How to Refresh a Maturing Reality Genre

How to Refresh a Maturing Reality Genre 06.04.2014 As the unscripted genre matures, producers need to find ways to bring a bit more uncertainty and surprise to reality programming or risk boring audiences. That was the conclusion of a panel of unscripted programming vets as they kicked off the RealScreen West conference in Santa Monica on Wednesday. "I think that the reality genre is maturing. There was a while there when anything you put on the air was fresh and worked. Now I think we're at a stage where not everything is working," said Nancy Daniels, TLC's general manager. "The audience feels like they've seen everything." CAA's Alan Braun, who reps creatives and producers of unscripted staples like "Big Brother" and "Dancing with the Stars" said that recent waves of consolidation among companies have created a crisis of fear where creativity can be stifled by a desire to maximize profits. But Braun said there was one key to keeping the genre fresh: finding captivating characters. "We don't need to over think our genre; It starts with great characters," Braun said. "There's character, there's content, and there's a little bit of process. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. We're evolving as a genre that's been around for 15-20 years. We're trying to find new characters." Daniels and Braun appeared alongside World of Wonder co-founder Fenton Bailey, All3Media America chair Stephen Lambert, Bunim/Murray Productions chair Jonathan Murray, and Lifetime Networks EVP and GM Rob Sharenow. The panel also agreed that presenting old reality favorites in a new light was a great way to win over audiences. Case in point, they said? Lifetime's "True Tori" with Tori Spelling. The recently-wrapped series followed the upheaval in the marriage between Spelling and Dean McDermott, standing in stark contrast to their earlier Oxygen series "Tori & Dean," which focused on the beginning of their life together as a married couple trying to set up various homes. "We've seen Tori, but we've not really watched a marriage unfold," said Braun. "They broke the rules. They took an Oxygen talent and put her in a scenario that we tell our clients to stay away from. It's so relevant. The show is so real." Real was the key word for Lambert, who said that the longevity of the reality genre has meant that viewers are now wise to anything that smacks of heavy-handed scripting. "I think the audience has become much more perceptive to inauthenticity," Lambert said. "We have to do everything we can to capture authenticity." Taking a page from the most popular competition shows, like "Survivor" and "Amazing Race" was another popular prescription. "One of the key things about the biggest reality shows is that when you watch them the outcome hasn't happened yet," Lambert said. "We have to find other ways outside of the competition framework for telling stories where when you start watching you don't know what the ending will be. That gives some sort of excitement to the show.".

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