CHAPMAN LAW REVIEW Citation: George Brietigam, Keeping it Real: How the FCC Fights Fake Reality Shows with 47 U.S.C. 509, 22 CHAP. L. REV. 369 (2019). --For copyright information, please contact
[email protected]. CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY | FOWLER SCHOOL OF LAW | ONE UNIVERSITY DRIVE | ORANGE, CALIFORNIA 92866 WWW.CHAPMANLAWREVIEW.COM Do Not Delete 5/22/2019 8:38 PM Keeping it Real: How the FCC Fights Fake Reality Shows with 47 U.S.C. 509 George Brietigam* I. INTRODUCTION The early 2000s was an exciting time for primetime entertainment. A new breed of television program was sweeping the nation’s airwaves that would forever change the American zeitgeist—reality television.1 Survivor (2000) is widely credited as the series that popularized and defined the modern concept of reality television.2 Commentators almost universally regard Mark Burnett’s pioneering program as the first commercially successful reality game show, and the numbers back up their assertion. During the summer of 2000, an average of 28.3 million viewers tuned into CBS Wednesday nights to see which “survivor” would be the next to be “voted off” the island.3 The show’s finale attracted an unprecedented 51.1 million viewers,4 greatly surpassing anyone’s wildest expectations, beating out the World Series, NBA finals, NCAA men’s basketball finals, and the Grammy Awards of that year.5 To put Survivor’s first season viewership in perspective, Game of Thrones, the most watched show during the summer of 2017, only attracted an average of 13.1 million viewers (less than * J.D. Candidate, Expected May 2019, Chapman University Dale E.