Back in 2003, Emily Nussbaum developed a covert guilty pleasure: she started watching the streaming 24-hour feeds of the first season of Big Brother in the U.S. Big Brother is a reality television show that debuted in the US in the year 2000. If you’ve never seen it, the show is basically about a group of people who are isolated in a house that’s under constant surveillance, and one contestant gets voted out each week. For Emily it was a sort of comfort watch.
In the early 2000s, reality shows like Big Brother and Survivor were beginning to conquer network and cable television. Nussbaum was one of millions of Americans submitting to the unscripted TV takeover. At the time, Nussbaum was a freelance writer in search of a book idea. And she had the thought that maybe she could turn her slightly cringey habit into a book all about reality TV. “…And I said this to this friend of mine,” recounts Nussbaum, “and he said, well, you better write that fast. And his idea was, this is a gimmick. This is a trend, and it’s going to die within a very short time. And by the time you write a book on it, it’ll be gone.”
Clearly, that prediction did not come to pass. Twenty some years later, Emily Nussbaum did write that book, and it’s called Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV. It traces the early history of this controversial form of entertainment, its decades-long creation process, how it shapes our world, and why – love it or hate it – you should probably understand reality television.
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Listening to the episode now, my comment is about SiriusXM Podcasts+ which I will sign up for if it’s not tied to the Apple Podcasts app.
I‘d like to add a reality TV format from German television called „Mein neuer Freund“ – „my new (boy)friend“ invented by actor Christian Ulmen.
German Television is mostly a mere copy of American TV, either dubbed or reproduced with German celebrities, actors and „real“ people.
„Mein neuer Freund“ has not been copied from somewhere else and I have never seen something unique like that somewhere else.
In the show contestants agreed to the following deal:
If you convince your friends, colleagues and your parents, that this particular guy is your new boyfriend (in two episodes girlfriend), then you‘ll get 10.000€. For three days, from Fridays to Sundays everything will be filmed.
The new boyfriend was enacted by Christian Ulmen himself and he acted as the petty theft guy with a little anger problem or as a posh and arrogant aristocratic-ish snob or as the conspiracy myth guy, who wants to communicate with aliens or as the wanna-be-artist loudmouth or the trans-sexual woman etc.
Only the contestant and their new boy-/girlfriend knew about the deal. All others got to know later on that they‘ve been filmed.
All characters enacted by Christian Ulmen were made to be extremely annoying to the contestants: Waking them up at night, having awkward ticks, throwing her mobile phone out of a car whilst driving, telling embarrassing stories to their friends etc.
The contestants had to do everything they were said to do. If they would not follow their new boy-/girlfriends wishes, they would lose and get no money at all. If your new boyfriend wants you to throw away all the beer you‘ve bought for your friends from the soccer team, then you would have to pour every single beer into the sink – no discussion will save you, if your new boyfriends mind is set to an idea.
All episodes are to be found on YouTube – in my opinion it is kind of a social study based on the question:
„Would you risk losing your dignity for just 10.000€?“
Most of the contestants had no idea what they were about to experience in this one weekend and they definitely underestimated the pressure and stress they were put under.
I‘d say for all of them it has been the most horrible weekend of their life and I do hope that they learned that 10.000€ will never outweigh the lies they were telling to friends and family just to get a little richer.
Best regards from Dresden/Germany – I‘m a long time listener to your podcasts. Keep on doing this good work and hopefully one day there will be podcasts in German that are produced as well as 99pi!
Thank you for raising podcast quality high above mediocrity
Marco
Big Brother is a huge hit in Brazil. There have been 24 seasons so far and it’s the highest grossing show of TV Globo, a giant in the country. Many people pay for the 24 hour version of the show and are addicted to it. Similar shows have been created in other tv stations over the years.