Networks Wedded Firmly to Reality-Show Concept

After February’s broadcast of the scandal-laden “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?,” the genre of so-called “reality” programming was all but declared dead.

What a difference a hit makes.

CBS’ “Survivor,” which premiered May 31, has fueled a renaissance of reality-based programming. Producers associated with the genre are suddenly finding a responsive audience at the major networks, who find themselves inundated with pitches of avant-garde concepts and, in some instances, biting.

“Thank goodness ‘Survivor’ came along,” says reality-based producer Bruce Nash, the man behind Fox’s “Breaking the Magician’s Code” and the “shock-umentary” “When Good Pets Go Bad.” “ ‘Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?’ clouded the whole reality area. All of a sudden everyone was questioning, ‘Can I trust what I’m seeing?’ And when you’re doing reality programming, people have to believe that it’s real.”

Nash credits the success of “Survivor” with not only validating the reality genre but opening the door to a wider variety of alternative programming.

“Survivor’ demonstrated that it’s not just about millionaire games, it’s about alternative series,” says Nash. “I have been in literally every network office in the last two weeks pitching and selling the next big thing.”

Nash is just one of a small group of producers the reality-craving networks are courting in hopes of launching the next “Survivor,” which CBS recently announced will return next year with an all-new cast let loose in the Australian Outback.

Fox’s executive vice president of specials, Mike Darnell, who was behind last February’s fiasco that saw Rick Rockwell choose, then wed, Darva Conger (the marriage has since been annulled) in prime time, says audiences should expect an onslaught of “Survivor”-type shows in the near future.

“[ABC’s ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’] had its impact in increasing game shows,” says Darnell, “and now [‘Survivor’s’] exploded and you’ll see a wave of this type of ‘real world’-esque reality. Fox, I can tell you, is going to be really aggressive in this department.”

Fox is hardly alone. ABC, for example, just acquired “The Mole”--another European import, in which one unidentified contestant is playing against his team--from Stone-Stanley Productions.

“The definition of alternative series at ABC,” explains Andrea Wong, the network’s vice president of that area as well as specials, “is basically anything that’s not a classic sitcom or drama. It ranges from sketch to game to improv to reality to docu-soap.”

“What I find interesting is that what we’re seeing today is exactly the kind of television that science-fiction writers said we’d be watching in the year 2000--’Running Man’ meets [the 1975 film] ‘Death Race 2000,’ ” noted “Busted on the Job” producer Erik Nelson. “Is it that much of a coincidence that ‘Survivor’ is a mega-hit the same year the movie ‘Gladiator’ is a mega-hit?”

New Trends Spread Like ‘Flu Viruses’

Nelson sees “Survivor” as the latest revolution in the reality genre.

“There was the 1996 ‘clip-umentary’ revolution, then there was the everybody-does-a-’Millionaire’-game-show, and now everybody wants to do ‘Survivor,’ ” says Nelson. “These things are the equivalent of flu viruses. Every year a different strain sweeps the country. Only familiarity and over-saturation can kill them off until a new strain’s developed.”

That and Rick Rockwell, Fox’s would-be groom, who threatened to bring down the reality genre after his shady past and questionable financial history went public.

“Fox certainly pulled back,” acknowledges the producer, “but it lasted about one month. After these things air, there’s sort of a nationwide hangover over them. People binge and then they feel guilty in the morning--but then they always pick up the bottle again.”

Eric Schotz, whose LMNO Productions has produced Fox’s “Guinness World Records: Primetime” and CBS’ “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” agrees that the impact of the Fox scandal was minimal, explaining he never worked more than in the weeks following the newlywed brouhaha.

“I’ve heard ‘reality’s dead’ more times than I know what to do with,” says Schotz.

“I think that scandal actually helped the genre,” adds Scott Stone of Stone Stanley Entertainment. “It created such a huge press hoopla that everyone realized these shows get huge ratings.”

Perhaps most telling that the “Who Wants to Marry” scandal has dissipated is Fox’s recent acquisition of a Nash property that sounds suspiciously like the notorious Feb. 15 prime-time nuptials. “We just sold Fox a big, two-hour special which we hope will turn into a franchise, called ‘The Sexiest Bachelor in America’--a beauty pageant with real guys as contestants,” says Nash, quick to distance himself from the Darva Conger clunker. “What [the sexiest bachelor] does with that title is his business--we’re not matching him up with anybody, and nobody has to get married.”

Darnell says he’s also planning to air another special for November sweeps that is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Rockwell/Conger fiasco, titled, “I Want a Divorce.”

“Everything is cyclical,” explains Schotz. “We just try to do good television and stay ahead of the curve. If you try to do trend television, you will fail.” Despite that assessment, Schotz, Nash and Nelson are all pitching “Survivor” copycats, or as Schotz likes to call them, “companion shows in the same genre as ‘Survivor.’ ”

“I’m certainly trying to cook up what will be the next generation of these shows,” admits Nelson. “The next step is to take real people, don’t let them know where the cameras are, and then you throw obstacles in their path. Sort of like what “The Blair Witch Project” did to their actors--put them in the woods, scare the crap out of them, and people will watch.”

At this point, NBC remains the sole network without a “Survivor”-type show in the bank.

“All of us kind of feel a little bit nervous [after] having all jumped on the bandwagon last year when we all did game shows,” says NBC Entertainment President Garth Ancier of his network’s hesitance to buy into the docu-soap genre. “This time we’re all saying, ‘Should we jump on this or should we wait?’ We don’t want to get into the cloning business. I’d rather find the next big thing than piggyback on someone else’s success.”

The other networks, meanwhile, continue adding reality programming to their arsenals. “Go New York” is an ABC midseason series from “Real World” creators Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray, which spies on the Manhattan social scene while a staff of young journalists designs a Web zine. Bunim laughs at the suggestion that her show is a copycat of “Survivor.”

“I think all these new formats are borrowed liberally from ‘The Real World,’ ” says Bunim of her long-running MTV hit, now in its ninth season. “I think we should be flattered, though we’d be more flattered if they sent us residuals.”

The majority of these “unique” offerings is nothing more than relaunched versions of tested overseas successes (“Survivor” originated in Sweden, “Millionaire” in England, the upcoming “Big Brother” in Holland). There is, therefore, an intense competition among the larger players in the reality genre to snatch up the rights to proven overseas hits and pitch them to the networks before their competitors concoct knockoffs.

Ideas Abound for Copycat Programs

ABC bought “The Mole” from Stone, who says he waged an aggressive campaign to acquire the rights to “Big Brother” before the Dutch producer, Endemol Entertainment, opted to bring the show to America itself. “It was very disappointing,” admits Stone, who did succeed in acquiring another Endemol property--”All You Need Is Love,” an eight-year proven hit in Europe that helps unite estranged lovers through videotaped proclamations of love.

Defending her product, ABC’s Wong insists, “ ‘The Mole’ is not a copycat. It’s not about voting people out of a house or off an island. It’s a game in which 10 people come together to figure out which of them is the saboteur.”

CBS Television President Leslie Moonves admits he’s up to his neck in pitches from “Survivor” wannabes. “People are batting down our doors with the most ridiculous rip-offs of ‘Survivor’ and ‘Big Brother’ that you’ve ever heard,” says Moonves. “About a hundred in the last two weeks.”