Core Response #4 by Mike Goemaat

For anyone interested in why certain things get made and others do not, Chad Raphael’s chapter follows Todd Gitlin’s work on prime time television and Hermann Gray’s work on the rise of black programming in invoking production and industrial studies methodologies to examine the sublevel of the industry. And it is not always flattering! In Raphael’s case, he traces the political and economic forces in the 80s and 90s that gave rise to what he coins “Reali-TV.” On the first page, he makes clear that although his analysis is focused on the political and economic forces driving the creation of these programs, that is not where the programs' “cultural significance” begins and ends (Raphael 123). These texts can be analyzed for meaning, as Strings and Bui demonstrate with RuPaul’s Drag Race in “She is Not Acting, She Is,” but Raphael’s interest is in the ways that an economic crunch led to the emergence of reality television. 

In the 1980s, as studios and networks were consolidated into media empires, these conglomerates faced enormous debt levels. Increased competition in the marketplace meant there was greater jostling for advertising revenues, and rising above-the-line costs made productions more expensive. As Raphael writes, “producers now were forced to deficit-finance their programs and cross their fingers in hopes the show would survive three network seasons, providing enough episodes for domestic and  foreign syndication and a chance to recoup their initial investments (127). With the economics of producing a show becoming harder and harder to justify, production companies and networks had to find ways to cut costs: enter Reali-TV, which could be produced cheaply and in ways that, to reference Jane Feuer, catered to an audience’s desire for “liveness” and “immediacy” (Raphael 124). 

Economic explanations are threaded through this chapter, but on page 127 he begins circling one that has suddenly become very relevant to our 2023 television landscape: labor compensation. Raphael draws a parallel between Reali-TV’s peaks and the handful of strikes the Writer’s Guild of America has taken in the last four decades. In essence, when the writer’s strike, the studios and networks produce more unscripted content (aka Reali-TV), since the programs could be produced with lower cost, non-Union writers and in inexpensive locations. The current WGA deal is set to expire on May 1st, and with the writers fighting for fairer compensation, especially as it relates to streaming residuals, another work stoppage seems likely. This means there may be a similar reorientation towards cheaply made productions to fill air time. Unscripted domestic programs and international scripted series will carry on as usual, and companies in position to offer these titles, such as Netflix, whose expansion into reality TV and international programming is driven by a search for subscriber growth and profitability, may weather the storm better than the networks. 

Raphael concludes that Reali-TV is “not likely to go away,” and it will be worth keeping his conclusion in mind as television programming will be impacted by the outcome of the upcoming negotiations. If we notice an increasing number of reality shows in the next 12-24 months, we will know that studio and network cost-cutting is partially to thank/blame.