Reality TV is Dead! …or is it?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
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

(00:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
For any of it.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
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

(01:15):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
So I've come to believe because I know our topic
today is about reality.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Tvager I may.

Speaker 4 (01:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
I hate being without my wife.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
I'm never watching a scripted show.

Speaker 5 (01:59):
So what do you want the reality show you're into?

Speaker 3 (02:01):
It could be anything. It could be. Uh, sometimes it's
it's a game.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
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.

Speaker 5 (02:12):
Well, I would have never paid you for a Kardashian.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Well, I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated, but.

Speaker 5 (02:19):
It's all fake.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
It's off stage it's all I understand that I'm fascinated.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
I don't mean to be derogatory.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
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?

Speaker 3 (02:37):
I'd go I couldn't tell you.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
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

(03:01):
I would normally have watched.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
But they are a phenomena.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
Some people are watching them, and so sometimes I put
it on to go what.

Speaker 5 (03:08):
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.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
Just tell you my cousin Jonathan has been on it
three times. He's been a contestant three.

Speaker 5 (03:31):
Is he a star because of that? The people recognize him.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, he's got big notebariety and you know, and he he.

Speaker 4 (03:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
It was like, and he would.

Speaker 4 (03:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Going, oh, he's a jerk off.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Man, fan square and you know he's like you sure,
you know?

Speaker 4 (04:21):
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.

Speaker 5 (04:37):
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.

(04:58):
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

(05:19):
you because you used a superlative.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
No one has you.

Speaker 5 (05:22):
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

(05:43):
to tell us if TV is.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
She also be able to tell us when none of
our shows were able to stay on there?

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Do you think she can do that?

Speaker 5 (05:50):
Almost every episode you tend to bring up our failures,
and I don't look at them as failures.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
I didn't say failures. I said they didn't stay on there.

Speaker 5 (05:58):
I looked at them as almost success to Jason.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
Success, She might have the answer, not half half empty,
handful still pretty empty?

Speaker 5 (06:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
I'm proud of this. I'm good for you.

Speaker 5 (06:20):
Wow. Wow that hurt Okay, hmm you sip with that
for men?

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (06:30):
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.

(06:55):
Let's say hi to Emilina's bum Hi, Emilina's bum.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Hi, emilyas we should do it.

Speaker 5 (07:01):
You know what. I was going to sing it too,
because if you say.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
It, it's off. It's almost like Frank, wello to our show.

Speaker 6 (07:07):
Nice to meet Youaz, thanks for having me.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
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

(07:30):
be a good place to start to say to ask
is reality to TV dead?

Speaker 6 (07:35):
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

(07:57):
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

(08:20):
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.

Speaker 5 (08:41):
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

(09:02):
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.

Speaker 6 (09:22):
Yeah, it's the ultimate dream where everyone is just their
own reality producer.

Speaker 5 (09:26):
Right.

Speaker 6 (09:26):
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

(09:48):
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

(10:10):
that much about, and it was only once I started
doing the research that I started.

Speaker 5 (10:13):
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.

Speaker 6 (10:26):
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

(10:48):
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

(11:10):
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

(11:34):
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

(11:55):
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,

(12:15):
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

(12:36):
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.

Speaker 5 (12:55):
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

(13:15):
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.

Speaker 6 (13:28):
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.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Yeah, like it lucky because at what is it?

Speaker 6 (13:47):
It says, uh, to look at yourself? Yeah, right, there's
other people do. And you know, it's.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
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.

Speaker 6 (14:03):
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

(14:24):
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.

Speaker 4 (14:44):
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.

Speaker 6 (14:59):
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

(15:20):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
This is a weird movie even.

Speaker 6 (15:36):
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.

Speaker 5 (15:45):
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?

Speaker 3 (15:56):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (15:56):
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.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
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

(16:39):
of variety show.

Speaker 6 (16:41):
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

(17:04):
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,

(17:26):
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

(17:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
And so is also things like.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
Ancient Aliens where you have these scientists and pseudo researchers,
and there is that would you know, I don't know, but.

Speaker 6 (18:24):
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

(18:45):
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

(19:07):
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.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Oh that's great, and he would tell.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
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

(19:55):
on Friday and make it.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
The reaction to the thing on Tuesday. So they're manipulations.

Speaker 4 (20:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
I know they're lauching them, but they don't. But they
don't last, they don't make it.

Speaker 4 (20:24):
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,

(20:45):
that stuff to last your lifetime.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
It's not going anywhere. The stuff that seems to.

Speaker 4 (20:49):
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.

Speaker 5 (21:04):
Except that the housewife those housewife shows right are pery.
They're not going anywhere, right.

Speaker 6 (21:09):
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.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
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.

(21:44):
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.

Speaker 6 (22:03):
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

(22:25):
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

(22:47):
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

(23:07):
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

(23:27):
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

(23:49):
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

(24:10):
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.

Speaker 5 (24:29):
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?

Speaker 6 (24:42):
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

(25:04):
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

(25:24):
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

(25:45):
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

(26:08):
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

(26:28):
that comes from, but I think it blinds people to
the actual ethical problem and the fact that there are
real victims of this.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
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.

(26:58):
So the difference between perhaps a Queer Eye and.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
You know, Big Brother kind of.

Speaker 6 (27:05):
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?

(27:26):
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

(27:58):
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,

(28:20):
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

(28:41):
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

(29:02):
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

(29:25):
and be heartbroken in public.

Speaker 5 (29:26):
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.

Speaker 6 (29:40):
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.

Speaker 5 (29:56):
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.

Speaker 4 (30:05):
Survivor is built on false alliances, betrayal.

Speaker 5 (30:11):
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

(30:33):
the first season.

Speaker 6 (30:33):
Whatever it will, but Ryan Sutter and married. Yes, Hey, Jason,
would you go on Survivor.

Speaker 4 (30:44):
I don't think i'd be good at it, would I
got I've thought about it.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
I actually have thought about it.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
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,

(31:10):
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

(31:31):
that game.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
I don't think i'd be very good at it, but.

Speaker 6 (31:36):
I'm like you, I'm first of all credulous and I
trust people, and I have no poker face.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
It would be particularly I think, But I have advocated
that my older son would be great on it.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
He loves he loves it.

Speaker 4 (31:47):
He's he knows the game the show backwards, and other
than he's not good when he's not fed.

Speaker 6 (31:55):
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.

Speaker 5 (32:12):
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.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
Well, my cousin almost lost his leg, but that must
be not a one off.

Speaker 5 (32:25):
That's got to be when you're out there, you hurt yourself.

Speaker 6 (32:28):
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.

Speaker 5 (32:45):
But there's so many somebody fill in a.

Speaker 6 (32:47):
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.

Speaker 5 (33:01):
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.

Speaker 6 (33:15):
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

(33:38):
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

(33:58):
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

(34:18):
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

(34:39):
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

(35:01):
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

(35:22):
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.

Speaker 4 (35:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
Were you able to watch Jury Duty?

Speaker 6 (35:42):
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?

Speaker 5 (35:50):
Why do Why don't you?

Speaker 6 (35:51):
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

(36:14):
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

(36:35):
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

(36:55):
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

(37:16):
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

(37:36):
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

(37:59):
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.

Speaker 5 (38:06):
So then they.

Speaker 6 (38:07):
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

(38:32):
fall in love with that actor.

Speaker 5 (38:34):
Yeah right. They didn't make it responsible for the woman
who kept falling. It was a wonderful It was brilliant.

Speaker 6 (38:41):
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

(39:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Well that's the answer to is reality show dying? Now?

Speaker 5 (39:16):
No, they're they're redoing.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
Well.

Speaker 4 (39:18):
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

(39:40):
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.

Speaker 6 (39:57):
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

(40:19):
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.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
Can't be describing, you can't be describing when animals attack.

Speaker 5 (40:30):
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

(40:51):
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.

Speaker 6 (41:00):
Yeah, he wanted to do all these things, like he
loves television. Yeah, do you guys know him?

Speaker 3 (41:05):
I know Mike, I know him.

Speaker 6 (41:09):
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.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
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

(41:46):
their tricks.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
I was about to say.

Speaker 6 (41:48):
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.

Speaker 4 (41:56):
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

(42:18):
kidding you sick.

Speaker 6 (42:20):
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

(42:41):
did he He seemed interested.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
Huh, Well, listen, you know, Mike has I don't want
to I don't want to say that.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
He would have ever, you know, done something like that.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
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,

(43:12):
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

(43:32):
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.

Speaker 6 (43:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
And you can't turn away.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
And that's incredible from the guy who says he's catching
bullets in his teeth.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
You can't turn away. So and I actually.

Speaker 6 (43:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
Because of that was when our friend of him, he
talked to WALLYE.

Speaker 5 (44:16):
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,

(44:38):
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.

Speaker 6 (44:50):
Exactly.

Speaker 5 (44:51):
Wow. Right, Well, we look forward to the next book.
But this book is called.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
You the Sun, and it's and it's it's really fun.
It's really fun.

Speaker 5 (44:59):
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.

Speaker 6 (45:16):
I'm going to find something very.

Speaker 5 (45:17):
Sweet as Thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 6 (45:22):
Thank you it was great meeting you guys. Thanks for
inviting me.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
So what did so?

Speaker 4 (45:37):
I can't tell if she thinks reality shows are dying
or not. I don't think she does think that.

Speaker 5 (45:41):
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

(46:04):
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?

Speaker 3 (46:09):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (46:09):
Huge? But those big movies on those streamers are always
going to make money. Is how the streamers make money.
It's the Electric.

Speaker 4 (46:16):
States, Darring Lille, Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt and us.
Will they come on, by the way, the Russo Brothers
onto this show?

Speaker 5 (46:24):
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?

Speaker 4 (46:36):
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?

Speaker 5 (46:42):
All right?

Speaker 4 (46:43):
Well they used you not when it's pretty cool and
they were great, mister Grogan, I'm welcome.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
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.

Speaker 7 (46:54):
I enjoyed the trailer the other day.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
They just released the trailer trailer for the movie. Yeah, Electrics,
were you in it?

Speaker 5 (47:01):
Because do we even know?

Speaker 3 (47:04):
I'm barely in the movie.

Speaker 4 (47:05):
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.

Speaker 5 (47:12):
More importantly, did you get a trail? I got a trill?

Speaker 3 (47:14):
Okay, nice? And I learned how to do mocap.

Speaker 5 (47:17):
I learned motion cap.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
Yes, yeah, yes, there you go now here.

Speaker 7 (47:21):
I had actually some interesting reality TV trivia for you.

Speaker 3 (47:26):
We could do briefly.

Speaker 5 (47:28):
What was the most popular episode of reality TV ever?

Speaker 3 (47:35):
Oh, I'll give you, I'll give you a hint.

Speaker 7 (47:37):
There was fifty one point seven million viewers.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
Oh, for God Sex when when Heraldo opened out capone's safe?

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Is that possible?

Speaker 5 (47:49):
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?

Speaker 7 (47:56):
It was the big cultural phenomenon reality show?

Speaker 5 (48:00):
Was anybody winning a big amount of money? Yes? And
he would later go to jail for it? Oh?

Speaker 3 (48:06):
Was it the Richard Haber right, Sir? Survivor Season one?

Speaker 5 (48:11):
Richard High? There you go? Good? Thank you?

Speaker 7 (48:15):
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.

Speaker 4 (48:31):
I'm guessing it's The Bachelorette or the Bachelor, And I'm
guessing it's just America's got talent.

Speaker 5 (48:36):
I know, how Howe Mendels does.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
I don't know that.

Speaker 7 (48:39):
No, they yeah, very good guesses. It was apparently Love
is Blind Blind.

Speaker 5 (48:46):
Which is the show that she said, Oh here, yeah, okay, wow.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (48:49):
And just to give us a little bit of comparison,
what was the highest rated TV event in history history?

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Yes, it had one.

Speaker 7 (49:03):
Hundred and twenty five to one hundred and fifty million viewers.

Speaker 5 (49:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
I would imagine it was that. Well. I was going
to say the landing on the Moon for the first.

Speaker 5 (49:24):
Time, Kennedy Kennedy funeral.

Speaker 7 (49:26):
Jason is correct, the landing lading Mars, which landing on Wow.

Speaker 5 (49:32):
Yeah, it's the biggest.

Speaker 4 (49:33):
Yeah, I would neither actually happened. So you know my
grandmother's great story, it neither happened.

Speaker 5 (49:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
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.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
There you go, it's the true story, all right. You
want to play a little game.

Speaker 5 (49:55):
And by the way, we haven't been back, so it's
just that's right, right.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
Uh So these uh, this is a game similar to
ones we played before.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (50:04):
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.

Speaker 5 (50:19):
Exactly. That's real.

Speaker 4 (50:20):
That's a real, real David. No, that's a real show.
I want to Marry Harry and it was huge.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
By the way, who won? Nobody? Uh?

Speaker 4 (50:30):
The Tank a Japanese show in which contestants play they
are sealed in a century deprivation tank to see who
is the last.

Speaker 5 (50:37):
Oh, I think that's real too. I think I read
about the guy one. I think, go ahead, how do
you film that?

Speaker 3 (50:43):
No, it's I made that up.

Speaker 5 (50:45):
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.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
Does profession that's isolation. Okay, this show fine, would you shoot?

Speaker 4 (50:56):
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.

Speaker 5 (51:11):
I'll I'll see you.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
Good idea, but.

Speaker 5 (51:13):
No, it's I made it up totally because we're gonna
be doing it.

Speaker 4 (51:17):
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.

Speaker 5 (51:31):
One last trive reel. I would do that. I probly
would be in that drone a minute.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
Yes, absolutely true. Bestneral sixty Days.

Speaker 4 (51:41):
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.

Speaker 5 (51:50):
I don't think that's opening because you can't go off
the other to.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
Play off insurance. Insurance wouldn't cover it.

Speaker 5 (51:56):
No, I made it up. Totally.

Speaker 4 (51:58):
Sexy Beasts, in which people vie for affection and dates
while wearing elaborate, fully prosthetic face covering makeup.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
Sure, true, that's a real show.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
My Strange Addiction showcases people who eat drywall to compulsive
anal bleaching, all kinds of strange addictions.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Sure that's piker anal bleaching. Yes, it's a real show.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
Alter ego celebrity judges assess singers who sing live, but
the judges only see a CGI generated avatar of them.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
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.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
Documentary series about people opting to birth their babies in
the thick of the woods without medicine or technology of
any kind.

Speaker 5 (52:45):
That's not happened.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
No, that's a real show.

Speaker 5 (52:47):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (52:47):
Good and last, but not least, what is that Contestants
via to correctly identify commonplace items that are shown in
extreme close.

Speaker 7 (52:56):
Up real This is the sequel to Your Your Your
human uh splotches.

Speaker 5 (53:05):
Yeah, I made it up.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
That sounds like a great show.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
We should make it and we're out, thank you.

Speaker 4 (53:10):
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.

Speaker 5 (53:17):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
You'll be tuning in for would you shoot?

Speaker 5 (53:23):
Your phone is going to be ringing off the hook tonight,
my friend?

Speaker 3 (53:26):
Where's Mike Darnell? What do you shoot? When you need them?

Speaker 5 (53:28):
When you need them?

Speaker 3 (53:29):
They need to replace Yellowstone? Right, I mean, why not?

Speaker 5 (53:32):
There you go called Bloodstone. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you, great pleasure. It's always fun.

Speaker 4 (53:39):
Thank you everybody, and thank you Emilina spum and uh
safe right, why we.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Listen to our damn show?

Speaker 5 (53:47):
Can you ever go un chew too?

Speaker 3 (53:49):
Well?

Speaker 5 (53:49):
Yeah, yes, before you swallow?

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Now that's another episode of Really No Really.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
It comes to a close.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
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,

(54:17):
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

(54:39):
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.

(54:59):
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,

(55:21):
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.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
To win a million bucks.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
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.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
If only we could switch that to podcasts.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Oh well, really, it really is production of iHeartRadio and
Blase entertain

Speaker 3 (56:01):
Fo

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Peter Tilden

Jason Alexander

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