Hollywood is destabilized. The rise of streamers fragmented the industry; Covid fragilized production companies; the strikes delivered a major blow to cable and network television.

Societal upheavals reshaped the dynamic of the programming landscape. The triple whammy of the pandemic on top of the record-breaking unionized strikes of both the actors’ and writers’ guilds further helped the transition from legacy media to streaming.

The strikes led to a halt in development and production of scripted programming, as well as a slowdown in the greenlighting of unscripted shows from increasingly frugal networks and cost-cutting approaches from nearly every major media conglomerate.

“The strikes were a symptom of a greater ill in the industry,” screenwriter and executive producer Andrew W. Marlowe said, pointing to a changing economic paradigm that is shifting from a largely network and cable-based model to a streaming service mode with a proliferation of content.

Marlowe, known for ABC’s hit crime series Castle and CBS’s action series The Equalizer, revealed that it was only a matter of time before the overleveraged streaming bubble burst.

The SAG-AFTRA’s and WGA’s labor disputes had the potential to restore some of the luster of reality programming given that less scripted content was being created. Many were expecting a reality boom. That boom did not happen.

Cable networks are far behind

Scott Stone is a reality TV producer and founder of Stone & Company Entertainment. He said that there was a complete change in how the money flows in the industry today. “The traditional media companies were trying to hang on to their old media income levels and that was a mistake,” Stone said. “And meanwhile, Netflix got way ahead. What’s happening is a very painful transitionary period.”

Scott Stone (photo from Stone & Cie Entertainment)

Streamers have edged out cable networks like CBS, ABC and Fox –which are based on models that have lost large portions of their market share to streaming giants.

“Only a few buyers are out there,” Stone said in March 2024. “There was a consolidation of all that money into a few people’s hands,” Stone continued, referring to merged groups like Bravo/Peacock, Warner Bros/Max/HBO/Discovery and Disney +/Hulu.

The viewership of CBS’s longest-running competition show Survivor was 28.3 million in 2000 –with season one’s finale racking up a whopping 51.69 million viewers. British TV producer Mark Burnett was the mind behind the show that would revolutionize the industry in the early 2000’s. The show sparked a unique change in the television landscape of the time and quickly became the symbol of the golden age of reality programming.

Nearly a quarter century later, these golden years seem to be over.

The viewership of CBS’s longest-running competition show Survivor was divided by four over the course of 45 seasons. to 6.32 million viewers in 2023.

Classic cable shows such as ABC’s The Bachelor and CBS's Big Brother lost their grip and appeal to rival streamers’ more modern shows like Peacock’s competition show Traitors and Netflix’s dating show Love Island.

Contestants on Survivor in 2000 vs. 2023 (photo from Instagram @Survivorcbs

Why are they declining, then? In addition to the war between cable TV and streamers, Stone explains that programming is produced in cycles. When a new show comes in, then the other show becomes outdated, shaking up the dynamic of the genre. “That’s just the nature of the beast,” Stone said. “Certain shows might die because they’ve gotten old and run their genre of television at the time. What will happen is the next generation will invent a new version of Big Brother that’s better and bolder than Big Brother was when it came up.”

“It’s amazing frankly that Survivor and Big Brother have lasted as long as they have.” Stone said.

A major rival in the industry, the giant Netflix has hastened the rampant decline of cable networks like Bravo or CBS. With over 238 million paid memberships across 190 countries in 2023, the most subscribed video-on-demand streaming platform sparked a change in the way TV shows were produced, distributed and consumed.

What are the consequences of the rise of streamers on unscripted TV, then?

The ten most-watched TV series of all times on Netflix are scripted –with highly-acclaimed series like Stranger Things and Bridgerton sweeping most of the numbers. And while three of the ten most-watched shows in 2020 were unscripted, no reality TV show appeared on the 2023 ratings chart.

The reason behind this decline? Money. There has been a period of expansion where networks wouldn’t balk to buy shows –scripted or unscripted, Marlowe explains. This period of profit and greenlights has ended and the industry has entered a necessary period of contraction, where deals and new shows become rare.

“That doesn’t have to do with [the public’s] appetite,” Marlowe said. “It has to do with a business that got drunk on venture capital, money and expansion, now trying to meet the fiscal responsibility of how we justify the budget of these shows.”

Some shows even deserted their longtime network and pivoted to a streaming platform. After 20 seasons, the Kardashians left their historic home E! and signed an exclusive deal with Hulu, a more “tech forward” media as Khloe Kardashian wrote.

Disney Entertainment’s co-Chairman, Dana Walden, justified the company’s bet “Who would you want more for your unscripted slate than the Kardashians?”

While a generous deal was put on the table according to Walden, free production management also factored into the decision-making. While the sisters don’t have to comply to E!’s shooting requirements, the airing of the show isn’t restricted to a tight schedule. “We hated how long we had to wait,” Kim Kardashian said. “That was, like, the death of us because once we got over something, we had to rehash it all over again.”

Unscripted TV is going into survival mode

“There was a period of expansion over expansion,” Marlowe said. “There were a ton of scripted shows and a ton of unscripted shows. What you’re seeing is a contraction that’s currently going on in the industry. You’re seeing companies merge, you’re seeing less content being created overall.”

Marlowe said that any producer “who came in during the contraction” has the risk to be put out of work.

Amid major waves of layoff across nearly every entertainment company, this contraction hit Hollywood’s executive jobs. “The dire situation, ‘bordering on worst-case scenario,’ the seasoned TV executive said, was created by a perfect storm of Covid, strikes and “poor management decisions coming home to roost” driven by short-sighted moves by media companies,” Nellie Andreeva wrote for Deadline.

But what sorts of strategies can producers employ to survive, then?

With broadcast networks hobbled by streamers on the lookout for low-cost shows, unscripted programming has a solid financial foothold.

“If you can just hold on long enough you’re likely to survive.” Stone said.

Erin Cristall talks everything strikes and unions. Click play to hear more! (photo credits to Mike O'Sullivan, Inc.)

How can producers sell unscripted shows to buyers, then? Erin Cristall is a TV producer and Development Consultant, and previously worked as SVP at Bunim-Murray Productions. She said that a way to sell a project is to add an executive producer with star power to it. For example, Marlowe’s reputation as a screenwriter precedes him in the scripted industry.

Marlowe created, wrote and produced the hit scripted TV series Castle. For the first time in his career, he is currently working on a reality show. “When you switch from one genre to another, you always have that learning curve in terms of dealing with the budget, the casting and the day to day production.”

And developing an unscripted show is nothing like working on scripted projects. “My process is to work backwards,” Cristall said. “I want to know who is buying and what they are looking for. What is an idea that I can come up with that fulfills that need? And then what else can I package onto this idea to make it a product to sell and not just an idea – because nobody wants to pay for an idea.”

“I’ve enjoyed being able to explore a new form of entertainment,” Marlowe said. “What I'm hoping to do is land my special flavor and my expertise. It’s a different creative opportunity to engage with the audience, and bring a different kind of storytelling to the screen.”

Flipping the script

Scripted and unscripted programming mutually impact each other.

Cristall’s most famous projects include Oxygen’s tattoo show Best Ink, Lifetime’s Project Runway: All Stars, and Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen starring Chef Gordon Ramsay. “Unscripted TV has had a good effect on storytelling.” Cristall said.

Some scripted shows turned into reality TV hit series. The British reality competition series Squid Game: The Challenge was adapted from Squid Game, South Korean survival-thriller series. Likewise the dystopian trilogy The Hunger Games gave the idea for a Russian survival reality show –introduced as a social experiment– Game 2: Winter.

Squid Game: The Challenge is an adaptation of the Korean scripted series (credits to E! News)

“People who have responded to shows like Star Wars or Harry Potter really want to live in those universes,” Marlowe said. “That creates theme park rides and experiences, and similarly the unscripted world is a place for world extensions that you can bring to those people.”

The opposite is also true. Reality television has impacted the scripted world. “The first season of Survivor, the villain won,” Cristall recalls. “That would never happen in scripted TV but because of that, scripted TV realized it’s okay for us to create characters that are flawed, and maybe we don't like them so much at first, but we dive into understanding what their motivations are to be the way they are.”

Yennefer Fang, filmmaker (photo by Thomas Legrand)

Unscripted TV brings out real-life stories that feed the imagination of screenwriters. Yennefer Fang specializes in documentary filmmaking. “[The genre of] documentary brings the realness to a character. That’s the beauty of the genre. You’re seeing someone’s real life. Fictions, on the other hand, are remakes of someone’s journey.”

A balanced ecosystem

Scripted and unscripted TV are constantly put in comparison –but they can’t truly be compared. “In a healthy ecosystem, scripted TV plays a role in reflecting the culture, using smart storytelling,” Marlowe said. “But you also have room for this other area in the ecosystem.”

“There is room in a healthy ecosystem for all of them. The balance tips when people start doing too much of one and they don't have the other. All unscripted TV makes for an unhealthy viewing diet for the public.” Marlowe said.

And in this balanced entertainment ecosystem, both genres serve different purposes. “A lot of people talk about unscripted TV as their guilty pleasure,” Marlowe said. “We, naturally, as human beings develop affinities with various characters.” And the reason is straightforward: those characters are relatable.

“When you watch unscripted TV, you put yourself in a position that you could be on the show.” Stone said.

Yet, reality TV has faced stiff criticism and sparked the most negative reactions across all genres. “Shows are still edited to reinforce stereotypes, from the vapid blonde to the angry Black person to the sassy gay man,” Judy Berman wrote for Time Magazine. “Docusoaps thrive on the notion that women are vain, petty gossips. Conspicuous consumption is celebrated and obscene wealth is portrayed as an end in itself.”

Reality TV stands as a feel-good genre. But maybe not for the reason you’re thinking about. “Reality TV makes us feel better about ourselves because most people on TV, let’s face it, have problems,” Stone said. “And it’s good to see their problems.”

Stone continues: “Let’s take the Real Housewives or Below Deck. I call these shows –this is just me– rich people behaving badly. That’s the same thing that Succession was, right? It’s rich people who you don’t really like and we watch those shows because we look at them and go: ‘Oh thank God, I don’t have friends like that!’ or ‘Man, that reminds me of my boss’ or ‘what a jerk this guy is, money didn’t buy him happiness’”

The Real Housewives franchise has grown into a global reality arsenal –including ten U.S. versions, 27 spin-offs and 29 international adaptations.

And yet the Bravo/Peacock vault keeps getting bigger. The Traitors, streaming on Peacock, outshined the housewives ratings. The second season of the murder mystery game rose to “most-watched unscripted series in the U.S. across all streaming platforms” according to the streamer, logging a whopping 384 million minutes viewed.

Networks are looking to develop franchisable shows like Netflix’s Selling Sunset, Cristall said. The Oppenheim Group, high-end real estate brokerage, now stretches to Tampa and the OC. “When our producers come in the room and pitch a new type of docuseries, the network will say ‘let’s give it a sort of blanket title with a colon and something else underneath’”, Cristall said. “They’re hoping that they can franchise that concept into various locations or types.”

Between scripted and unscripted: fantasized tales come to life

Another set of unscripted shows relies on fantasy reality. Reality programming focuses on promoting an idea of perfection –fake or real– to the viewers. “There are some things about the Real Housewives that are that way too. Wouldn’t it be fun to live like that?” Stone said.

He continued: “Or home makeover shows where somebody comes in and makes your crappy house look really beautiful. That’s a fantasy, right? And then there is the Bachelor of it all, which is the fairytale Cinderella fantasy of some: a beautiful guy coming, sweeping you off your feet and taking you to a romantic place. And then at the end of the day, he proposes to you and isn’t that wonderful? And then you find out later that they never got married.”

Scripted and unscripted TV storytelling share similarities. “They’re the same storytelling we like in our scripted fantasies, but those are real life stories.,” Stone said. “They’re just a little closer to reality.”

Is fabricated reality really a bad thing?

The genre gave credence to underheard voices and real-life stories. It had a strong impact on the audience. “Showing people in all their dimensions is something that reality TV has been able to do really well,” Cristall said.

“People covered head-to-toe in tattoos might walk down the streets. On Best Ink, we were able to showcase these people and hear their stories and see most importantly the amazing artists they are.”

Is reality TV real? Maybe not. Does it matter? Well, no. Viewers know that they’re watching an idealized or manipulated reality. First-timers on reality shows might be camera-virgin and act spontaneous. But let’s face it, there is a whole different category of reality programming and franchises that rely on a well-trained cast that always delivers strong lines.

“After the first season of a show, nobody is a real person anymore, and they’re all performers,” Stone said. “Once you see yourself on TV and people tell you how they feel about you on TV, you don’t respond the same way. But that doesn’t mean you’re not good for TV.”

About characters putting on an act, Cristall replies: “Everyone is self-branding. So it’s almost impossible to cast somebody now that is completely authentic and doesn’t think of themselves through the lens of a camera.”

Yet reality TV explores real-life scenarios. The hit docu-series Love on the Spectrum on Netflix focuses on young adults on the autism spectrum navigating romantic relationships. “Almost all of us are affected by ‘the spectrum’ so the show bravely helps normalize the lives of people living with autism and remind us that they want the same things everybody wants - love, jobs, fun, etc,” Cristall said. “My opinion is better to showcase the characters and open up the discussion than not.”