Cory's Reads #32: The Reign of Reality TV
On humanity, housewives, and a historic new deal for the WGA
The best thing I have watched in 2023 is Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s intricately structured historical epic.
The second best thing I have watched in 2023 is Claim to Fame, the hokey reality show from ABC (and streaming on Hulu) in which the relatives of various celebrities must deceive one another as to the identity of their famous family members.
With two seasons under its belt, Claim to Fame has already found more traction than its thin premise should probably suggest. Hosted by Kevin Jonas and his not-so-famous brother Franklin, the show is seemingly aware of the silliness embedded into its concept. As hosts and contestants acknowledge the iconic coattails to which they are so desperately clinging, there is a sense that ABC is similarly hoping to surf the waves emanating not from Chuck Norris’ grandson, but from Norris himself. Not from Laverne Cox’s twin brother, but from Cox herself.
Neither Norris nor Cox nor any of the other celebrities mentioned in Claim to Fame ever appear in the flesh, but the series is still operating under the assumption that our shared fascination with these famous figures will be enough for us to wonder “who is Brittany’s Super-Bowl-winning father?” and follow that line of questioning to its logical conclusion.
Indeed, the simple recipe is quite successful, and it is not dissimilar to the many other straightforward premises that have made unscripted reality a stalwart of the TV landscape over the last three decades.
Longtime subscribers to Cory’s Reads are familiar with my passion for Survivor, now entering its 45th season. The show emerged as a pioneer of the reality genre in the early 2000s, and CBS is similarly positioning it as the linchpin of its fall lineup over twenty years later. The powerful disruption caused by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes forced entertainment executives to pivot away from the scripted series that tend to dominate each new season of TV, and instead focus on the few shows that do not rely on the crucial contributions of writers and actors.
Survivor and its close cousin The Amazing Race are both airing 90-minute episodes all season long. The supersized episodes are a welcome gift to fans of the two competition shows, although those added minutes may just as likely alienate newcomers. Still, more of these mainstays is likely preferable to some of the other ideas eking out from the corporate meat grinder.
Josh Duhamel hosts Buddy Games, an over-the-top physical competition series adapted from Duhamel’s utterly forgettable directorial debut. Over on ABC, The Golden Bachelor updates the long-running franchise by casting women 60 and over to court 72-year-old star Gerry Turner. FOX unexpectedly renewed Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test for a second season, inviting a new batch of C-list celebrities to undergo several rounds of rigorous military training.
The straightforward appeal of these shows is unlike that of any work of fiction, in which the narrative complexity drives our interest forward (to varying degrees, of course). A reality or game show begins by introducing a simple question, one that immediately demands our attention over the course of an episode or entire season…
Who wins? Or better yet, who loses?
Admit it. You once walked past a parent or roommate watching an episode of Dancing with the Stars. “How do you watch this crap?” you asked, before spending the next 45 minutes scoffing at Gary Busey’s pathetic excuse of a foxtrot, or shouting at Bruno Tonioli for giving that impressive salsa a meager score of 6. He can’t hear you!
Reality TV has an uncanny pull. Even as formats are adorned with more bells and whistles — modern Survivor has more idols and advantages than one can count — the appeal remains incredibly simple. And it’s easy to see why studios are similarly attracted to the genre. After all, reality and game shows are cheaper to make than scripted television. Without the need for intricate production design or high-value stars, networks and streaming services can churn out several episodes at minimal cost.
A show like Claim to Fame can capitalize on its fame-adjacent cast, whilst paying those cast members a small fraction of what their famous relatives would command. Reality TV has become an essential asset in Netflix’s growing library of original content, with shows like Love is Blind and The Ultimatum emerging among the most-watched programs on the service.
(The most-watched show in Netflix history is Squid Games, a fictional riff on our obsession with reality TV. A real-life competition series inspired by the show is on the way. Ill-advised? Maybe. Tone deaf? Probably. Likely to debut atop the Netflix Top 10? Absolutely.)
The ease of production and reliable viewership all but guarantee the future of the genre, but can we say the same for the people whose livelihood depends upon it? Beyond the historic deal negotiated by the union leaders, the WGA strike had at least one other notable side effect, offering many of us a greater glimpse into how the proverbial sausage is made. As it turns out, many reality TV shows employ writers, and many of those writers are WGA members!
It should not come as a shock that our favorite reality shows need writers. That is not to say these shows are entirely scripted, but that narrative arcs — not to mention additional written material — still need to be crafted by a team of professionals. Of course, shows that continued to run amidst the strikes were not WGA shows, but the recent return of Dancing with the Stars for its 32nd season highlighted just one example of a reality competition series relying on the work of WGA members. Picketers marched outside TV City in Los Angeles, targeting stars like Matt Walsh (Veep), who is both a WGA and SAG-AFTRA member. Walsh quickly verified his support for the striking guilds, and announced that he would boycott the show until a deal was reached. ABC even announced plans to push back the season premiere, but when a deal was struck on September 24th, last Tuesday’s scheduled premiere was able to go on as planned.
Walsh was the first dancer eliminated Tuesday night.
The WGA’s contributions to pop culture and entertainment cannot be understated. And perhaps the most exciting thing about those contributions is that they are all 100% human.
Of all the threats facing WGA writers this summer, the most existential of them was AI. The eventual deal between the WGA and the AMPTP was surprising on a number of levels, including the WGA’s success in squashing just about any of the AMPTP’s AI-related aspirations. With the rapid rise of AI technology over the last couple years, it seemed inevitable that studios would turn to AI to support and ultimately supplant their human writers. Reporting throughout the summer suggested that AI was a sticking point for the AMPTP negotiators, but their final offer conceded just about every point on the matter, prohibiting studios from using AI to write or rewrite a script or treatment. All AI-created material must be disclosed to WGA writers, and only the writers themselves can opt to use AI in writing a script or treatment. The human touch that renders our favorite shows and movies art — and not just content — has been safely preserved.
In truth, the other terms in the WGA’s deal likely made the AMPTP’s concessions on AI easier to swallow. The impetus for using AI in place of writers was largely economic. But as the AMPTP agreed to stricter staffing requirements and increased streaming residuals, cost-cutting opportunities seemed fewer and fewer.
Greed could only take those studio and network executives so far.
But keep an eye on reality TV over the next several years. Obvious elements of artifice notwithstanding, reality TV is the most human genre we have. As studios fought for their right to replace humans with AI, they populated their fall schedules with programming that could not exist without the humans both behind and in front of the camera. So as the economic race to the bottom resumes, and competitors no longer have AI in their arsenal, reality TV emerges once again as an especially intriguing exploit.
The previous strikes in 2007-08 coincided with the biggest boon in reality TV programming in recent memory. The Real Housewives and Keeping Up With the Kardashians were already airing or in development before those strikes began, but their rapid rise in popularity encouraged studios to triple down on the genre, launching several similar series and spinoffs. Smaller networks like Bravo and MTV found new life in this new world of unscripted storytelling. If we go back even further, we find that the strikes in 1988 gave us Cops, an unprecedented piece of unscripted programming at the time.
It is tempting to interpret the timing as evidence of reality TV’s disposable nature. Indeed, many of us will have a hard time escaping a sentence about reality TV without uttering the word “trashy” in the same breath. On some level, this may be a tacit acknowledgment of the unprotected and underpaid staffers who have kept these shows alive before, during, and after industry-wide disruptions. And to be fair, our distaste for reality TV is an unfortunate albeit understandable byproduct of the characters we have come to associate with the genre (a certain former president chief among them). But the existential threat of AI — even as it is now kept at bay — has forced us all to more closely consider what we define as art.
And for me, art — both good and bad — remains as such so long as it is human. No genre of television has been upholding and exposing that which makes us human longer than reality TV. As writers return to work, there will be no shortage of brilliantly creative scripts crossing executives’ desks every day. Scripted storytelling is not going anywhere. But reality TV isn’t either, and it may be time we stop taking it — and its humanity — for granted.