Reality TV: An Insider's Guide to TV's Hottest Market by Troy DeVolld

unique. To revisit the Candid Camera example: Scare Tactics focused on frightening prank subjects, Punk’d played pranks on celebrities, and Boiling Point awarded prizes to participants who endured pranks for the longest length of time without losing their cool.
    CRITICISM: FAIR OR UNFAIR?
    Using the Internet, find five reviews of any successful contemporary Reality show written by professional television critics.
    Comparing the reviews, list common complaints about the show. Also list common positive comments about the show.
    Share: Do you think the critics are holding the shows critiqued to a fair standard? If the show is not being well received critically but is pulling good ratings, why do you think the shows are successful despite negative reviews?

    Editor Karen Snyder places interview bites into a rough cut. Like most good editors, she is experienced at editing many different kinds of Reality. (photo by the author)
    Notes:
    1. Punk’d, which ran on MTV from 2003 to 2007, is but one of many contemporary examples of the revisited Candid Camera format.
    2. Interesting side note: Albert Fisher, quoted in this chapter, holds the remarkable distinction of having produced for both Candid Camera and The Original Amateur Hour .
    3. In 2004, the show’s format was resurrected as Strictly Come Dancing , calling on celebrity competitors to punish the parquet. That version was soon after retooled by BBC Worldwide for ABC as Dancing With the Stars .
    4. To those who would argue Wild Kingdom ’s “reality” label, I ask this — aside from the fact that antelopes don’t have to sign appearance releases afterward, what’s the difference between hiding behind a tree and filming an antelope and hiding behind a tree and filming some hapless secretary on a lunch break for a Candid Camera stunt? None!
    5. An interesting side note: Lance Loud had been a resident of the Chelsea Hotel, the residents of which were featured in Warhol’s groundbreaking Chelsea Girls five years earlier.
    6. TV Guide quote referenced in Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon by Nancy C. Lutkehaus.
    7. April 20, 2004 interview by Ken Paulson on Speaking Freely .
    8. It’s debated that Real World ’s confessional device may have been borrowed from a Dutch series of the same era called Nummer 28 .
    9. Numbers according to Nielsen Media Research.
    10. 54% in 2009, claims Locations magazine.
    11. Numbers according to Nielsen Media Research.
    12. From a 2010 appearance on Showtime’s The Green Room With Paul Provenza .
    13. Excerpted from transcripts of the October 2005 MIT panel discussion “Is Popular Culture Good for You?”
    14. Placement is when you see a name brand soda on the table. Integration is when the name brand soda’s not only on the table, it’s part of the storyline.
    15. Noted actor Charles Nelson Reilly recounted just such an early network experience in his one-man show, Save It For The Stage , later memorialized in the doc film The Life of Reilly.

The Seven
    (or Seventy, or Seven Hundred)
    Kinds of Reality Shows
    W e live now in what I like to call “The Age of Lists.” Every week there’s a new countdown show detailing the top ten celebrity meltdowns, a magazine article giving you the top fifty new stars to watch out for, or a blog entry recounting the last hundred things Nicolas Cage has had for breakfast.
    Okay, I made the last one up. But mark my words, one day you’ll be reading the Nicolas Cage breakfast blog and thinking, “That DeVolld guy was right on the money.”
    As lists go, one of the most elusive is any sort of official list categorizing Reality shows by subgenre. You want one, right? So do we all out here in television land. It would make things so much easier!
    Well, no matter what you’ve heard or read, even here, there isn’t one.
    I’ve been actively pitching original series for the last few years of my career, and while this book will get into the particulars of that process much later on, the one