Emily Nussbaum (2:39)

Yes, absolutely. First of all, it's fascinating that he's on the show. It's also so interesting how that show has transmuted. Like when it started, it was this controversial, culture destroying kind of thing that people wrote these pieces about how it was the Apocalypse Now. It's this show that's changed a lot, both in terms of who goes on it, in terms of people's expectations of it, and in terms of it being an institution. Like, people take it for granted that it's always existed and now people look back on it nostalgically. Like, I know a bunch of people who during the pandemic were kind of watching early seasons with their kids. And the hit on the genre was always, nobody will ever want to rewatch these shows. And now it's actually like a cozy rerun kind of thing.

Koosha Navadar (3:23)

In my family, it was a cozy rerun during the pandemic. Interestingly enough, you know, we're going to get to more about Survivor a little later in the interview, but right at the top, you know, we've gotten some pushback on the show for talking about reality TV before. So I'd like to make start with making the case for why it's valuable to examine reality tv. Why? Why do you think it's something so worth talking about?

Emily Nussbaum (3:45)

I think it's worth talking about because not only is it a powerful industry, but at this point, the genre itself, and I define it in specific ways in the book and everything, but it's at the center of the culture. It's influenced so many things. Yes, politics, absolutely. But also simply the way people think about themselves, the way they document their lives, the way they conduct their relationships. And I think in that sense it's part of a bunch of like, junk art forms that people look down on and perceive as addictions, including television itself. But like, you know, comic books, all the way back to novels. Things that people think of as junky and harmful, and therefore the only way to talk about them is to disapprove. When I wrote this book, I mean, I'm a TV critic a lot of the time and I talk about whether I like things or don't like them. But that's not what this book is about. This book is about talking about real, like a lesser talked about history. Where did this come from? Because I do think it's misunderstood. And I tried in the book to tell it through the voices of the people who created it. Going back decades.

Koosha Navadar (4:51)

Well, there have been all kinds of moral panics about reality TV through the years. Has that been the case since the very beginning?

Emily Nussbaum (4:58)

Yes. And that surprised me because you know, when I started the book, when I first came up with the idea for the book, it was 2003, and the big boom post Survivor had just been happening, and I was sort of swept up in it. I was actually watching Big Brother stream on live, and I had this idea of, like, I'll write a book about this sort of wild new Hollywood. But when I actually got around to writing the book, I realized that that moral fervor, like the excitement about it and the hostility to those shows went back to literally the 40s. Like, I ended up writing about the origins of reality television in radio. And what really surprised me is when I read critical responses to it at the time, there were exactly the same arguments. People were like, what's happened to American culture? Why are people, narcissists, who are these weirdos, spilling the beans? And also, people regarded the shows, not inaccurately, as a cheap, tawdry, A kind of budgetary tactic, a strike breaker, a way to make stories without paying writers or actors. And all those themes have continued through reality history. But on the other hand, those initial motives to make it like the, you know, the titillating, voyeuristic qualities to it and the cheap qualities also led to some really innovative experiments with documentary.

Koosha Navadar (6:14)

Absolutely. I'm wondering, do you remember the first reality TV show that you watched that I watched?

Emily Nussbaum (6:19)

Well, it depends how you define it. I'm trying to think if there's. I mean, probably, you know, honestly, because I'm, you know, I'm in my late 50s. Like, everybody I talk to has a different set of references. So I actually watched all those shows, like real people in the 80s that were on. But the. The big thing for me was the. Of the Real World because just generationally, that was so compelling to me. When it went on, it was set in New York. It was people around my own age. I'd never seen anything like it. And I have to say, when I interviewed all the people who were on the show, they'd never seen anything like it. And they didn't really know what they were getting into, which was a repeated motif among people who were on these shows.

Koosha Navadar (6:57)

Yeah. In fact, let's talk about the Real World for a second. I'm gonna ask my engineer to skip a clip there because we have a clip from the Real World. And just as context for listeners, MTV has one of the main networks pushing out reality program. And that really began with the Real World. Here's a little bit from that very first episode. I thought I was like, this is never gonna happen. This is not going to happen. They can't do this to seven people. At first I thought that they were gonna put us in like this little box and it was gonna be like a nightmare.

McDonald's Customer (7:29)

This is the true story. True story.

Emily Nussbaum (7:31)

Seven strangers picked to live in a.

McDonald's Customer (7:34)

Loft and have their lives taped to find out what. Stop being polite. Could you get the phone and start getting real?

Emily Nussbaum (7:43)

The Real World.

Koosha Navadar (7:45)

That was a little bit from the very first episode of the Real World. Emily, what was new and innovative about the Real World when it first launched?

Emily Nussbaum (7:52)

Well, in the book, I talk about the Real World as marking the beginning of the modern period in reality tv. I talk about reality TV and reality programming as dirty documentary, where you combine cinema verite with things like game shows, soap operas and, and, and prank shows. And the Real World marked the point that the soap opera thread, which had come out in 1973 in American family, which I have a chapter about as well, became modernized. Like the An American Family was a documentary that told the story of a family in this very close up way with all of the intimate things about their lives. And the Real World did the same thing, but it was much more contrived situation. So it invented a lot of the things that mark modern. It had that diverse cast where they cast seven people who would otherwise not have known one another, who were young artists from different backgrounds. They put them in a house and there had never been a show like that where they artificially decorated a house, filled it with cameras and audio equipment, and then traced their lives. But there's also all sorts of stuff, including that incredible credit sequence that are unique to. Were unique to the show at the time, but ended up influencing everything, including this kind of little flashbacks and all sorts of crazy wild tilty camera work and the editing. All that very distinctive stuff. When you watch it on there, they were inventing it as it went along. And also during that show, they created to a large degree the convention of a lot of the jobs of making reality tv, including the field producer. So the field producer's the person who works on the show and works with the cast members, interviews them. And they created the use of the confessional on the show where the person's telling the story of what happened to them. So all of that stuff was being made up as it went along. And the Real World was a combination of genuinely documentary stuff and some interference, some manipulation. And there was a real struggle on the show about is that stuff ethical listeners?

Koosha Navadar (9:53)

We're talking to Emily Nussbaum, who's a staff writer for the New Yorker, and Her new book, Cue the the Invention of Reality tv, is out today, Today's publication day. Emily's also speaking tonight at the strand at 7pm we jumped ahead a little bit talking about the real world, but you mentioned An American family as well. So before we go forward, I wanna go back because before we had the Kardashian family to follow, there were the Louds. They're a wealthy California family who became the subject of this reality series that you mentioned called An American family in the 70s. Kind of like one of the more original televised versions of reality tv. Talk a little bit about that program. What were its initial aims?

Emily Nussbaum (10:31)

Well, this is one of my favorite chapters in the book. And first of all, I know the Louds, if they hear this, will cringe at the comparison to the Kardashians because they always hate that. Everyone who was involved in the show that I interviewed for the book, like the Living Louds, I also talked to Pat Loud, the mother from the family who sadly died while I was writing the book. And the Raymonds who filmed it, they all regarded it not as a reality show. It was a cinema verite, highbrow documentary on PBS exploring this provocative thing, which is an intimate life of a family. But when the show came out, because of some of the subject matter, the parents got divorced on the air. Lance Loud, who became sort of the star of the show. The oldest son who was visibly gay, an artist who lived in the Chelsea Hotel. The divorce and his homosexuality were such shocking things in 1973, which is when the show came out. People had seen nothing like this before. So the way I talk about it in the book is the show was filmed as a documentary, but it was received as a reality show, which was as a moral crisis of people violating the differences between private and public who deserved to be famous. And everybody had an opinion. Everybody judged the Louds, everybody wanted to weigh in. And it turned the Louds into the very first reality stars.

Koosha Navadar (11:42)

Yeah. I'm wondering what did that celebrity dom look like for the Louds?

Emily Nussbaum (11:46)

For the Louds, it was. I. I talk about this throughout the book, but there's a certain innocence to the period I'm covering where people genuinely didn't know what they were getting into. And Grant Loud, when I spoke to him, and it was complicated. Cause, you know, he's now in his 60s. But of course I think of him as a teenager. Cause I've seen him on the show, he was saying, it's hard to look back on that period and understand this. But we were doing it. What felt like, for elevated, artsy reasons, to teach people about things. But once the show came out and they became super famous, they actually started doing a ton of press to try to tell their side of the story. This is a consistent thing. Like, people want to seize back the control of what happened because it was very painful. Like, a lot of the response was very cruel and very judgmental. There were vicious and often very homophobic pieces written about Lance Loud. But unfortunately, as a lot of reality stars discover, going out in public and trying to tell your side of the story often just extends the cycle because then people are like, why are you doing more? You know, people judged the Louds as looking for attention, and I think that's still the way people feel.

Koosha Navadar (12:50)

Well, you know, I did see a clip while I was researching this from one of the Louds, talking about wanting that kind of celebrity status. I think that's another thing that I see cut through reality TV is this search for celebrity Dom.

Emily Nussbaum (13:01)

Absolutely.

Koosha Navadar (13:02)

And so for you, what can we learn about An American Family? In addition to, like, things repeat themselves, but also, just in terms of the birth of reality tv, is there any precursor that we can see in An American Family that kind of applies later on?

Emily Nussbaum (13:17)

Yeah, I think American Family really does mark the beginning of the. The kind of show that merges documentary models with soap opera models. People received it as a real life soap opera, and they were so shocked and provoked by seeing people like themselves in all the intimacy of their lives on the air. So, I mean, I guess is what you're asking, like, what from that show carries on? I mean, that's the part that does connect to me as much as the Louds I know, would not like this, but with the Bravo shows and the Real Housewives and stuff like that, they're shows where people like to see real people as characters. And when An American Family came out, because it was so new, people had a lot of confusion about how it was made. You know, some people thought it was scripted. Other people understood it was a documentary at this point, on shows that are soap opera like shows, when people go on them, they understand that they are sort of transforming their own personality into a character, and people are going to know them. And yes, absolutely. People go on reality TV and always have to some degree, because they want to be famous, because they want to be known, they want to go out in public, and they make that decision for all sorts of reasons. And sometimes they regret it and sometimes they embrace it. And the one person among the Louds who did embrace it was Lance Loud. Because he was a real forerunner of the kind of reality star who's a preternaturally talented, charismatic individual who looks into the camera and wants it to see them. He was very influenced by Warhol. He'd ridden to Warhol, like, literally when he was in his tweens. He wrote letters to Warhol and that's how he saw it. At one point, I think he talked about himself as imagining himself in this Warhol movie. So, I mean, it's very before its time. But then there are lots of people that I talk about in the book who fit into this category all over the map, like, you know, people like Omarosa on the Apprentice. Like, there's a certain kind of person who, when they go on the show, they are performing themselves. They know how to do it and they're willing to do it despite the risks.

Koosha Navadar (15:17)

And that updated sophistication as we've seen it evolve is definitely making a difference in the genre itself. We have to take a quick break, but I want to talk more about that when we get back. We're here with Emily Nussbaum, who's a staff writer for the New Yorker. The book is Cue the Sun, the Invention of Reality tv. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more about the genre today. Stay with us. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Kusha Navadar and I'm excited to be sitting down with Emily Nussbaum, who's a staff writer for the New Yorker. Her new book is Cue the the Invention of Reality tv. It's out today. Emily is also speaking tonight at the strand at 7pm so before the break, we were talking about all of the precursors to kind of the modern birth of the genre. And you write that for a while reality programs were seen as like, kind of unique one offs. Not a whole category of television that was ripe for innovation. Why do you think it took television executives so long to figure out that there might be a whole, whole industry here?

Emily Nussbaum (16:23)

Yeah, you know, for a long time. And this was the criticism of the shows, but it was true. They were just seen as gimmicks. Like, you know, and there are all sorts of reality shows I talk about in the book. I talk about the period when, like, Chuck Barris had the Dating Game and the Newlywed Game. And that was sort of a short brief. People regard it as like a flash in the pan thing where you get high ratings because it was kind of a. What's it called? I was gonna say a festival, but like A. It was a display for everybody. It was just like a shocking event that came, got huge ratings and then died out. I think part of it was because. I mean, part of it's because of the design of television. At the point that Charlie Parsons, who created the Survivor format, was trying to sell his show, he couldn't sell it in part because there are dramas, there are comedies, there are sports shows, there are news shows, but there was nothing like this kind of format. So it took a long time for people to be able to conceive of this as something that would be like an ongoing series that had any kind of lasting value.

Koosha Navadar (17:23)

You talk about the Survivor, ultimately the Survivor. You talk about the show Survivor a lot in the book. And, you know, you also mentioned Mark Burnett, who's one of the most influential and complicated figures in reality tv. He's the creator and producer behind shows like Survivor and also the Apprentice. How would you describe his TV legacy?

Emily Nussbaum (17:41)

You know, it's interesting because in this book I write a lot about. You know, I write about both cast and crew, but I write a lot about the. Mostly guys. There were some women who were the creators of reality tv and they happened to certain patterns. They're piratical, larger than life, kind of mischievous, pushy, entrepreneurial figures. And they come from different backgrounds. Mark was unique to me because he really was a marketer. I mean, he got into reality TV primarily because he wanted to create a business. And initially he was creating this adventure racing thing based on this adventure show he'd been on, the Raid Gal was. But I don't think his goal was actually to create reality television. And he did not create the Survivor format that was created by. The idea was invented by a British producer, Charlie Parsons, and with a team of people who came up with all the things people take for granted, like the tribes voting people out. Like that was actually its own invention, which I try in certain ways to celebrate in the book, because I think it's a hugely influential and meaningful format everyone's tried to imitate. Mark's part in this was that he bought that format. He obviously produced it out the wazoo and turned it into just a blockbuster. But also he sold it to cbs. They couldn't get it on the air before that. And he sold it. Cause he's a very, very savvy guy with advertising. He plugged it full of product integration and various deals. He actually cut a brilliant deal himself where he got half of the advertising revenues and he sold it to Les Moonves on the basis of. If you put this on as a summer experiment, and it literally gets zero ratings. You still lose no money. Like, it was basically the ultimate deal. So it's kind of slipped under the transom. I mean, you could rewrite history where he never got Survivor on the air. There had been a version of it produced in Sweden, but it could never have gotten onto American tv. I think it really would have changed history.

Koosha Navadar (19:28)

The whole idea of it kind of turning from flashes in the pan, like you're talking about, to this. This entire industry, but some of the biggest ones might not have even happened. It is this idea of, like, reality TV being completely misunderstood in some ways. And for me, even the name reality TV seems like a misnomer because so much of what we see on reality TV is partially scripted or manipulated or edited. You talk to a lot of producers for this book. How honest did you feel like they were in the lengths that they went to make storylines work for what they wanted?

Emily Nussbaum (20:02)

Well, I'm sure some people didn't tell me everything, but I have to say, people were great. Like the sources for this book, they have great stories, like, Juicy. The stories just from Survivor itself, I have two chapters on Survivor were fascinating because the truth is, a lot of the producers are, I think, legitimately proud of the accomplishments they've done. Some of them have done fairly shady things. And I feel like there were a lot of people who were pretty honest with me about that. Like, there's a very manipulative side of this. That mixture of fakery and realness is obviously native to the genre. And I was trying to describe that in the book. But one of the best ways is by talking to the people who do it. I find there are two misunderstandings of reality. Like, honestly, I think there are some people who are like, the whole thing's scripted. Nothing's real, Everybody's faking it. It's kind of a way to separate yourself out and be like, oh, I can't get fooled. They're all just. And obviously some shows are especially modern shows, soft scripted. And I trace the development of that. But that doesn't mean that there aren't actual people on it and that some of what's happening isn't authentic, despite the contrivances of it. To me, the Survivor aspect of it, and part of the reason I think it was such a lasting accomplishment is that it combined together the three major threads of reality experiments, all those gimmicks you were talking about. So, like, there was the threat of the soap opera that ran through American Family and the Real World. There were game shows and there were prank shows that went back to Candid Camera. And the thing about Survivor is that it's essentially a game show that has so many prank show aspects that put such pressure on people. They have to react and that becomes like a soap opera. I think that's what inspired so many things that came afterwards, Both the real and the fake ones.

Koosha Navadar (21:39)

It's like this trifecta, like the perfect storm of reality TV show is what you're saying in some ways, right?

Emily Nussbaum (21:44)

Yeah. And I think, you know, it's funny because both because it was successful and because it was a pretty powerful and replicable format, people. Right after that. I have a chapter called the Explosion. That's essentially the moment that it changes from a set of little experiments to just this vomiting out every part possible kind of mutation. Yeah. Suddenly there's like celebreality and there's talent contests and there's all sorts of different kinds of things. There's, you know, everything gets amped up and steroided out and some of them succeed and some of them fail. But it really was a massive gold rush.

Koosha Navadar (22:17)

I thought it was interesting in the book how there are all these permutations and you don't mention the Kardashians. Why was that?

Emily Nussbaum (22:24)

That's because it goes past the point. Like this book runs from 1947 to around 2009. And I do touch on the Kardashians because I talk about the Kardashians and the Real Housewives in the chapter on the development of Bravo and where Bravo came from. And to me, those two things go together. I mean, the Kardashians are sort of both a celeb reality show and a housewives like show and a soft scripted show. But honestly, it's because I was trying to end the book at the period when the Kardashians appeared on the scene. I think there should be another book that's about the next period and about the stuff that they presaged. But they're obviously, that's a tremendously influential show partially for the kind of show it is, which is this sort of contrived soft scripted show about people who are also, I assume, the executive producers of the show. So they're, they're, they're in charge of this. And also it's an economic model. Like they're, they're marketing themselves and it's the ultimate in product integration.

Koosha Navadar (23:21)

How much does the reality TV show as a genre seem to get involved, influenced for you by the sophistication of these individuals who now want to go and appear. They are even more sophisticated than the Louds back in American Family. They know that they want to be rich. They know that they can get famous from here. Is that affecting the genre for you?

Emily Nussbaum (23:38)

It is. But I think people can overestimate the level at which people can control what it means to be on a modern reality show. Yes, it's absolutely true that when people, for instance, go on Survivor, now they've watched Survivors, sometimes they're like PhDs in Survivor. Like they go on knowing all the people I wrote about were literally, when they were on the show were like, are we allowed to form alliances? Is that unethical? Like that Nobody feels like that anymore. And when people go on the Bachelor similarly, they know what the Bachelor is. But the truth is when you go on a reality show, you might think you know what you're getting into, but you don't know very much about the structures of it and how production works. And you sign a contract that has a very, very strict non disclosure agreement and you're not allowed to talk about what happened to you. And, and once you go into it, if anything really bad happens, it's forced into private arbitration. So I think that sometimes people overestimate how savvy and in control modern reality stars are. I'm not saying that some people don't go in with a clear eyed sense of what the risks and what the benefits are and the idea of becoming an influencer and some of them succeed. But I would say a larger proportion of people than you imagine go in thinking they can control it and not being able to.

Koosha Navadar (24:51)

Yeah. You also talk about in the final chapter of the book the Apprentice, which I was also very interested in, which is of course what brought Donald Trump into the homes of Americans for years. After looking at it so deeply, do you have any sense for yourself what you think of whether President Trump could have happened if it was not for the Apprentice?

Emily Nussbaum (25:10)

Yeah, I have a pretty clear cut answer to that. I truly don't think that Trump would have been elected without the Apprentice. Obviously there are many factors that led to, to him being elected. I think a lot of times politics, writers, because they dismiss reality TV like everybody else did, didn't take that factor as seriously as they should have because that show is a show. It's like a talent show about marketing. What that show is, is it treats marketing as, and branding as like ballroom dancing on or singing on other talent shows. And the big accomplishment of that show was rebranding Donald Trump. And it was interesting to rewatch it Cause it's a very. The first season is what I write about on this. And the first season's a very skillfully made show. It's right at the end of the period. I'm talking about, like, by the point. They made the Apprentice. Those were real jobs. Everybody knew how to edit shows. They knew how to design all of the elements of it. It's beautifully filmed. There was a lot of money behind it, comparatively. But you cannot separate that show from Trump. And when I talk to people who made it, I talk to them all about how they felt at the time and how they feel now. And some of them feel understandably, really guilty about what the show did for Trump. But at the time, they saw it differently. I mean, he was not a potential president, and a lot of them knew all of his flaws and all of his crimes, and they thought of him as a deadbeat and a clown, but they thought of the show as a comedy. And some of them told me they were surprised by how the cast felt, which was very different. The cast were business people, by and large, and the vast majority of them really respected Trump and wanted to work for him. So I think that tension between the two sides of it is what drove the making of that for first season. But, yeah, I do feel like that's Mark Burnett's responsibility.

Koosha Navadar (26:51)

Wow. Yeah. And in the beginning of the interview, you had talked about historically how there are these criticisms of reality tv. One of them that you mentioned was a way of subverting writers and finding a way to make profitable content fast. And historically, reality TV has been seen as a way to even subvert unions, especially during writers strikes like the one we saw last year. Have there been any successful movements to try to unionize reality TV producers?

Emily Nussbaum (27:17)

Yes. Well, not successful with producers. Producers are largely non unionized. And in the book, I trace this real attempt in an earlier WGA strike to get scripted writers to be in solidarity with unscripted writers. Because, you know, people who work on reality shows do actually write stories in a lot of ways out of a different kind of material, but it failed. And actually, to this day, you know, reality television is still on the air because it is broadly non unionized. There have been some elements of it that are unionized. There was a more successful attempt to unionize editors under aetc. I never know how to pronounce that. Sorry. And camera operators are also more unionized. The one thing I don't really write about in the book is any attempt to unionize cast members, because there was no attempt to do that. So until very, very recently. And I actually wrote about this in a piece that I wrote for the New Yorker about the show Love is Blind that was about the first ripplings of an attempt to actually find some kind of way to get rights, to get protections, to get some kind of treatment of people on reality shows as workers. That's never happened before. Like, the whole period I trace in my book, people genuinely weren't talking about that. Now they are. And I think it is a little bit because of the MeToo movement, the black Lives Matter movement, and the strikes, I think, changed the conversation about what people deserve when they're on a set. And, you know, reality TV is a lot of things. It's art, it's commerce, but it's also a workplace. And so I think that's the work people are doing now.

Koosha Navadar (28:53)

And so what do you see as though the future of reality tv? What direction do you think it's gonna go in?

Emily Nussbaum (28:56)

I am the worst predictor of the future of television. Look, I'm always like. I always would be asked that. Back when I was like editing stuff about, I was like, I don't know, I always guess wrong. Like, literally one year, I guess, two hit shows, that's it. So I just can't say I do know. You know, people who work in reality tv, I call it reality TV in the book, they do not call it reality tv if you talk to them, they call it unscripted content. It's a much cleaned up, more corporate sounding term. I know they're under a lot of stress right now. I mean, this has been a very difficult year for people in that industry. And there's a lot of pressure on people in television in general. There's so many shifts that just have to do with the industry in ways I can't possibly get into in detail. But I don't think it's going anywhere. I mean, there is a vast audience that grew up on these shows. They are passionate about them. I've talked to people who, you know, while talking about the book, there are people who loathe all reality, and then there are people who it is the only thing they watch. It's really central to them. And I think that that audience that loves these shows is going to continue to be out there. So. So I think there might be a more ethical version that could be created. And that kind of is what remains to be seen.

Koosha Navadar (30:02)

We don't know what's coming, but we will certainly watch it. It sounds like it.

Emily Nussbaum (30:05)

I agree.

Koosha Navadar (30:06)

Emily Nussbaum is a staff writer for the New Yorker. Her new book is Cue the the Invention of Reality tv. It's out today. And Emily's also gonna be speaking tonight at the strand at 7pm Emily, thanks for coming down, hanging out with us.

Emily Nussbaum (30:18)

Thank you so much for talking to me.

McDonald's Customer (30:21)

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Emily Nussbaum (30:24)

Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order, miss?

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