Must-read expose of reality TV contracts

My wife and I watch more reality TV than any other kind of programming: Top Chef and Project Runway All-Stars, just to name two shows running currently. And we've watched MasterChef - the subject of this article - in the past. So I'm morally complicit in this.

It's not pretty.

I am a “MasterChef” survivor

 

Never understood the allure of so-called Reality TV. I'd rather watch a well-crafted story, personally.

 

The only reality show ever liked was the one where people had to eat bugs in animal guts for money. That was truth in advertising.

 

Per the article posted, I don't think all shows are like that. This seems to be a pretty extreme case.

 

My wife and I watched Master Chef for a couple of seasons several years ago. I know how manipulative and scripted "reality" TV is, so I often find myself shifting between enjoying the ride and overthinking the production. "Master Chef" is one of the more fascinating productions because of the amount of people doing this level of cooking, along with producers basically orchestrating who comes out on top in the end. It's a sham, but it's also one of the better shows of this genre IMHO.

But like most fast food TV the fun eventually wears off and by the third season we noticed the unwatched episodes piling up on the DVR and moved on to other things.

Still interesting though, looking forward to reading this.

dan c

 

Sounds somewhat similar to the Joe Rogan hosted Fear Factor!

 

If I was you and I read that article then my reaction would be that I wouldn't want to watch any more of these shows again, knowing what they put people through. So are you going to stop or carry on watching them and, as you say, being complicit?

 

My desired response to this would probably violate the “no politics” rule.

Let’s just say I’m practiced in having a guilty conscience.

 

With MasterChef in particular, I was always curious when the interviews take place. I thought there was no way they could stop the production and do an "in-the-moment" interview similar to where they are placed in the show, so I assumed they happened after the events of the day were finished. The article implies that some of the interviews take place beforehand and the events are somewhat shaped to correspond to the answers already given.

 

Here’s the writer’s bio on her Twitter Page:

“Writer, NYT Modern Love, WaPo, Salon, Toronto , publicist@mindbuckmedia, prof @ PSU, squirrel rescuer, autodidact, musician, beekeeper, mama. ...”

So, a freelance writer who lost in the tryouts for a reality show writes a disparaging article about reality shows. She could probably use a reality check of her own. The facts she relates could just as easily be interpreted as to conclude that the show goes to extreme measures, before and after, to assess the psychological health of the contestants. And of course they’re going to be watching all along to pick the best contestants for the show.

Not to mention, of course, that no one is imprisoned during the process and is free to leave at any time.

Sounds like a big case of bad loseritis to me.... probably shouldn’t burn the onions on a cooking show.

 

The only reality show I ever liked .... besides ALONE

 

If you pause the "fine print" during the end credits, you'll see a disclaimer saying that events may not have occurred in the sequence portrayed on the show.

You'll also see that judges' decisions may have been made "in consultation with" the producers.

Again, this not specific to MasterChef. The ostensibly classier Top Chef is no different.

 

The last RT show I watched was the original - "Queen for a Day".

 

...or that they are looking for the most breakable contestants for the show, because that makes compelling viewing in the opinion of the producers. One of the handful of people I follow on Twitter is Marty LeGrow a cartoonist who made extra money as a birthday party princess (dressing up as various Disney princess characters). NPR did a profile of her, and she was deluged with calls from various sleazy "reality show" producers who wanted to do a show about her and her fellow princesses. Even though she could really have used the money, she refused every offer. From her Tumblr:

I don’t watch reality TV. The closest I’ve gotten to it is Total Drama Island, and that’s a scripted cartoon show lampooning actual reality TV. I don’t like real reality TV, because most of it is centered around judging other people at their worst. And that’s something I don’t like to do.

Let’s face it, reality TV is anything but. They take a tiny bit of starting truth and absolutely drown it in staged events, manufactured drama and the worst of the worst, “frankenbyting." A frankenbyte is an audio or video segment, strung together from many separate segments, to depict something that never actually happened.

For example, Annie and Jamie are friends on a show, but the producers think it would be better for the plot of the show if they suddenly had angry tension between them. Combing through hours of footage shot of the two of them, they find Annie making an angry face and saying "Can you BELIEVE THAT??” about some world event she read in the paper. They then find a video clip of Jamie asking to borrow Annie’s hairbrush and taking it before she gets an answer.

In the original footage, Annie was OK with it. But when put together with the new footage of angry Annie (and maybe dubbing over an angry “WTF?” in Annie’s voice, said the day before about something else, as Jamie leaves the room with the brush), and you have a whole new plot line. This is common practice for reality TV and whole “plots” can be developed through the show, that have nothing to do with reality. That’s why so many of these shows have “story editors” in the credits. Their whole job is to make the show follow plots the producers want, regardless of what actually happens.

So when I received yet another message the other day, from an entertainment company looking to spin my work as a princess into a reality show, I answered yet again with a resounding NO. I don’t care how much money is involved, or how many books I might sell after being on TV, or how many bills it will pay. I may be desperate for work, but there is no way I will ever be that desperate.

This is not a new thing for me. People looking around for new show ideas often come across the blog, or the original forum thread, or some article I did about princessing, and they think it’s a great idea and write to me about a show pitch…probably because they picture a bunch of catty, screaming girls dressed as Disney princesses, pulling each other’s hair and swearing. We all loved that one Real Housewives of Disney sketch! Who doesn’t want to see foul-mouthed, misbehaving princesses?



Me, that’s who. I know a lot of Americans might find that tons of fun to watch, but I can’t for the life of me imagine why.

Party princesses are the last people who deserve to have their good names tainted by some trashy TV show. We do more charity work and volunteer events than anyone I know. We work long hours, making children happy, at the expense of our aching backs and feet. We go to the hospitals and comfort the children who are sick and in pain. We go to the shelters and talk to the children who have no homes. We don’t earn much money, but we love the job too much to care. Selling out a whole industry of princesses for a TV show is not just wrong on a personal level, it’s antithesis to the very idea of being a princess, being selfless and kind and willing to help others before yourself.​

 

"Reality Television" has killed TV. That's a good thing for me as it's also the reason I watch little-to-no television any more. Also, Gordon Ramsay is - by far - the biggest douche canoe egotistical sh*tclamp I've ever seen. If I ever see him in person I'd gladly go to jail for the privilege of punching him in the throat repeatedly

 

The thing about "reality" TV is how little connection it has to genuine reality, and it seems that the less real it is, the better the public likes it.

 

Totally agree with you. I can't stand them and they have pretty much screwed up everything else beyond television programs....

I do however enjoy some HGTV programs where they renovate your kitchen over a weekended for $2000.

 

Yes, I enjoy high fantasy as well.

 

I'll confess to watching one "reality" program - Overhaulin'. The show features car designer Chip Foose taking some deserving person's beloved but beat up car and in a week totally rebuilding it. Nobody screaming at each other, no bogus engineered interpersonal drama, just a bunch of incredibly skilled people making something happen.

Of course each show is filled with products from various companies lovingly presented, but that's fair - they are supplying some very expensive stuff, and if it was crap it wouldn't work in the build.

 

Wow, that's a great story, @ribonucleic -- much appreciated.

I have worked on about 10 different reality shows in the last 20 years, and I figured out very early on "there is no REALITY in reality shows." It's all television: very carefully contrived, planned, and edited for very specific (hopefully entertaining) results. But it ain't real.

There was a mini-scandal about 15 years ago when somebody who claimed to be a low-level segment producer on American Idol claimed that the show was rigged. What they did was very clever: the performances were real and the vocals were real, but the phone votes were rigged. The producers would decide in advance which of the contestants they favored to go on to the next level, and so they'd have the phone lines shut off for (say) Contestant B after an hour if they wanted Contestant A to win. This way, they could legally say at the end of the show, "the contestants with the greatest number of votes wins each segment." That's technically true, but it all depends on whether the calls get through on the line or not.

I have no idea if this is still done, but I suspect a lot of technical trickery like this is done all the time. I know for a fact that all the competition shows (Survivor, etc.) are very heavily edited to create "characters," like who the mean contestant is, who the nice contestant is, which one is the neurotic, which one is the loudmouth, and so on. It's all very carefully-crafted. One guy got home from Survivor, thinking he'd had a pretty good time and everything went well, and then he saw the finished shows months later and said, "wow, they turned ME into the villain!" And all that comes from heavy editing, careful use of music, even using shots and angles where the contestants had no idea they were being recorded.

Foose and his son and crew are nice people, but the producer I worked with was a total ****head. Not a good experience.

 

Fear Factor? Silent Library?

 

That's a shame. My brother used to watch American Hot Rod, and I thought Boyd Coddington was a tool, and when I found out that Chip Foose had actually designed the cars that Boyd put his name on, I checked out his show and much preferred it. Not as much manufactured drama.

Was this producer an *** by regular human standards, or by the much more extreme ones of producer's?

 

I couldn't get through the whole article, because the website is spammish, and someone tried to hack my phone. That being said...

I just assume there's always some scripting in "reality" shows. There's always editing to create drama. I'm taking this woman's story with a grain of salt. She makes it sound like Clockwork Orange. Just a way to get publicity, I'm guessing.

 

I read it with the AdBlock browser and had no issues.

Really? I didn't see anything in the article that seemed even a tiny bit surprising.

The only reason we're hearing her story is that she got to participate in the show without signing their contract. I'd imagine many others could tell the same one if they didn't have to worry about being sued.