NIU experts hold their noses but admit TV’s new faces are changing entertainment

by Mark McGowan, ’92

When MTV unleashed The Real World in 1992, the pseudodocumentary played well with the cable network’s primary viewers but made only tiny ripples elsewhere. Its simple formula–seven young and usually attractive strangers with mismatched personalities and combustible tempers, forced to live in the same house under the constant glare of cameras–remains intact today as MTV gears up for the 11th season, currently being filmed in Chicago. Hugely popular among its young audience, the show even spawned a spin-off called Road Rules using the same premise while putting the “cast” in a Winnebago cruising the highways of America and beyond.

But not until CBS unveiled Survivor last summer, changing forever the way network television executives regard summer programming, did the rest of America catch onto the phenomenon known as “reality television.”

“What they’ve figured out how to do is make documentaries that aren’t boring,” said NIU’s Gary Burns, assistant chair and professor in the Department of Communication. “They’ve taken traditional documentary and figured out a way to make it entertaining.”

Like The Real World, the show of 16 castaways in the South China Sea introduced strangers who used only first names and who quickly found themselves on each other’s nerves. Unlike The Real World, which plays out as a plotless and pointless soap opera of sorts for MTV-loving teens and twenty-somethings, the contestants of Survivor crossed several generations, sparred for rewards and immunity and competed for a prize of $1 million. And rather than enduring the mere task of putting up with one another, the tribe members of Survivor must form strategic alliances to ensure their longevity: Every three days, the tribe banishes one of its own from the game.

Most importantly, however, their adventures were aired on prime-time network television to a nation starved for new programs during the dog days of rerun season.

That doesn’t mean it’s worth watching, Burns said. “It’s insipid, trivial, and obviously phony,” he said. “I don’t find it to be good drama, in most cases, and I don’t find it to be good documentary.”

Reality is good for ratings, however, and even better for the bottom line. It’s titillating, appeals to the voyeur in all of us and cheap to produce. In Hollywood, that translates to only one thing: Prepare to see more. Lots more.

The incredible success of Survivor sent other networks scrambling to create their own “reality” shows. ABC came up with The Mole and Making the Band while Fox offered the controversial Temptation Island and then Boot Camp, so close in format to Survivor that its producers sued. Even CBS felt the need to keep up, airing the inferior Big Brother every night of the week for months. Latecomer NBC this summer presented the critically assailed Fear Factor, in which contestants compete for cash prizes by facing their phobias, and CBS boldly presented a second summer of Big Brother. Fall brings the third season of Survivor, this time set in Africa, as well as a second installment of The Mole.

It was only one summer before Survivor that ABC rocked the industry and the country with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, inspiring copycats who revived 21 for NBC and created Greed for Fox. Both enjoyed residual interest for a while, but ultimately faded and failed. NBC hasn’t given up, turning to The Weakest Link to strengthen its fall schedule the way ABC depended on Millionaire last year.

“We have a lot more TV channels now, and they all have to fill the airtime with something,” Burns said. “These marginal (cable) networks started this because they needed it to stay in business. The traditional three networks have become marginal networks as well. They’ve fallen off their perch.”

So how can they resist these dollar signs? Like most reality shows that require no writers or high-priced actors, the costs of Survivor and even its $1 million prize are negligible in contrast to the enormous advertising revenue. Meanwhile, advertisers such as Pontiac, Target, Budweiser, Mountain Dew, and Doritos pay extra to prominently place their products on the island and in the outback.

“TV is looking for cheap product,” said Jeffrey Chown, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Communication, “and this is the current flavor.”