Cinerant

Death of Reality

So I was having lunch with some folks today and somebody brought up a really interesting point regarding reality television that I hadn't thought of. I thought I'd share it here.

Much of the way that money is made in television is through syndication. Even a show that's not in the Nielsen Top 10 (like Buffy) goes into syndication and results in a ridiculously enormous check. People rely on residuals. Writers can make money for years off a couple of years of working on a successful show that makes into syndication. That's why HBO was so eager to get Sex and the City and The Sopranos into syndication--that's where the real money is.

However, now there are fewer and fewer shows to go into syndication because of the onslaught of reality programming. But there's no syndication market for reality TV. Nobody wants to watch Survivor for the second, third, fourth, umpteenth time. What's the point? Once you know who wins, where's the joy in the show? That's the reason that most of these reality shows haven't been sold into syndication and why they don't perform nearly as well on DVD as a show like Arrested Development.

As a result of the industry's reliance upon reality programming, there is now going to start to be a lack of syndicatable programs. This is especially true of sitcoms since the only sitcoms that have really lasted the appropriate number of seasons over the last couple of years are Scrubs and Reba or Less Than Perfect. As a result, the people "in the know" at this group were speculating that reality only would be around a couple of years and then it would be gone.

I'm not sure what I think about that. I've personally always thought that reality has been around in some way, shape or form (Candid Camera). It's so bloomin' cheap to make that I think it's unlikely that it will ever leave. I do think that it's possible that its production might decrease (I hope), but I think in some way, shape or form, it will always be around. The most believable scenario I can imagine is that it will be relegated to the summer where networks are too nervous to really invest in anything that they think has hope, though TNT has proven this summer with The Closer that audiences will watch stuff in the summer, so who knows?

posted by cinegod @ 10:01 PM