FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
June 22, 2005
Sir Reality
The Writers Guild of America West went public with its campaign to organize reality TV writers. Yes, writers.
Admittedly, these writers don't script dialogue but manipulate situations. President Daniel Petrie says, "The secret about reality TV isn't that it's scripted, which it is; the secret is that reality TV is a 21st-century telecommunications industry sweatshop."
This isn't surprising considering that networks were attracted to the reality genre because they are so cheap to produce. It turns out they are cheap for a reason: Not giving story producers health benefits or paying them the minimum salary requirements. If you've seen any reality TV, especially any involving celebrities, you know how contrived they are. You can almost hear the producers saying, "Let's send her to a psychic." OK, maybe that's just me.
What should be obvious to everyone is that reality is not all that compelling. Steve Rupel, who has worked on shows like "The Real World," agrees: "I don't care if it's Omarosa, or Richard Hatch, or Puck -- if you watch every second of someone's life, the majority of it is quite boring." I don't envy him his job editing down endless hours of banal conversations and trips to the bathroom trying to find something of interest. It's still storytelling, but without the excitement of "Lost" or the sublime dialogue of "Casablanca."
You get what you pay for, and in the case of reality TV, the viewing public has a whole lot of nothing.
Posted by Kerry-Ann Austin at June 22, 2005 11:58 AM | Category: arts + entertainment |
3 Comments
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Blogging for Fast Company, you'd think you'd be into at least the business concepts and success of Reality TV, even if you don't like the content. Reality TV is much to broad now to simply be dismissed, and it's really an amazing and very popular trend in television. There is this idea that if you don't like reality TV you are somehow smarter and more sophisticated than the rest of us, but I think it just means you don't care about television.
From business to celebs to relationships to island living, Reality TV covers so much ground. It's an industry that I would think Fast Company would be interested particularly because it's cheaper to produce, faster to get on air, and has higher returns.
You obviously don't watch reality television, and that's fine, but don't go saying things like, "If you've seen any reality TV, especially any involving celebrities, you know how contrived they are." when what is contrived is your blanket dismissal of the whole genre.
It makes me laugh to hear the Writer's Guild is trying to pull in reality show writers! The officers at the Guild finally realized that they are cut out of the loop because TV is making money without them.
It is a bit like the officers & oldsters at the Teacher's Union in California being upset because Arnold wants to make kids education more important than the Old Boys School tenure policies.
I don't know much about the Writer's Guild and the politics of the organization, but they claim "the guild has received nearly 1,000 signed authorization cards from writers, producers, and editors who work in reality television and want to be represented by the WGAw."
That certainly makes it seem like writers, producers, and editors want the Writer's Guild in the loop as much as the Writer's Guild itself wants to be there.
Any time a business tries to avoid unions raises a red flag to me.