Those who created the term reality show explain it as "a television program, for ordinary people, which is filmed in real conditions". This is how we read it in the Cambridge dictionary, this is how we bring it to you. The much-loved Giorgos Babiniotis has given "everyday programs" and "stories from life" as synonyms.
To have 78 years in our lives, they must be doing something right. Or we are doing something wrong. However, this is not our issue. Nor how much the real has been lost, within the expensive productions, the complete control of the material authorities regarding the "story" that finally reaches us and how suspicious the participants are - as to what will give them television time . Our topic is how it all started, how it evolved and how the same project can 'stand' on the television program of a country for 20 consecutive seasons and remain successful.
Welcome to the magical world of Survivor and the cult of the inhabitants of this planet to cast social criticism on people who do not affect their lives - but help them not think about it. Let's see how the genre evolved to the 'phenomenon' that year after year 'opened' the boundaries, without losing the basic principles. According to Ringer these are social policy (should we say PR?), ruthless strategy, survival skills and the tropical setting.
Time Toast the evolution of reality television was as follows:
The first reality TV show is credited to Candid Camera, which premiered on American television on August 10, 1948. It was the one-year anniversary of Candid Microphone, a concept inspired by Allen Funt (New York television producer, director and writer who had graduated from high school at 15 and then studied art at Cornell before earning a bachelor's degree in business administration from Columbia), for radio and which had been made into a theatrical short. The reality show justified the fact that the camera caught unsuspecting citizens, whom it subjected to pranks.
The first reality show to air in the UK was Seven Up!. It was a series of interviews that did not have a scaffold (the questions were about all areas of life and the cameras recorded the reactions) with 7-year-old children of the country - from all backgrounds. The same children were going through the same process seven years later. It was the first project that turned everyday people into celebrities. Each episode was 39 minutes long. First aired 5/5/1964 (last 6/6/2019). The idea belonged to Michael Apted, director, producer, writer and actor. Then he became the director of the James Bond film World is not enough - among many others.
The first attempt at live "matchmaking" was in 1965, in America, through the Dating Game (you know it as "Blind Date") which premiered on 12/20/1965. According to the "archivists" this was the first show " in which the contestants were willing to sacrifice something of their dignity for the chance to appear on television." The woman asked questions given to her by the production, to three men whom she did not see and then chose the one who had satisfied her the most. It closed in 1986. It was created by Chuck Barris, TV game show creator and producer, who was also the host. His next ideas were the Newlywed Game (four couples who had been married for up to two years competed for prizes by cheating on questions about their relationship - often the result was the definition of shame) and the 1978 Gong Show, with amateurs who presented their talent).
American Family was the first reality show in today's sense of the term. It had 12 parts recorded from 5/30 to 12/31, 1971 (there was 300 hours of footage over seven months, with a budget of $1.2 million - an outrageous amount for the time) and aired from 11/1 to 3/29/1973, on the US Public Broadcasting Service. The original idea was to chronicle the everyday life of an upper-class family of seven from Santa Barbara, California, until the producers found themselves "capturing" the parents' separation on camera - who claimed the editing was done in a way that highlighted the negative aspects of their lives. Among those presented was the one who informed one of the sons that he was gay. He was the first to make the revelation on television. In the archives, the show has passed as a reality/documentary and a year later it went to Great Britain and was produced by the BBC.
COPS premiered on 11/3/1989 and the end credits rolled on 11/5/2020. In the intervening seasons, cameras followed police officers in all areas of their work and recorded everything. There was no "dressing up" with music or scripted dialogue or the slightest bit of planning as it was all about the goings on of each day. The originator of the idea was John Langley, a television director and producer. He had been one of the pioneers of reality, as a producer of special two-hour events, at the time when TV acquired unionization (in the '80s). He has been called "the godfather of reality television". He noted that until 1989 everything was done with film. Then computer editing systems appeared.
The first time strangers, including people, entered the same house (which was full of cameras) was in 1991, in the Netherlands, for Nummer 28 (Number 28). The name of the reality soap was that of the house address number. Seven students lived together in Amsterdam for a few months and the cameras recorded their lives. The concept had no games or tests, and the participants were not isolated from the outside world. Each week viewers of Katholieke Radio Omroep (KRO, Catholic Radio) watched 20-minute episodes. They included many soundtracks and accounts of the protagonists, about incidents that had happened - after they had happened. The same concept was used a year later by MTV, in Real World, whose creators confessed that they "borrowed" the concept of Erik Latour (television producer and owner of the production company Today TV, until his death in 2004, at the age of 48 years), which took off in its... second phase. Real World originally wanted to make a regular TV soap opera, but the money for writers, actors and production was not forthcoming. So they did the borrowing.
The first reality show that had auditions and exits aired on 11/28/1997 in Sweden. It was titled 'Robinson Ekspeditionen' and British TV producer Charlie Parsons' idea was to take Nummer 28 and match it with Robinson Crusoe. He took it to a relatively remote - exotic - location, made the participants 16 - divided them into two "tribes" and added challenges, from building a hut to finding food - with contests to give gifts of things that facilitated survival and immunity to upcoming vote. That's where the departure of a player would be judged. The process would be repeated until one remained, who was the winner and received prize money. The production was undertaken by the Swedish Strix. You wouldn't say it broke. As Expedition Robinson. He did Survivor, as it was renamed when it was transferred to America, in the summer of 2000. TV summers were until then "dead zones" or as the Americans used to say "death traps" because whatever they tried, they failed. Until Survivor came along on CBS who had nothing to lose.
First prize money was $1,000,000. Richard Hatch won it. Six years later he was charged with tax evasion (failing to pay his prize taxes) and spent 51 months in federal prison. In 2011, he interfered with the terms of his probation and returned to the cell for another nine months. In February 2001, his co-star Stacey Stillman filed a lawsuit, alleging that the producers had interfered with the process of Survivor:Borneo (that was the name of the original), convincing two members of her "tribe" to vote her out, instead of her competitor, Rudy Boesch. With this I want to tell you that from the first moment these issues arose. Imagine what happens 20 years later.
After the success of Survivor, in its first season in the USA (2000), one reality after another began to appear and dominate to the extent that in 2004 there was a special show about how they "steal" in the editing, the productions, entitled "TV Secrets Revealed".
For three years Parsons floated his idea, but no one wanted it
In an interview, the creator had said that "I've been trying to sell my idea, that everyone can be Robinson Crusoe, live somewhere cut off from civilization and try to survive, since 1994 but no one was interested". When that changed, he was saved.
Parsons and his partners made other reality shows and in 1999 they sold their company, Planet 24, for a lot of money (our man got 17 million euros). They didn't give everything they had. They retained the rights to Survivor, which became the "flagship" of the new company, called Castaway Television Productions. It "ran" for two years on ITV in Great Britain and was then sold around the world. And for all these reasons Parsons has been called "the father of reality television". He is paid 2.9 million euros a year, from the salary that Castaway gave him and from that of the executive producer, until today when his creation is in its 40th season. And not only does it remain at the top of the TV ratings, but it also showed an increase of 6% from last year.
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