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I think that's part of it, but I also think there's some merit to our intuition as well; sometimes you can viscerally feel if you're in a boom or bust cycle. D
by lodi 5y ago
I think that's part of it, but I also think there's some merit to our intuition as well; sometimes you can viscerally feel if you're in a boom or bust cycle. During the reality TV phase I remember thinking "this is all garbage", and then shows like The Sopranos and The West Wing kicked off an era that had me thinking "I literally can't keep up with all the good shows; there's too much good TV to watch." I think this was a pretty common feeling, and not in hindsight but during the era. In gaming I remember marvelling at a PC boom in 98-99, and then hating the "xbox-ification" of PC games for a few years after that.
- dllthomas 5y ago> During the reality TV phase I remember thinking "this is all garbage", and then shows like The Sopranos and The West Wing kicked off an era... The West Wing and The Sopranos l started in 1999. Jackass and Survivor started in 2000.
- hexis 5y agoThe Real World started in 1992. It was "credited with launching the modern reality TV genre" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_World_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_World_(TV_series)
- p_j_w 5y agoYes, but the reality TV boom didn't hit for quite some time after. Maybe my memory is off, but it felt like a mid aughts thing.
- bmhin 5y agoSurvivor in 2000, American Idol in 2002, The Bachelor in 2002, The Amazing Race in 2001. That always felt to me like when they found their "reality game show" formula that was then replicated off of those base archetypes into the entire rest of the genre. So mid-aughts does feel about right for when the explosion happened. The more pure reality shows like original Real World or COPS seem more like ancestors than anything and didn't spawn as much of an immediate copy cat proliferation. Real World if anything morphed to be more like those later incarnations.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoUnscripted television had been bubbling beneath the surface for a good long while (game shows have existed since basically forever), but the 2007 writer's strikes was the catalyst that caused MTV-style trashier reality TV to take over.