3 ms·

> Netflix's proliferation of reality TV (Love is Blind etc) felt absolutely jarring to me at first but it's just the tip of the iceberg. This should be seen as

> Netflix's proliferation of reality TV (Love is Blind etc) felt absolutely jarring to me at first but it's just the tip of the iceberg. This should be seen as a death-kneel for any channel/service, yet those cable channels keep going after decades of truly terrible TV. I wonder what kind of person these shows pander to.

afavour 3y ago
> I wonder what kind of person these shows pander to. An absolutely massive audience that just wants to switch off at the end of the day rather than engage in a deep drama or similar. I'm not exactly defending it but don't underestimate the size of that audience.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  Yeah I'll bite. James Cameron said something to the effect of "a ticket to a movie is a promise to give something 100% of your attention for 2 hours" -- and most of the time I'm NOT willing to do that. Reality TV or something is fine much of the time.
jncfhnb 3y ago
Pretty much everyone. You might not seek it out, but if someone else is watching you’ll probably be suckered into some kind of emotional response. A lot of cynics watch and say it’s dumb and fake and vain and overdone; and it is. But it doesn’t take long for them to fall into the trap of exclaiming how dumb a character is, or what have they should have done, or why someone deserved a punishment and then bang. They got you. You felt a glimmer of empathy for the folks on the screen, even if it’s contempt.
Apocryphon 3y ago
I haven’t looked into the numbers myself, but after reading the great comment below about how mobile game studios essentially bought AAA game publishers instead of the other way around, it’s made me reflect on the recent Discovery acquisition of HBO in a new light. Maybe an empire of cheap and disposable reality TV is far more profitable than expensive, smaller audience-appealing, prestige television. In much the same way that disposable F2P mobile gaming is far more ubiquitous, casual, and profitable than expensive, hobbyist, AAA console and PC gaming. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36230784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36230784
- fragmede 3y ago
  The metric to look at is viewers per dollar. If Foundation or The Expanse drew in viewers for the millions per episode spent on them, that would be one thing. But if you spend a tiny budget of a couple hundred thousand dollars, max to make an episode of, say, Naked and Afraid, and got commensurate viewership, if not higher, what would you choose, if you're running a business. Combine it with the fact that reality tv contestants don't receive residuals, there are no union writers to pay, it's obvious which direction the American TV business is headed because reality tv is a ridiculously better deal for them. Get the theme song recorded as a work for hire as well and it's pure profit for Discovery. It's not great for the industry but culturally, we're not supportive of strikes worker rights, especially if the media tells us it's okay to hate those workers for being "rich" Hollywood folk (most writers are struggling), and doesn't point out we're supporting scabs by watching reality tv. We may all want to watch Ballers or some other a tv show starring The Rock but he's the highest paid actor in Hollywood and is able to command a share of the revenue from the show. It's not publicly known for him, but the TV show friends had their actors earning a million dollars per episode by the end of it, and they get paid residuals for every time the episode gets watched. Meanwhile in a race to the bottom, reality tv show contestants are often (sometimes literally!) fighting for table scraps from the tv studio. A one time appearance fee $25,000 or lower - and the beauty of it being a contest is you pay the losers even less, if at all! Hell, some of them do if for the exposure and the experience and go home with nothing other than being able to advertise for their restaurant with that claim to fame for their restaurant.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    All of this makes complete sense, it just felt shocking because HBO has such greater cultural cachet and prestige than Discovery, which I didn’t even know owns an empire of reality shows aside the ones on its channel. Guess that really illustrates how what is seen as good TV is increasingly decoupled from what is actually watched on TV. There was a recent meme about how the “little-known” ABC drama The Good Doctor was obscure to the Twitterati but is, in reality, a long-running series with viewership that dwarfs the Succession set. And on the subject of reality TV, this is a good retrospective of how many cable channels from MTV to Bravo have drifted from their once lofty, even high-brow identities into domination by reality television. It really is a ubiquitous trend. https://youtu.be/Vd1gqLVHZWo https://youtu.be/Vd1gqLVHZWo I wonder what genre will succeed reality television. Maybe they’ll find a way to adapt Twitch streaming or vlogging for television, and then they will have to pay even fewer people. > We may all want to watch Ballers or some other a tv show starring The Rock As an aside, apparently not, judging by what happened to Young Rock. :p

afavour 3y ago

> I wonder what kind of person these shows pander to. An absolutely massive audience that just wants to switch off at the end of the day rather than engage in a deep drama or similar. I'm not exactly defending it but don't underestimate the size of that audience.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
Yeah I'll bite. James Cameron said something to the effect of "a ticket to a movie is a promise to give something 100% of your attention for 2 hours" -- and most of the time I'm NOT willing to do that. Reality TV or something is fine much of the time.

jncfhnb 3y ago

Pretty much everyone. You might not seek it out, but if someone else is watching you’ll probably be suckered into some kind of emotional response. A lot of cynics watch and say it’s dumb and fake and vain and overdone; and it is. But it doesn’t take long for them to fall into the trap of exclaiming how dumb a character is, or what have they should have done, or why someone deserved a punishment and then bang. They got you. You felt a glimmer of empathy for the folks on the screen, even if it’s contempt.

Apocryphon 3y ago

I haven’t looked into the numbers myself, but after reading the great comment below about how mobile game studios essentially bought AAA game publishers instead of the other way around, it’s made me reflect on the recent Discovery acquisition of HBO in a new light. Maybe an empire of cheap and disposable reality TV is far more profitable than expensive, smaller audience-appealing, prestige television. In much the same way that disposable F2P mobile gaming is far more ubiquitous, casual, and profitable than expensive, hobbyist, AAA console and PC gaming. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36230784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36230784

fragmede 3y ago
The metric to look at is viewers per dollar. If Foundation or The Expanse drew in viewers for the millions per episode spent on them, that would be one thing. But if you spend a tiny budget of a couple hundred thousand dollars, max to make an episode of, say, Naked and Afraid, and got commensurate viewership, if not higher, what would you choose, if you're running a business. Combine it with the fact that reality tv contestants don't receive residuals, there are no union writers to pay, it's obvious which direction the American TV business is headed because reality tv is a ridiculously better deal for them. Get the theme song recorded as a work for hire as well and it's pure profit for Discovery. It's not great for the industry but culturally, we're not supportive of strikes worker rights, especially if the media tells us it's okay to hate those workers for being "rich" Hollywood folk (most writers are struggling), and doesn't point out we're supporting scabs by watching reality tv. We may all want to watch Ballers or some other a tv show starring The Rock but he's the highest paid actor in Hollywood and is able to command a share of the revenue from the show. It's not publicly known for him, but the TV show friends had their actors earning a million dollars per episode by the end of it, and they get paid residuals for every time the episode gets watched. Meanwhile in a race to the bottom, reality tv show contestants are often (sometimes literally!) fighting for table scraps from the tv studio. A one time appearance fee $25,000 or lower - and the beauty of it being a contest is you pay the losers even less, if at all! Hell, some of them do if for the exposure and the experience and go home with nothing other than being able to advertise for their restaurant with that claim to fame for their restaurant.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  All of this makes complete sense, it just felt shocking because HBO has such greater cultural cachet and prestige than Discovery, which I didn’t even know owns an empire of reality shows aside the ones on its channel. Guess that really illustrates how what is seen as good TV is increasingly decoupled from what is actually watched on TV. There was a recent meme about how the “little-known” ABC drama The Good Doctor was obscure to the Twitterati but is, in reality, a long-running series with viewership that dwarfs the Succession set. And on the subject of reality TV, this is a good retrospective of how many cable channels from MTV to Bravo have drifted from their once lofty, even high-brow identities into domination by reality television. It really is a ubiquitous trend. https://youtu.be/Vd1gqLVHZWo https://youtu.be/Vd1gqLVHZWo I wonder what genre will succeed reality television. Maybe they’ll find a way to adapt Twitch streaming or vlogging for television, and then they will have to pay even fewer people. > We may all want to watch Ballers or some other a tv show starring The Rock As an aside, apparently not, judging by what happened to Young Rock. :p