be famous just for being themselves. And this was an article from nineteen forty seven. So I was very excited because it was like literally exactly the same set of concerns that people had when Survivor came out at the turn of the century. They were talking about on radio and so then I had to do this little like self education and radio. But Candid Microphone, I mean there were a lot of different shows like that, Like there were just shows that were biz shows or shows where people would sort of be asked to embarrass themselves. But Alan Funt, who had actually made one of these shows early on and thought those shows were garbage. Also, he was a sneaky guy who got a portable microphone and had a dream. I mean, that's really where a lot of this came from. I don't I After reading many people's opinions of Ellen Funt, I did not come away with a positive impression of him. But he really is the godfather of the entire thing, because I think you just had to have a person like that who you know, he was working, he was in the army, running sort of army radio programs, and there was this technological change where suddenly you could have a portable microphone and he got it in his hands, and his first thought was, I should trick my friends and tape them without their knowledge, and I should tape over the red button that shows the microphones on, and you know, trick people into doing things. And so that really became the beginning of the whole stream of prank shows.
Did they get pushback? Did they get pushback that they were from the public, that they were mean? Because I remember when I was a little kid, Alan Funt was on and I remember the friends of ours said, he's me I can't stand him. He's making people look stupid. I don't like that he does that. And then I think you pointed out that canon camera it's it's what would They changed the name of it to smile You're on can. They marketed it as a poth smile You're being made in it basically and a jingle. People feel better about the fact that they were being completely the line and made them look forward.
When I was writing this book, I listened to that song so many times and so many different versions that I could not get it out of my head. And honestly, it is an amazing song. It's very it's a very catchy propaganda.
Yeah, like it lucky because at what is it?
It says, uh, to look at yourself? Yeah, right, there's other people do. And you know, it's.
Fun to look at yourself as other people says fun to laugh at yourself as other people do. Look at yourself. Yeah, I know it's in there somewhere.
He basically says, if you were pranked by Alan Funt, you're the luckiest person. And if you push back on it in any way, you have no sense of humor, right, because now you're famous and you should be really complimented. So even besides them making people sign releases for the show. This was sent the message to anybody that it was a really positive thing. But it's interesting that people that you knew said that he was mean, because you know, when I was growing up, I remember thinking that was this sweet show and the sweetest guy you Now people remember it very nostalgically, and sometimes when I say I wrote a book on reality TV, they're like, I missed the nice stuff like Candid Camera. I'm like, you should read the pieces people wrote about Candid Camera and Candid Camera.
Eventually, if I recall, he made one motion picture called what Do You Say to a Naked Lady where it was one gag he kept putting putting naked women in like an elevator, and that was the Candid Camera. He couldn't do it on television, but he released.
Yeah, you always wanted to do more dirty stuff on the show. I mean, he was a pretty perverted guy. Like like he was he was into tricking people, and he definitely was like in all his biographies he writes a lot about Saxon. I think that sort of kink has something to do. I mean, it's like, you know, a voyeuristic kind of scheme, but He really wanted to do more adult stuff than you could do on TV, for better or worse, and he wanted to make a movie that was really intense about sex. He made when that movie, You should rewatch that movie. That is one of the weirdest movies.
This is a weird movie even.
Streaming online. He made another movie that I couldn't find. It's about money. I think he wanted to make a series of movies about all of these taboo adult subjects.
We should mention to do the book. You interviewed John Langley to cops? You did? John Murray? Who did Murray Boonham, who launched Real World? You did? Did you do what the name of Fox? Mike Darnell did you?
Oh?
Yeah, I talked to Mike Darnell. I talked to Mike Flie. I tried to I interviewed more than three hundred people for the book because one of the things the book wanted I wanted, you know, it's not a book of criticism. It's a book of the history of where the genre came from. And it's about the creation of a workplace and a whole bunch of jobs that never existed.
I want to sort of define what we're talking about when we talk about reality shows a little bit, because there's an argument to be made that the Ed Sullivan Show and The Gong Show are almost the same thing, except the Gong Show knew. I wasn't trying to say, hey, we've got some really talented people here, so we're the Ed Sullivan Show. I think would fall onto the heading of variety show.
But no, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's actually I can't remember the name of the show, but there was a big radio talent show that also somewhat humiliated people, and it was kind of a carry on of that. I had to define reality in my book, and what I said was I called it dirty documentary. And basically the way I define it is, I say, it's when you take documentary tools, cinema verite idea of just put on a camera, put on a recording device, and watch people, and then you cut it with an aggressive, pressured kind of format that speeds it up, pushes people to respond, and turns it into a story and something you can make episodic. And so I run it in the book through four lines. And so there's the Prank Show, which Alan fun created. There's the game show which comes from radio in which it basically Chuck Barris picked up all these old radio shows and sects them up. And then there's the reality soap opera, which goes through an American family which I write about in the book The Real World, and through the housewives. And then there's something I call the clip show, which is like America's Funniest home videos and cops which are just these short cuts. But I agree with you, like just a pure talk show or a sport show or just a variety show isn't really a reality show. It has regular people. I mean, I don't define reality TV as like anything with people reacting spontaneous, right.
And so is also things like.
Ancient Aliens where you have these scientists and pseudo researchers, and there is that would you know, I don't know, but.
By the way, you guys are hitting on exactly the parts of the book where I was like, you know, I know the Gong Show isn't a reality show, but I need to include it for these reasons, and the Ancient Aliens and all the Fox shows in the nineties. It was one of the most fun chopters to write. I have a whole, huge section on Alien Autopsy, And I know there are people reading that going that's not a reality show. But the thing is the story of Alien Autopsy and how it helped create Fox and frankly, how it created the whole TV news problem of things being simultaneously real and fake. Yeah, it seemed very important to me. So I would be writing the book and there would be things I was interested in, and then I would try to interview everyone involved with them, and Alien Autopsy was one of them.
But there's a difference to me from an ancient alien show, which is, you know, who knows they're taking they're using kind of kookie evidence and trying to make something compelling and compelling narrative out of it. But I don't think they're doing what I was talking about in our intro. My cousin was on Survivor three times.
Oh that's great, and he would tell.
Me about how they would take things out of context, reshifted around to create characters and storylines that did not exist in the actual event, so that they could create a villain, they could create, you know, a certain impression that they wanted to and they would take something that was said on Tuesday and a reaction from something else on Friday and make it.
The reaction to the thing on Tuesday. So they're manipulations.
Reality to create the storylines and impressions they want. That is different from what the sort of pseudo documentary shows do. So I'm wondering which one when we're talking about these articles, Peter, because the cover, like I would say, game shows are more threatened than reality shows at this point, I don't think there's a game a new game shown.
I know they're lauching them, but they don't. But they don't last, they don't make it.
I see posters all the time for the billboards for these new game shows with you know, big stars hosting them. When I go, I see half a season or one season. I never see them again. So I don't know if the games are holding. It seems to me anecdotally as I as I keep my hotel television on, there's enough of the ancient alien kind of cops and you know, that stuff to last your lifetime.
It's not going anywhere. The stuff that seems to.
Be dying are the Allen Funt type shows, the stunt shows, the kardashianesque shows, the bachelor shows, where that seems to be where the audience that is really jonesing on those may be moving more.
Except that the housewife those housewife shows right are pery. They're not going anywhere, right.
I mean, Bravo is a massive institution. I haven't seen real signs of economic weekness on the part of Bravo. I mean, if you have, you should let me know. That's really interesting about your cousin and survivor do you know what what seasons did he appear on.
His first one bought so many have been in Fiji or Fujia. But it's no secret who he is. His name is Jonathan Penner. They call him Penner on the show. He was on the first season with Poverty and I can't remember you know, some many other stars of that season. But he's done it three times because he's one of he's a fan favorite and he loves doing the show absolutely. But you know, he would often talk about, Yeah, they're not making us do or say anything. They're not telling us to do or say anything or you know, do less than we can on an ability, But they are taking footage from different days. They're creating scenarios and conversations that you know didn't actually take place.
Yeah, there's a continuum from I mean, I guess documentary to abjectable Like that is just part of this discussion. Like there are shows that do very you know, there are shows that more closely resemble documentaries, and there are ones where the whole thing is basically what's called soft scripted, and soft scripted is shows that are more like you're talking to the cast and the crew, and the crew says that you guys should go in the kitchen and have a big fight and then go on to the porch and throw a cup. Like that's just much closer to improv than it is to anything having to do with them having an actual fight. But there's all sorts of stuff in between, And you know, part of what I write about in the book is the development of these roles of the producers and the cast members and how they interact. It's interesting to say that about Survivor because although I know there's you know, there's obviously manipulation and Survivor the first season. I talked to most of the people who are on the first season. They had plenty of complaints about the stuff that happened, but they did not think that they were misrepresented as far as the events of the show, and I wonder whether it changed as it went on. I know they added some stuff to that show later on, and generally the rules for producers changed a lot as things went on, and sometimes those were economic changes, Like it's a lot easier to tell people to go into the kitchen and fight than it is to hang out with them for four months waiting for them to get into a point like doing it the fake way is cheaper. So that's a lot of the issue. And there are all sorts of other kinds of con you know, cons and hoaxes and stuff like that that have to do with it. But the one thing I will say is I talked to a lot of people who were on reality shows, and obviously many people who made them or were behind the camera. And sometimes I'll talk to people about the book and they'll be like, well, everything on those shows is fake anyway, Like I can't believe people are such suckers and they think it's really happening. And that really bugs me. Around the show is because you know, it might be misrepresented, it might be taken a little out of context. Certainly the editing might be the step, but people actually go through things like even on I mean, the book is not about modern shows. It's it runs from nineteen forty seven to two thousand and nine. But I just wrote this big investigative piece about Love is Blind. I don't know if you know the show where the people you know are divided by a wall and then they get married on the show. And I talked to these people who have enormous complaints about the show, But did they fall in love and get married? They actually did. I mean, it's not all scripted and it's not all made up.
Well, because you were you were, you reveal a lot of stuff about that where NDAs, the way they were treated was not not the best experience for a lot of them. And what was the biggest problem for the people on that show?
And Love is Blind? I mean, the great thing about writing the book was everybody's NDAs had expired, so they could tell me various stories about manipulation and cruelty and joy, you know, without having to worry about breaking in NDA. The people on the people on Love is Blind, like the people on all modern shows, have to sign these just brutal non disclosure agreements that mean that it's not just that they can't spoil the show or even talk about abuse. They can't talk about anything without the producers letting them do it. So that was a different kind of piece. That was like an investigative piece about a bunch of legal stuff. And there are a handful of people from that show who are working to change the labor role of people in reality television, and like you're saying, they're like people on game shows. There's a category in Hollywood. It's called that I didn't actually didn't know about while I was writing the book, because the book is not that much about the legal thing for performers. It's more about the attempt to unionize producers. But there's this more recent thing, and so I learned that it's called a bonafide amateur is the category. So bonafide amateur is somebody who doesn't qualify as a scripted performer like in SAG, but also doesn't qualify as like a professional nonscripted for like a news host or a talk show host or all of those kinds of things. So it's a little carve out for people who have new rights whatsoever, can get paid nothing and you can do anything you want to them, and they can't talk about it. So in my personal opinion, that should probably change. Yeah, that seems wrong, And I think the reason it hasn't changed is because people have contempt for reality television. They have contempt for people who go on reality television, they have contempt for people who make it. And I understand where some of that comes from, but I think it blinds people to the actual ethical problem and the fact that there are real victims of this.
Do you know, from talking to producers of all kinds of shows, I've always kind of wondered if there's a different job or a different satisfaction or difficulty in the job of producing a reality show that is intended to be, for lack of a better word, inspirational, versus producing one that is intended at its best to be kind of prurient. So the difference between perhaps a Queer Eye and.
You know, Big Brother kind of.
Yeah, No, there definitely isn't. It's one of the difficulties of talking about this at all, Right, Like, not all scripted shows are the same, and not all reality shows are the same. They have different intents, they have different methods. I asked every producer and cameraman and editor. I mean, I talked to a lot of different people on these shows what line they wouldn't cross? I asked them all, like what kind of show do you love to make? And what kind of show do you won't you make? Like is there anything that crosses your line? And a lot of people love making things that are warm and inspirational, but I thought that the line they wouldn't cross would be more like torture shows or prank shows. And so many people said a lot of people love making things that are warm and inspirational, but I thought that the line they wouldn't cross would be more like torture shows or prank shows. And so many people said dating shows like. There are one guy who was like, I love doing shark shows where people cry and are frightened and it's really authentic emotion, Like that's part of why people get involved, is they like that. He's like, dating shows crossed a line for him because he felt like it messed with you know, it's like young drunk girls who genuinely want to fall in love and are easy to manipulate, and it felt cruel. And this guy I was talking to, by the way, and it's not like a major feminist or anything, but he felt like the shows were misogynists and it just crossed a line for him. But I always think that that question is interesting because I mean, first of all, many people in many different careers have ethical questions about their jobs or things they won't cross. But reality, when you're working on one of these sets, it's kind of an intense, humid bubble of it's just a different set of what's acceptable. So I think the dirtiest chapter in the book in a lot of ways is about The Bachelor, because that's a show that has very different ethics than something like Queer Eye, you know, or there are a lot of or Survivor for that matter, there's the job is to people's heads and get them to fall in love and then have a nervous breakdown and be heartbroken in public.
Well, you know what, it's weird because I wanted to check out the Golden Bachelor or Bachelor, which everyone went. The fact that you have thirty people that I'm going to try and make you fall in love with is already mind blowing to me. It's just such a funny.
Because it's not mind blowing to like, there's so many young women who I talk to who it's like their favorite show and it's just par for the course. When the show started, people found that shocking. I mean, but when Survivor started, people thought that show was going to destroy the world because they were eating bugs. So it's like every kind of line they push over.
But Survivor, I'm just trying to survive here. I've got three people that I don't know. Really, No, you're not enough of a Survivor watcher.
Survivor is built on false alliances, betrayal.
Yes, the stories there, that's going. But here I'm trying to manipulate a show so that this woman or man picks one of these thirty people to commit to, to give their allegedly their heart to, and then I'll see you later, have a nice wedding, and we'll hopefully we'll see you later. You'll be Ryan Sutter, the guy from the first season.
Whatever it will, but Ryan Sutter and married. Yes, Hey, Jason, would you go on Survivor.
I don't think i'd be good at it, would I got I've thought about it.
I actually have thought about it.
You know, at my age, I don't know that i'd be very good either in the camp or at the challenges. But I I don't think i'd be good at no knowing someone was manipulating me. I am very gullible, so when someone seems to be, you know, speaking earnestly to me, I tend to go, oh okay, So we have that connection now, and that must be a real thing. I'm I think I'm I'm too gullible, and I would have to play a role of some kind, some sort of avatar in order to do the kind of social manipulation that you need to do in order to maneuver through that game.
I don't think i'd be very good at it, but.
I'm like you, I'm first of all credulous and I trust people, and I have no poker face.
It would be particularly I think, But I have advocated that my older son would be great on it.
He loves he loves it.
He's he knows the game the show backwards, and other than he's not good when he's not fed.
Yes, that is a particular downside. The first season the show, which I wrote about it, people were actively starving, and I think I heard it on later seasons they realized that having people be so starving that they literally are falling apart and all the time, it's not good telling you.
They are normally such a like with the survivor's stuff. What are the worst? There have been tragedy, really bad tragedies that have gone on have been covered up.
Well, my cousin almost lost his leg, but that must be not a one off.
That's got to be when you're out there, you hurt yourself.
Yeah, you know, this is a very There have definitely been incident. I don't know that they were covered up. That's a very professional show. And they I mean, unless I unless I've been completely conned my senses that when stuff happens, they have medical help around them.
But there's so many somebody fill in a.
Fire during the second season the third season, and Mark Burnett's big comment about it was he said, if that guy had stopped filming, I would have fired him. So it was a whole episode about the guy falling in the fire. People had various feelings about that.
But even Mike the backlor had had issues and all kinds of stuff that they came to light. The way they created people, and like we're talking about the nda is, I don't know how many people should have gotten therapy if they've participated in the particular I.
Mean, these are all slightly different things. There's physical dangers, there's shadiness just not putting everything up front, and then there's mental illness and you know, that kind of harm. And I definitely think that they cast people on shows deliberately, especially on some of the more drama prone, you know, like on Big Brother. I talked to a woman who was on the first season of the show who's pretty sure. You know, they have them go through therapy and get tested, and there's a certain kind of crazy that they're looking for to cast, because it's somebody who is going to lose it and make for powerful television, but who's not enough aware of their own problems that they can protect themselves from it. I mean, it's kind of baked into the casting for the show. And you know, this is there's all sorts of separate subjects about this, but one of them is that there actually are what's it called. There are therapists who work on the show, and their job is to work for the producers, but the cast members are often experiencing therapy for the first time. And I just don't understand how any of this can be legal. If you're curious about any of this, there's a show called unreal. That's a scripted show by Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, who was a producer and very repentant producer from The Bachelor, and it's the one scripted show that's really like a behind the scenes show about the making of a show like The Bachelor. And one of the major characters in it is this therapist who just learns everything about the girls and then goes to the producers and says, this is a good time for you to push her about her annirex and that stuff is not exaggerated like that is genuinely what goes on, especially on the shade ear of the shows. And I do think and you know, and then there's also like drinking. Some of this has changed over time. I mean there's been clamps downs because you know, there's a larger discussion in Hollywood about abuse all that kind of stuff that I think has shifted. There are discussions about diversity on the shows that have changed. A group of the black survivors all organized and cut an agreement with CBS. So there's been like a lot of discussions about like the ethics and the makeup of the show. But the basic task of the producers is to squeeze people until they crack.
I want to I want to ask you about one very specific show, and it's a fairly recent one, just to see if you even think it falls in the category of reality.
Were you able to watch Jury Duty?
Yes? I did watch Jury Duty, which is I don't know if you read the section in the book that's about the Joe Schmo Show. Now, do you guys know what the Joe Shmo Show is?
Why do Why don't you?
Jury Duty? Jury Duty is basically a remake of exactly the same thing that went out with the Joe Shmo Show. And I talked to most people who were involved with the Joe Shmo Show. So the Joe Schmoe Show came out in I think it was like two thousand and three or something like that. It was after the big turn of the century reality boom, and it was the first show that was like a reality show that was a parody of reality show. So it was kind of an inside response. It was made by a guy who worked at Big Brother, and the idea of the show was they were like, what if we make a show that's a reality show and kind of a prank show, but the goal is to show somebody being kind and generous rather than somebody being a venal, sadistic monster, like he was winning a lot of the shows, the competitive shows. So what they did is they created a fake reality show that was called Lap of Luxury that was set in a big house and everybody in that house was an actor except for one guy, and that one guy was the Shmo, the Joe Schmo, And it was sort of a parody of all these different shows. So all the characters that the actors played were parodies of other reality characters, Like there was a guy who was like Puck on the Real World, and there were you know, this was on Spike, which was a TV channel for guys, so it had a lot of like girls in bikinis and stuff like that, and there was a character based on Rudy from Survivor. So this one guy, they cast this very sweet guy on the show and he goes in and he thinks he's on a reality show, but he doesn't realize it's a prank show where he's the only non he's the only pranked person. And the making of the show was really fascinating and it drove everybody almost into a nervous breakdown. Who was making it, because the problem with casting an empathetic person at the center of a show like this is he starts to develop loyalty and feelings toward these fake characters around him, and so he started feeling protective of the older guy. And if there was like a gay character that was like a stereotypical character, and people would make fun of him, and he would defend that guy, and he started getting a crush on Kristin Wig, who was in the show. Kristin Weig was playing the psychiatrist in the show. So anyway, the whole thing almost broke down. And when I talk to people about the show, they felt a lot of morally complex things about it, including one of the major guys in the show who's like, yeah, I regret having done it. It was really painful.
So then they.
Make this new show. It's just basically the same thing, right, like Jury Duty. The only difference is they were a little careful on Jury Duty, like it's about Jury Duty. It's it's like a documentary about so it's not like so intimate like living in a house, of competing for money and stuff, and they I think they kind of went out of their way not to have them fall in love with people. Yeah, yeah, I guess you could fall in love with that actor.
Yeah right. They didn't make it responsible for the woman who kept falling. It was a wonderful It was brilliant.
It was a brilliant show. It was a brilliantly made show. It was a very funny show. But you know, I wrote a book about these shows, and I like some of these shows, but there's a problem of like writing about the sausage factory thing, and I have a real distised for you know, I just don't like prank shows. And so when I watched that show, I was like, oh my god, nobody even remembers that they made the Joe Schmoe Show. Now they're making another show. Everybody's acting like it's this big breakthrough, and sure enough, they're reviving the Joe schmo Show. Oh I don't think anybody cares about my fingers.
Well that's the answer to is reality show dying? Now?
No, they're they're redoing.
Well.
You know, the argument that we that our research was showing us is that the argument that it's dying is because the industry, the producers in the industry are being existentially challenged because they're being given less time, less resources, less money to make these things, and so how can you possibly do something that is creative and inventive or has quality or that you can build in a sustained way. So it feels like they're asking reality shows to deliver on impossible budgets. And of course once the producer does, the network's go, well, see, obviously it can be done, and so they continue to do it.
You know, the thing that sells a reality show or I'm sure a show fucking violent kind of new spectacle, bad press, you know, like like Mike, Mike Darnell is you know, absolutely shameless and straight up about this. He's like, we didn't want to make a show that people thought was a good show. We wanted to make a show that every you know, outrage liberal and feminist, and a lot of people on the right also would all be like this is garbage and it's destroying the world. Because then you get a lot of press that says you.
Can't be describing, you can't be describing when animals attack.
Three Well, I remember, and I remember Mike Darnell at one point was the pushback was he wanted to take a real jet airliner and do a live crash into the desert with dummies in it, cameras everywhere, so everybody could see what it would like to be in a plane crash. That was the reality show that he tried to get and it was pushback. But like you said, the amount of publicity for that, for the plane crash thing was insane. It was mind blowing.
Yeah, he wanted to do all these things, like he loves television. Yeah, do you guys know him?
I know Mike, I know him.
But what did you what did you pitch to him? That's so I'm always so interesting because you know, this stuff is regular. People don't know about the negotiations. I'm interested in shows that didn't get made, Like I had to leave out so many shows from this book that were just ideas.
A lot of what I pitched, and Mike was in on those pitches because I had a deal at Fox when he was at Fox, and I my company was interested in doing a improvisation hybrid and so you know it fell under reality or fell under Yeah. But I got to know Mike pretty well and we had a lot of conversations about when animals attack and magicians reveal their tricks.
I was about to say.
I was like, I think maybe I'm misremembering. I thought you came up in a conversation about magicians because the Magicians. I was so mad about his Magicians show.
He and I had a conversation about revealing magic and yes, and I once punked him. I went in to pitch something else, and I punked him by going, you know, my company had found out that there is there's a loophole in the FCC that you actually can show a live execution if you do it under certain and he and his ears perked up. But I'm kidding, Mike, I'm kidding you sick.
I love that story. I love that story because I'm telling you, live executions came up over and over again when I was making this book. This was the thing Chuck Barris would raise all the time, Like he would sort of troll interviewers and be like, you know, it's not true that I would show a live execution because I haven't gotten the you know video, like people always talk about that as being the end result. But so did he He seemed interested.
Huh, Well, listen, you know, Mike has I don't want to I don't want to say that.
He would have ever, you know, done something like that.
But I think what he was interested in was I was saying that I found a loophole in the you know, in the guidebook. And he was certainly interested in pushing the envelope because he has had enormous success at doing the thing that everybody says you can't show that it's too ugly or it's or it's too unethical, and you know, it's a conversation, is revealing a magic trick? Truly unethical. Yeah, there's an argument to be had when when an animal attacks somebody, if you are saying, well, these were the conditions this animal attacked in, it was provoked, this is what happened, or this is how you extricate yourself from that kind of situation, you can make a case for it is informational. But we all know that no one can turn away from a train wreck. We can't do it. So you know, you just don't know.
All of all of those shows were based on exactly exactly that premise you can't turn away, and it was all using that was using like already done footage just together.
And you can't turn away.
And that's incredible from the guy who says he's catching bullets in his teeth.
You can't turn away. So and I actually.
Didn't realize how many people got seriously injured on That's incredible. Oh yeah, until I started research. I was like, oh my gosh, like a guy joined tunnel, like they had that that don't try that on television thing.
Because of that was when our friend of him, he talked to WALLYE.
Frasier and he said, what happened was he found a guy who could swallow coins and then regurgitate him in the order that you called for, Like you say, okay, do the Nickel dime quarter quartered on Nickel And so he's taping it and the woman from Legal, the network Legal goes, there's no frigging way you're run running a guy swallowing coins and regurgitate him. So what he said, I came up with the famous and because of that, she said that a lot of the floodgate stuff and do not try this at home was all they needed for a legal disclaimer.
Exactly.
Wow. Right, Well, we look forward to the next book. But this book is called.
You the Sun, and it's and it's it's really fun. It's really fun.
It's from the the beginning the beginning of radio stunts, which is fascinating to me. I'll find on radio through through the Apprentice, and then now we're going to do your next book. I guess starts with influencers and am we'll see where it goes, right.
I'm going to find something very.
Sweet as Thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you it was great meeting you guys. Thanks for inviting me.
So what did so?
I can't tell if she thinks reality shows are dying or not. I don't think she does think that.
Who knows what's going to be the next thing that takes off? Would you have thought eating hot wings and talking about answering questions would have been a show that you also would have said, No, one's going to go for this. You're not going to get Scarlette Johansen to come on and so for millions and millions of dollars because they're going to do it live on Amazon. Now, who would have known that that's what people want to want? So, yeah, it's interesting. I will say this about if the streamers are going to go down. I do have a big movie coming out on Netflix in March, so can can we hold on to Netflix?
Oh?
Huge? But those big movies on those streamers are always going to make money. Is how the streamers make money. It's the Electric.
States, Darring Lille, Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt and us. Will they come on, by the way, the Russo Brothers onto this show?
Yeah? No, would you? And that's what I like if you were John Sally is that player attitude of I'm going to go out and conquer no matter what I go to you? Will they come? Why would they have?
I have a bigger question, will they come on this show? I'll get rid of that question to go. Will they use me in another film that's about Kerry?
All right?
Well they used you not when it's pretty cool and they were great, mister Grogan, I'm welcome.
Do you have anything for us from our conversation? And then I'll play a little game with you in that theater. I have so much.
I enjoyed the trailer the other day.
They just released the trailer trailer for the movie. Yeah, Electrics, were you in it?
Because do we even know?
I'm barely in the movie.
I am in the first If you want to go page count, I'm in the first fourteen pages of one hundred and twenty eight.
More importantly, did you get a trail? I got a trill?
Okay, nice? And I learned how to do mocap.
I learned motion cap.
Yes, yeah, yes, there you go now here.
I had actually some interesting reality TV trivia for you.
We could do briefly.
What was the most popular episode of reality TV ever?
Oh, I'll give you, I'll give you a hint.
There was fifty one point seven million viewers.
Oh, for God Sex when when Heraldo opened out capone's safe?
Is that possible?
God? It's got the finale of something where everybody watched to see how it would end. Yes? What was the big show where everybody would have won?
It was the big cultural phenomenon reality show?
Was anybody winning a big amount of money? Yes? And he would later go to jail for it? Oh?
Was it the Richard Haber right, Sir? Survivor Season one?
Richard High? There you go? Good? Thank you?
Beg you fifty one point seven million, and they have not repeated that. Can you guess what was the most popular reality show in twenty twenty four with twenty point nine million viewers.
I'm guessing it's The Bachelorette or the Bachelor, And I'm guessing it's just America's got talent.
I know, how Howe Mendels does.
I don't know that.
No, they yeah, very good guesses. It was apparently Love is Blind Blind.
Which is the show that she said, Oh here, yeah, okay, wow.
Yeah.
And just to give us a little bit of comparison, what was the highest rated TV event in history history?
Yes, it had one.
Hundred and twenty five to one hundred and fifty million viewers.
What was it? It's one hundred and fifty million views? Huh, yeah, I know Nixon resignation was huge. I know there's a couple of us the finale. Could it be it was the news? It was the news events.
I would imagine it was that. Well. I was going to say the landing on the Moon for the first.
Time, Kennedy Kennedy funeral.
Jason is correct, the landing lading Mars, which landing on Wow.
Yeah, it's the biggest.
Yeah, I would neither actually happened. So you know my grandmother's great story, it neither happened.
Yeah.
My cousin Jeffrey was watching it with a little portable television past his bedtime. My grandmother Hill that caught him and said Jeffrey turned it off to grandmother about to walk on the moon, and my grandmother went the walk on the Moon tomorrow.
There you go, it's the true story, all right. You want to play a little game.
And by the way, we haven't been back, so it's just that's right, right.
Uh So these uh, this is a game similar to ones we played before.
Uh.
Some of these are actual reality shows. Some of them are complete love Are you ready? Real or fake? I Want to Marry Harry Female contestants vie in contests to ostensibly marry Prince Harry.
Exactly. That's real.
That's a real, real David. No, that's a real show. I want to Marry Harry and it was huge.
By the way, who won? Nobody? Uh?
The Tank a Japanese show in which contestants play they are sealed in a century deprivation tank to see who is the last.
Oh, I think that's real too. I think I read about the guy one. I think, go ahead, how do you film that?
No, it's I made that up.
That's completely But there was a guy. There was a sensory deprivation guy lived in it like an apartment or something that's not sensary.
Does profession that's isolation. Okay, this show fine, would you shoot?
Fantasy courses and scenarios challenge contestants to navigate unusual visual setups and live confrontations and only shoot the bad guys. So it's like, you know, walking through a maze and there are scenarios in this pop up.
I'll I'll see you.
Good idea, but.
No, it's I made it up totally because we're gonna be doing it.
Hu Best Funeral Ever, in which loved ones hand over the remains of the deceased and allow elaborate, funfilled funerals to be created for them, like rolling a bowler's casket down the lane from.
One last trive reel. I would do that. I probly would be in that drone a minute.
Yes, absolutely true. Bestneral sixty Days.
The contestant is given a false name and background, then thrown into a general prison population. If they make it through sixty days without revealing themselves or tapping out, they win.
I don't think that's opening because you can't go off the other to.
Play off insurance. Insurance wouldn't cover it.
No, I made it up. Totally.
Sexy Beasts, in which people vie for affection and dates while wearing elaborate, fully prosthetic face covering makeup.
Sure, true, that's a real show.
My Strange Addiction showcases people who eat drywall to compulsive anal bleaching, all kinds of strange addictions.
Sure that's piker anal bleaching. Yes, it's a real show.
Alter ego celebrity judges assess singers who sing live, but the judges only see a CGI generated avatar of them.
No, No, that's a real show. Okay, that's a real show. That's set your ripoff of mass singer. Come on. Born in the Wild, a.
Documentary series about people opting to birth their babies in the thick of the woods without medicine or technology of any kind.
That's not happened.
No, that's a real show.
Okay.
Good and last, but not least, what is that Contestants via to correctly identify commonplace items that are shown in extreme close.
Up real This is the sequel to Your Your Your human uh splotches.
Yeah, I made it up.
That sounds like a great show.
We should make it and we're out, thank you.
Those are reality shows. That's what people are watching and not watching. And you're wondering if they're gonna die. Not when I can come up with six beauties like that.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm sure.
You'll be tuning in for would you shoot?
Your phone is going to be ringing off the hook tonight, my friend?
Where's Mike Darnell? What do you shoot? When you need them?
When you need them?
They need to replace Yellowstone? Right, I mean, why not?
There you go called Bloodstone. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, great pleasure. It's always fun.
Thank you everybody, and thank you Emilina spum and uh safe right, why we.
Listen to our damn show?
Can you ever go un chew too?
Well?
Yeah, yes, before you swallow?
Now that's another episode of Really No Really.
It comes to a close.
I know you're wondering what are considered some of the best reality shows ever. Well, we'll see who those survivors are in a moment, but first let's thank our guest, Emily Nustbomb. You can follow Emily on her Instagram where she is at Emily Nusbaum, or you can visit her website Emilynusbomb dot com. Our little show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and threads at Really No Really podcasts and of course, you can share your thoughts and feedback with us online at reallynoreally dot com. If you have a really some amazing factor story that boggles your mind, share it with us, and if we use it, we will send you a little gift. Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought that counts. Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and take that bell so you're updated when we release new videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday. So listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now the answer to the question, what are considered some of the best reality shows ever? Well, Variety magazine, the entertainment industries insider news source has determined a list of twenty. Some of the right spots of the list include at number twenty, America's Next Top Model, Tyra Banks, and other judges picked from a bevy of hopeful wannabe models. Number fourteen is Shark Tank, and I think the idea for Shark Tank was sold on Shark Tank. Number nine The Real Housewives, where all that is real is that they are in fact housewives. Number eight The Amazing Race and yes, it is number five American Idol, and no, most often they're not. Number four Top Chep, number three RuPaul's Drag Race where no one eats but they do win Emmys, and number one The Big Guy Survivor forty seven seasons strong, and folks are still fighting, bitching, moaning, lying, scheming, and starving for a shot.
To win a million bucks.
And you're probably watching at least one of these since Talker Research estimates Americans watch an average of ten hours of reality TV per week.
If only we could switch that to podcasts.
Oh well, really, it really is production of iHeartRadio and Blase entertain
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