Emily Nussbaum is a Pulitzer-prize-winning writer at The New Yorker magazine who has specialised in TV criticism. Her current book, Cue the Sun, recounts and analyses the invention and growth of ‘Reality’ TV, and the far-reaching implications of that development –– both on and off our TV screens. Her book’s enigmatic title comes from a line in The Truman Show – a movie that Nussbaum credits as being ahead of its time in addressing some of the critical issues raised by the emergence of so many ‘unscripted’ TV series.
Nussbaum’s book is exceptionally well-informed and well-written. In several important respects, it casts new light on the history and pre-history of a vital part of TV production. The origins of Reality TV, she argues, pre-date the presence of television in our lives, the true founder of what is now a universal genre being a man called Alan Funt. As a young man, Funt had been employed in the radio department of a New York advertising agency. When he was drafted into the US army in 1943, he was assigned to work in the Forces Radio service that was part of the Army Signal Corps. His job entailed interviewing ordinary GIs about their lives and experiences, but he found that, once the tapes began to roll, they often became inhibited and tongue-tied. Eventually, he found a way round this problem – by using hidden microphones so that the soldiers did not know when they were being recorded, leading to much more open, truthful and revealing interviews. After the war, Funt worked for a local radio station and began to use hidden microphones to record people in everyday situations – often choosing those situations that were likely to prove stressful for them.
On one occasion, he had just finished rigging up his hidden microphones in a dental surgery when a patient arrived. Funt was on his own and, on the spur of the moment, he decided to pretend to be the dentist. He examined the woman’s teeth and made wild suggestions for the treatment that he said she needed. When he played her alarmed reaction to his radio bosses, they were greatly amused and encouraged him to record similar pranks. This led to a radio series called Candid Microphone – and, as television sets became common in American homes, this evolved into Candid Camera. After a somewhat bumpy start, Candid Camera became a staple feature of US TV schedules; it was carried on the CBS network for almost forty years.
The basic format of this series has generated numerous prank and hidden camera shows around the world – including in Ireland. I worked on one of them: Murphy’s Home Movies – featuring Mike Murphy, who was then one of RTÉ’s biggest TV stars. Other prank shows have sometimes relied upon creating extreme situations – even simulating serious road accidents, murders and alien abductions. However, Mike Murphy had some acting experience – he had appeared in the movie adaptation of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls – and he played a number of different and well-defined character roles. He was also adept at misdirection and gauging just how far he could push and provoke his ‘marks’ – always stopping short of bullying them.
Alan Funt became a well-known celebrity in the US and that could sometimes blur the dividing lines between the pranks he staged and real life. In 1969, he was on a flight to Florida with his wife and children when the plane was hijacked and the hijackers demanded safe passage to Cuba. However, some of the passengers had recognised Funt and they were convinced that this was just another of his pranks. It was not until the plane landed in Havana that they realised that the hijack was for real.
A watershed in the development of the genre occurred in the early 1970s. An American Family was a series which, as Nussbaum observes, sent Reality TV down a new path and ‘shattered old notions of what was private and what was public’. The series presented the audience with what has since become the dominant form of Reality TV: a real-life soap opera. It had been commissioned from what may now seem to have been an unlikely source: a small public service television station.
This was the sort of station that normally made what Nussbaum characterises as ‘eat-your-spinach documentaries’: worthy but rather dull and predictable. However, in 1971 the station’s new CEO was determined to produce a series that reflected the turbulent mood of contemporary America and he was prepared to allocate a substantial budget for its production. He recruited a producer and a camera team that specialised in making well-crafted observational documentaries in a cinema-vérité style. They had recently completed an Emmy-nominated film called The Triumph of Christy Brown (a story that later inspired Jim Sheridan’s Oscar-winning My Left Foot.)
A family called Loud was selected by Craig Gilbert, the producer, to represent an average American household and to be the focus of this new series. The film crew – a husband and wife team called Alan and Susan Raymond – spent the months that followed filming with the Louds. The filming was relatively unplanned, spontaneous and unstructured: the Raymonds would begin shooting every morning and follow whatever storyline seemed the most promising lead. Over the next three months, they shot an immense amount of footage and, since they could not afford the time or funds to watch daily rushes, they had no idea if anything they had shot would be of future use.
Then, three months into filming, Pat Loud, the mother of the family, asked Bill, her husband, for a divorce. This changed the whole dynamic of the shoot – which continued for another four months. As the filming progressed, new crews were recruited by Gilbert to cover the growing complexity and drama of the story, and they did not always follow the same strict vérité rules as the original crew. Indeed the Raymonds came to believe that some of the filming violated ethical standards by recording the bitter silences, blazing rows, intense recriminations and drunken rantings that occurred within the Loud family. However, the filming continued until New Year’s Eve 1971, when the Louds held two separate end-of-year parties.
Then the lengthy process of editing began. There were hundreds of hours of previously unseen footage to work through and reduce to just eight episodes – with a coherent narrative – for the final broadcast. The editing style was similar to that followed by most independent documentary-makers. There were a few concessions to a TV audience – with some explanatory narration – but each episode in the series was mainly composed of long and slow takes that conveyed a sense of raw and unmediated authenticity to its viewers.
The series was first broadcast in January 1973, and it began with the ending, so to speak, that featured the two parallel – and emotionally charged – New Year’s Eve parties. This transmission strategy proved highly effective. The series had an immediate and profound impact on its viewers: it was as if a spotlight had suddenly been turned on some of the secrets shared by many American families. The reaction of the Louds to the series varied – but the initial response of Pat Loud was one of shock and dismay. She had believed that she was taking part in a sophisticated arthouse documentary: now she felt that she had played the lead role in what had become a lurid melodrama. In time, her view of the series would soften and that was also true of most – but not all – of her family.
This ambivalent relationship with the final cut of a Reality TV documentary series has been repeated many times since An American Family was first broadcast. Perhaps there is something of a Faustian pact on the part of those who choose to participate in these kinds of shows. They may gain fame or notoriety – whether or not that is what they want. But, as the showbiz saying goes, ‘Fame Costs’, and there have been recurring claims by participants in Reality series that the editing of footage has been unfair and has presented a distorted image of their characters and lives.
The initial reaction of the mainstream media to An American Family displayed a degree of disdain that has continued to surface frequently in relation to Reality TV shows. One reviewer described the Louds as ‘affluent zombies’, dismissing the series as ‘a glimpse into the Pit’. As Nussbaum points out, Reality TV has similarities with other ‘lowbrow’ forms of popular culture and it is often treated ‘less as an art form than as a drug’. Its potency can seem derived, at least in part, from its voyeuristic nature and its appeal has been considered by some critics to be excessively vulgar and best suited to be consumed by those in the lower strata of society.
Ireland played a role in the development of what has proved to be the most successful Reality TV show of all time: the Survivor series. The US version of this franchise will soon celebrate its fiftieth season on air, but its origins are traced back by Nussbaum to an Irish source. In 1987, Philip Kampf, a producer with the Gay Byrne Show on Irish radio, had sent a small group of individuals to see if they could survive in rural Connemara simply by following the practical advice found in the SAS Survival Guide. This proved to be a very popular running item on the daily radio show.
One of those sent to Connemara was Gerry Ryan – a very gifted, original and popular radio presenter. After a week or so, Ryan announced on Gay Byrne’s show that he was so hungry that he had killed a lamb for food. He claimed that he had put a rock in a sock and whacked the lamb on its head. The claim caused huge controversy. Questions were asked in the Dáil Eireann; Ryan was accused of animal cruelty and RTÉ launched a formal investigation into the precise circumstances of the lamb’s death. In the end, it turned out Ryan had not killed any lamb: that had been done humanely by a friendly farmer. This assistance was, however, against the rules of the exercise – which was why Ryan had made up his story. This became known as the ‘Lambo’ incident and word of it reached an English TV producer called Charlie Parsons who ran a production company called Planet 24.
Parsons saw further potential in the format that Kampf had created and began to develop an idea for a Reality TV show which would also feature a group of individuals having to survive against the odds and lacking in basic resources. It seems that this scenario reminded him of one this favourite books, Lord of the Flies. Parsons began trying to raise funding in the USA for a TV series that he called Survive. He soon encountered a TV producer in the USA called Mark Burnett who was exploring somewhat similar territory – and, by coincidence, Lord of the Flies was also one of his favourite novels: it had been on the English course when both were at school. In some respects, Burnett may seem typical of the sort of TV producer who wanted to make Reality shows at that time – the sort who could sometimes appear to be uninhibited by social or ethical constraints – but in other respects he was exceptional and his route into television production in the USA was most unusual.
Burnett was English by birth, and had grown up on a working class housing estate in Dagenham, where his father worked on a car assembly line. As a teenager, he had joined the Parachute Regiment and he saw active service as a section commander in Northern Ireland and in the South Atlantic during the Falklands war. When he left the British army he became an illegal immigrant to the USA. Through a wide variety of jobs – including selling T-shirts on Venice Beach – and a circuitous path, he became a US citizen and entered the world of TV production.
His early ambition was to produce television shows that seem to have been based on his previous experiences in the army. He launched an American version of a French Reality series called Raid Gauloises – which described itself as ‘a race for survival’. That show failed to engage the attention of the American public – and it was soon followed by his production of another somewhat similar series called Eco-Challenge. In a sense, both these failed shows turned out to be dry runs for what became Survivor. Burnett had managed to pitch this new format successfully to the CBS network and when he advertised for participants he had already raised enough finance to be able to offer a winning cash prize of $1 million. Not surprisingly, he received thousands of applications from those who were eager to take part in the new show. They were whittled down to just fifty-six – who were then flown to Los Angeles and booked into a hotel where they were under strict instructions not to talk or communicate with each other.
The applicants were subjected to detailed medical check-ups and aggressive psychological tests. They were, for example, woken in the middle of the night with a flashlight shoved into their faces and were asked for an instant response to questions such as ‘If you were lying in a tent and on one side there was a man and on the other a woman, and they both came on to you sexually, what would you do?’
When the applicants had been reduced to fifteen, they were taken to an island off the coast of Borneo. They were then divided into three teams or ‘tribes’ and the production process was also divided into three sections: ‘Challenges’, ‘Reality’ and the ‘Tribal Council’. The latter included an elaborate ejection ceremony – supposedly based on traditional native beliefs but actually concocted by the show’s producers. At the end of every episode, the contestants would each vote for the individual they would most like to see ejected from the show. This protracted voting ritual was conducted at night and was accompanied by a dramatic soundtrack and illuminated by torchlight.
Underneath this phony shamanism, the series was firmly based on the abilities of individual contestants not only to form voting alliances with each other, but also to determine when was the right time to break or deny such alliances. This proved a very effective way of promoting covert intrigues and internal conflicts between the contestants and these reached a dramatic resolution in the ‘Tribal Council’ – when the bonds of trust that had been formed between the contestants could either be honoured or betrayed.
Survivor came on air just six weeks after filming had wrapped and it quickly smashed every previous ratings record in the USA. In August of that year, the finale of the series was watched by more than 57 million viewers. Versions of the show have now been produced successfully in more than forty different countries.
Survivor may be the most successful of the Reality TV shows that Burdett has produced, but it is by no means the only one. His first follow-up was Combat Missions, which split its players into four ‘squads’ – ex-Navy Seals; ex-SWAT cops; Older Veterans; and ‘Oddball Warriors’ –which competed against each other in what were described as ‘combat-like situations’. The ‘Oddball Warriors’ included Scott Helvensen – described by Nussbaum as a ‘fit, blond Captain America type’, whose role in his squad was that of the ‘alpha-male’. He had appeared on a number of other Reality shows – including Man vs. Beast, where he was the only player who managed to beat a chimpanzee in an obstacle race.
Helvensen proved very popular with US viewers – not least for his propensity to come out with salty expletives. However, due to a failed business venture, he felt compelled to take up a better-paid job with the infamous Blackwater independent military company. He was flown to Iraq – then in the grip of an armed insurgency – where he would encounter a very different and much harsher form of reality. Helvensen had never been in real combat, and he was killed in central Falujah just a few days after his arrival in that city. Two of his fellow players from Combat Missions were also killed in the same ambush. Their bodies was dragged behind a car in front of cheering mobs and set on fire before they were hanged from a bridge over the Euphrates.
Footage of this atrocity was screened across the world and led to a deep sense of outrage throughout the USA. Many of those TV viewers who had watched Helvensen in his various Reality shows regarded him as someone whom they liked and admired. Mark Burnett paid tribute to him as a ‘true American warrior’. Soon after his death, the US army launched a full-scale assault on Falujah, and, in the months that followed, hundreds of Iraqi civilians were killed in the American bombardment of the city where Helvensen had died. Some critics predicted that this horror might spell the beginning of the end of Reality TV, but that proved to be far from the case – and it was certainly not the end of Mark Burnett’s career as a Reality show producer. In fact, a whole new vista was about to open up for him – and a new Reality show that would, in time, have geopolitical consequences.
In 2003, Donald Trump had the reputation, according to Nussbaum, of being ‘a tabloid joke’. He was widely regarded as an incorrigible self-publicist whose personal and professional career had been marked by scandals and successive bankruptcies. I made a documentary film about Trump for the BBC around this time, and I can recall how familiar and preoccupied he seemed to be with the world of TV entertainment – often citing popular programmes in conversation and commenting critically on their stars.
Trump had played cameo roles in several TV series – such as Sex and the City. He had also featured briefly in Home Alone 2: indeed he had only allowed that movie to be shot in his hotel on the condition that he would appear in the film. He had also sung on a Broadway stage and had even turned up in a professional wrestling ring in a televised show for the WWE. He had tried to produce his own Reality TV show – in which he would judge a group of aspiring female models – but it had never been picked up by any US network. I got the impression when I was filming with him that Trump couldn’t wait to have his own TV series, and in 2003 that is just what Mark Burnett offered him.
They met in Trump Tower in February of that year to discuss Burnett’s ideas for a new Reality show. He had already pitched his proposal successfully to the NBC network as ‘the biggest job interview in the world’. The basic concept was deceptively simple: Burnett’s plan was to create an urban version of Survivor within a business context. As Nussbaum observes, this format combined elements of a talent show, like American Idol, with the intrigues and back-stabbings that are an integral part of most survival shows. Trump was already engaged in talks about a similar format called CEO and he was quick to agree to Burnett’s proposal.
From the beginning, Burnett wanted to present an image of Trump to his audience as the ultimate successful tycoon: wise, intuitive, decisive and – to use one of Trump’s favourite terms – a natural ‘winner’. The series was also designed to make capitalism seem fun, sexy and exciting. The initial tasks given to the two teams of contestants were playful and innocent. They included selling lemonade on the streets of New York and marketing its bicycle rickshaws. But, above all, the series promoted the person of Donald Trump: in Nussbaum’s words, he became Burnett’s ‘most effective product placement’.
The opening sequence featured Trump swooping over Manhattan in his helicopter. There were shots of Trump Tower, Trump Casinos, Trump Hotels and Trump Golf Clubs – cut to the thumping beat of songs like the O’Jays’ For the Love of Money. Most of the tasks that the contestants faced involved products owned by the Trump Organisation. They were required to sell Trump’s apartments, or Trump’s bottled water, or to promote Trump steaks. When they won a task, they got to ride in Trump’s helicopter.
The four producers who worked on the series were required to sign non-disclosure agreements. But, when one of these lapsed last year, Bill Pruitt, who had worked as a producer on the first two series, claimed that Trump’s screen persona was largely created in the post-production suite. According to Pruitt, Trump could ‘barely put a sentence together’ during the filming and some of his comments had to be dubbed in later to make him appear more ‘articulate and concise’. According to Pruitt, everything in the show was designed to demonstrate Trump’s ‘impeccable business instincts and unparallelled wealth’. When his offices were thought by the producers to look too ‘shabby’ to enhance that image, a set designer was recruited to make them look both more luxurious and more businesslike.
However, there is also evidence of the significant contribution that Trump made to the success of the series. One of those contributions was the way he jabbed two fingers aggressively at the person he was firing at the end of each episode. This dramatic gesture made it look almost as if he were shooting the unlucky contestant. This had not been discussed with the producers beforehand, but it became a signature feature of the entire series and was later used in other versions of the franchise. Trump even tried to establish copyright for the gesture.
The producers tried to guide Trump to the person they wanted him to fire from the show, but he often ignored their directions and went with his gut instinct. According to Nussbaum, the producers had to accept – however reluctantly – that Trump had ‘an undeniable instinct’ for what would make ‘good TV’. I met one of Trump’s producers on The Apprentice some years ago and asked him about the experience. Producers often feel that, if it weren’t for their input and advice, TV presenters would be left exposed and clueless. In this instance, however, the producer acknowledged to me that Trump’s instinct for what would play well with the show’s viewers was often better than his own.
When The Apprentice debuted in January 2004, the first reviews were uniformly negative. ‘Are you seized by an urge to burst out laughing at this spectacle?’ one critic wrotee. Another speculated that, over the coming weeks, TV viewers would come to ‘see, think, dream, imagine and vomit the name of Trump’. It was only when the scheduling of the show was moved to a prime time slot that its ratings began to improve and it was renewed for a second season. By its third season it was an established and substantial hit with a $2 million fee to advertise around the show. As the subsequent seasons progressed, Trump is said to have become more difficult and troublesome to work with. According to one producer, his off-camera remarks were often unpleasantly sexist – referring to a female contestant as ‘the one with the big implants’. He is also reported to have asked male contestants explicit and unwelcome questions about their sexual preferences. For obvious reasons, none of this would appear in the edited version on air.
For the last six seasons, Trump’s advisers on the set of The Apprentice boardroom included three of his children: Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr. Trump’s wife, Melania, also appeared from time to time – and several tasks set for the contestants featured her beauty and cosmetic products. Other tasks featured the fashion designs of his daughter. The promotion of his own and his family’s commercial interests proved very much to Trump’s financial advantage: he claimed to have earned $214 million from his years on the show – and that does not include related product licensing as his brand became better established.
The presence of his wife and children on screen suggested that Trump was a committed family man as well as a Master of the Universe. That was an image that was carried across fourteen successive seasons: it was also one that resonated strongly with many of his viewers – and, in time, with a sizeable chunk of the American electorate. When he was first elected president, some of those who had worked to make this series such a popular success are said to have felt responsible for having created a public persona for Trump that did not accord with their experiences of the private reality.
In the following years, Trump produced a few of his own Reality shows – all of which were, according to Nussbaum, ‘about models being trained to behave better’ and none of which proved successful. But the screen persona that been fashioned for him by Burnett – as a brilliant businessman and a devoted father – was one that continued to appeal to substantial sections of the American public and proved central to his two successful presidential campaigns.
Trump may not have produced any successful Reality shows – unless one counts his presidencies – but the same cannot be said of Mark Burnett. In the last twenty years, he has gone on to produce Shark Tank, The Voice, The Restaurant, Stars Earn Stripes, Toughest Cowboy and Rock Star – to name just some of them. In the process he has also collected thirteen Emmy awards. More surprisingly, he and his wife – the Derry-born actress Roma Downey – have also produced a number of faith-based scripted TV shows. These include The Bible – which was a number one series in many countries and has now been seen by more than 100 million viewers. .
It seems that Donald Trump has not forgotten just how much he owes to his old producer. Soon after he formed his second administration, he appointed Burnett as his ‘special envoy’ to the United Kingdom. This is a position separate from that of US ambassador: Trump said Burnett would work to ‘enhance diplomatic relations … focusing on investment opportunities and cultural exchanges’.
Donald Trump is now a former Reality TV star who has become the most powerful man on earth. He has also filled his current administration with so many TV presenters that the boundaries between popular television and populist politics almost seem to have been dissolved. Many of those now playing key roles in the USA government come from an entertainment or TV background – and, in particular, from Fox News. Pete Hegseth, the current secretary of state for defence, was a news anchor on Fox; Dan Bongino hosted the Unfiltered show on Fox – he is now deputy director of the FBI; Sean Duffy appeared on The Real World on Fox – he is now secretary of state for transportation; Dr Mehmet Oz hosted a daily medical show on Fox – he is now administrator of the medicare and medicaid services; Dr Janette Neshelwat was a regular paid medical contributor to Fox News – she is now the US surgeon general; Martin Makary joined Fox in 2020 – he is now head of the Federal Drugs Administration; Tulsi Gabbard was a regular paid contributor to Fox News – she is now director of national intelligence. Linda McMahon, the current secretary of state for education, is a co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment; Laura Ingraham still hosts The Ingraham Angle on Fox – she was recently appointed to the board of the Kennedy Centre – and so was Maria Bartiromo – who presents a daily show, Mornings with Maria, on Fox; Jeanine Pirro was co-host of The Five on Fox – she is now US attorney for Washington DC; Kimberley Guilfoyle was also co-host of The Five on Fox – she is now US ambassador to Greece; Mike Huckabee presented a daily show on Fox for six years – he is now US ambassador to Israel; Michael Waltz was a regular paid contributor to Fox News – he is now US ambassador to the United Nations; Tom Homan was a regular paid contributor to Fox News – he is now Trump’s ‘Border Czar’.
And, of course, a recent guest of honour in the White House was the Irish mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor. He was introduced in the Oval Office to most of Trump’s cabinet – and to Mark Burnett. The meeting took place just a few months after a High Court ruling in Dublin found that McGregor had sexually assaulted a woman in 2018.
Meanwhile, Reality television shows continue to metamorphose – or metastasise, if you prefer – into their multiple sub-genres. There are still, of course, the old reliable formats: hidden camera and prank shows; talent search shows; documentary verité series; dating shows; high-concept game shows; survival challenge shows; home improvement shows; and court shows that feature real-life cases. But new forms of Reality TV are constantly emerging, challenging expectations and introducing new twists to old formats. Emily Nussbaum believes that the biggest change that has taken place in recent years is not in the shows but in the people who watch them.
She argues that a new audience has grown up which embraces this genre without apology and regards it as a valid form of television in its own right. Many viewers, she points out, follow particular shows or formats with great passion and dedication. On or offline, she believes these viewers throw themselves into ‘spirited and sometimes surprisingly profound arguments’ about shows that the educated world once considered to be ‘irredeemably shallow’.
There has also been a change in the attitude or approach of those taking part in these shows. To put it simply, they have learned the grammar that informs them and have become much more skilful in manipulating those internal rules – as well as the producers – to their own advantage. Some have even used these shows as a means of beginning a new career in television. In Ireland, Brian Dowling, who currently works as a presenter on Virgin Media, first came to public attention in a season of the UK’s version of Big Brother; Anna Nolan also began a broadcasting career after featuring in the UK’s Big Brother, and Jennifer (Maguire) Zamparelli, who recently presented RTE’s Dancing with the Stars, first surfaced on the British version of The Apprentice.
As Nussbaum points out, the fans of Reality TV are not greatly concerned if what they are watching is actually real. If it looks faked, she thinks that can even add to the fun and form part of their enjoyment. She concludes that most Reality shows present ‘a flash of the authentic’ framed by ‘the dark glitter of the fake’. This she compares this to having a ‘dash of salt in dark chocolate’ – and for many viewers that is an irresistible combination.
1/7/2025
David Blake Knox has worked as a producer for RTÉ, the BBC and HBO. His independent production company, Blueprint Pictures, has made films and programmes for a range of channels in Ireland and abroad. His latest production, Face Down – the Disappearance of Thomas Niedermayer, is based upon his book of the same title.
