6. "Ad execs are the new producers."Product placement is the big thing in TV advertising, and reality shows are the main vehicle. Leading the way is 'American Idol', whose sponsors spend millions to sew their products into the show -- which is why, for instance, the Coca-Cola brand on the cups at the judges' table faces the camera. "Reality TV is rife with it," says Mark Andrejevic, author of 'Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched.' It's "selling you something without trying, and it works." Advertisers spent $1.5 billion on product placement in 2006, according to PQ Media, a 58% increase from 2005. And double-digit growth is projected over the next five years.
Some advertisers even want to design whole shows around their products. Last fall, for example, MTV premiered 'The Gamekillers,' whose concept was developed by Bartle Bogle Hagarty, the agency that pushes Axe deodorant for Unilever PLC. The basis of the show was to see if male contestants could "keep their cool" under pressure -- while wearing Axe. Don't be surprised if you start seeing more of these ad-minded concepts, says Andrejevic. "This may be the direction marketing starts going."
7. "Go ahead and sue us -- you'll have a hard time winning."
Reality-based shows are famous for subjecting participants to intriguingly dangerous situations. But creators hardly ever have to pay up in the event that someone gets injured or even killed. It's not that people haven't tried to sue -- they have -- it's just that they virtually never win, according to Eric Robinson, staff attorney for the Media Law Resource Center. Robinson has tracked 14 such cases. Half were dismissed outright, and only one resulted in an arbitration award for the plaintiff.
Just ask Jill Mouser, who in 2003 filed suit in Los Angeles for battery and gross negligence after being held in a harness for 40 minutes for CBS's reality show 'Culture Shock.' She claimed that producers failed to warn her just how physically taxing the show would be. The release form she signed said differently; she lost. According to Larry Waks, release forms have gotten increasingly broad to ensure that networks and producers are indemnified from any claims of liability. So if you're intent on participating in a reality show, the most you can do is be aware of the risks and read all the waivers very carefully. Because, says Waks, "they've all stood up. The releases I see have all been found to prevent suits."
8. "Reality TV? You mean celebrity TV."
The landscape for reality TV has changed rapidly over the past few years. Competition shows and unscripted dramas once dominated the landscape, but it wasn't long before celebrities began infiltrating the reality format. "When reality TV started, its whole appeal was that 'these are not stars -- it's unscripted!'" says Robert Thompson. "Then all of a sudden, we have 'The Osbournes' and 'Surreal Life.'" And it wasn't long before network stalwarts like CBS and NBC began catching on to the trend, with celebrity versions of shows like 'The Apprentice' and 'The Mole.'
Elayne Rapping, professor of American studies at SUNY Buffalo, says that the influx of celebrities into the genre makes sense, because "it became something they could do to keep their careers going." As for viewers, "we want to see [celebrities] being real," Rapping says. "This is a country that's addicted to celebrity." Case in point: ABC's 'Dancing With the Stars' drew an impressive 22 million viewers for its first season's finale, in 2005, and it was the No. 1 show in all of television during the fall 2007 season.
9. "We steal a lot of our best ideas from Europe."
If you happen to sally forth across the Pond and catch a show on British TV that's exactly like 'Dancing With the Stars,' it means you're watching 'Strictly Come Dancing,' the popular U.K. progenitor of the U.S. hit. In fact, of the nine reality shows listed in the top 50 of Nielsen's ranking report for the 2006-07 season, only three were developed by domestic production companies -- and they were among the lowest rated. The reason? Foreign studios have been mining the reality-TV vein for a lot longer than American studios, and they soon started packaging and reselling concepts at a frenzied pace.
Netherlands-based Endemol, the force behind such reality hits as 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,' 'Deal or No Deal' and 'Big Brother,' farms out formats to other countries, stripping away cultural nuances and tweaking shows so they better suit their new home. The company even throws in a coach with the deal to consult with local producers on how to successfully adapt the show's basic elements. The goal, says David Goldberg, chairman of Endemol in the U.S., is to "exploit our content across as many markets as we can." Indeed, 'Big Brother' has variations in almost 40 countries. "It's as if there's nothing original about reality TV," author Andrejevic says.
10. "Get used to it -- we're not going away anytime soon."Since the 1990s, network television has been strained by the expense of original programming. According to NYU's Magder, producing an hour of original dramatic television averages a cool $3 million and can run much higher (ratings darling 'ER,' for example, cost $13 million an episode in its heyday). Compare that with the cost of producing reality shows, which generally run less than $1 million per hour, and you'll understand why networks won't be abandoning the format anytime soon. "They can't do without them now," says Magder. "The writing overhead is much less. They're easy to produce. It's a good economic model."
Another boon: As the writers strike aptly demonstrated, reality shows help hedge against union and labor demands related to producing scripted shows. Does that mean reality programming is destined to take over prime time completely? Not necessarily, says Magder. There may be a short-term increase at present, but don't expect the networks to abandon scripted dramas altogether. "The new model of scripted and unscripted shows is too good," he says. For networks to survive, "there must be a mix."
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