For decades, it may have seemed to despairing discerning small-screen viewers that the tap that produced “unscripted” reality TV programmes was permanently opened to full and endless capacity.
Every second show, whether on network or cable TV or streaming platforms, seemed to be yet another series about the rich wives of music producers, basketball players and billionaires; the bad choices made by visitors to expensive tattoo parlours in Los Angeles; the inability of contestants on cooking programmes to master the art of the soufflé in the face of the pressures of the clock and the sophisticated palettes of snotty chefs; or the temptations faced by 12-pack-ab sporting 20-somethings on an island full of equally impossibly sculpted 20-somethings of the opposite sex.
That was before the Covid-19 pandemic and the strike in Hollywood by writers and actors placed the future of the entire entertainment industry in jeopardy. Now, as the dust settles and the new reality of tough times and the measures needed to counteract them begin to hit home, even the once seemingly invincible and always bankable genre of reality TV is beginning to lose its shine. Though those who abhor it may feel like celebrating, the challenges facing the production of unscripted content are felt most by the thousands of people who rely on it for their livelihood and producers are trying to come up with solutions to survive.
When the last writer’s strike hit Hollywood in 2007-08, the biggest benefactor of the chaos was the reality TV industry which — with its far lower production budgets and fewer writers — enjoyed a boom period that saw it flood our screens to oversaturation. Initially, industry observers and insiders believed that the 2023 strikes would have the same effect and that reality would be the one genre that might benefit from the tumult of a long, double-hitting summer of protests.
Instead, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, reality TV has been as hard hit, if not more so, as its sister genre of scripted drama. Not only are newcomers to Hollywood who are looking to make it in the reality TV space unable to find jobs, veterans who have been living comfortably off the proceeds of decades of inflicting reality shows on all of us suddenly find their careers in jeopardy.
It seems that even the bubble of reality TV can’t escape the realities of the broader industry this time. Unscripted shows are feeling the pinch as networks tighten budgets and slash slates in an effort to plug losses. As one veteran told The Hollywood Reporter: “It’s the same problem as scripted [drama] and it’s really depressing.”
The buying market for unscripted shows is shrinking, budgets for new shows are seeing huge reductions and those who believed that endless supply would meet infinite demand are learning a tough Economics 101 lesson.
The only shows that seem able to weather the storm are long-running franchises that have proved their staying power by managing to remain popular in the face of decades of obstacles. Unfortunately, that means that reality-averse viewers are still likely to see plenty of Real Housewives, Deal or No Deal, Below Deck and MasterChef on their TV home page screens for a while yet.
Unscripted sports content, which Netflix has recently invested heavily in, is also an all-weather favourite, so shows like Formula 1: Drive to Succeed and nostalgic documentaries about the glory days of internationally beloved sports franchises don’t seem to be in any danger. The game show, a solid TV staple almost since the invention of the medium, has also shown itself to be a solid OG of the unscripted universe — easy to watch, participate in and endlessly repeatable.
As with all the challenges the film and TV industry has faced, this one has led to rethinks of strategy and development of new ideas, which may just save reality TV for a little longer. MTV — which long ago left its original music-based format behind in favour of wall-to-wall reality programming — is seeing some of its top content creators experimenting with the idea of trying out new formats and ideas in international markets first before bringing those that are successful to US screens.
Other companies have tried to take the unscripted format into new territory, creating reality TV-style podcasts that, if successful in the audio space, can then be repackaged for television.
All of which means that for new entries into the reality market, the litmus test has now become not so much what successes a new show might mimic but rather what a new show has going for it that makes it unlike any other of the thousands already on air.
The genre that was once touted as having indelibly shaped the social media world we now live in finds itself bent out of shape by the real world. What happens next may for the first time in the genre’s history actually be unscripted and unpredictable.
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