Cue the Sun!

ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. Back in 2003, Emily Nussbaum developed a covert guilty pleasure.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: I had a bad habit of watching the streaming 24-hour feeds of the first season of Big Brother in the U.S., which is something that I was doing pretty much every day and talking to nobody about because it was extremely embarrassing.

ROMAN MARS: Big Brother is a reality television show that debuted in the U.S. 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.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: They just showed the people in this house in California 24/7. And so, I would put them in the corner of my screen. I would wake up in New York, and I’d watch them sleeping out in California.

ROMAN MARS: In the early 2000s, reality shows like Big Brother and Survivor were beginning to conquer network and cable television. Emily was one of millions of Americans submitting to the unscripted TV takeover.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: It’s interesting to see regular people. It’s interesting to see authentic behavior by real people put under pressure. I think this is a universal appeal of all of these shows, however you define them. And people can criticize that and say that that’s cruel and voyeuristic to want to watch regular people under pressure. But I also think it is human nature.

ROMAN MARS: At the time, Emily 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 about reality TV.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: And I said this to this friend of mine, 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.

ROMAN MARS: Clearly, that prediction did not come to pass.

REALITY TV MONTAGE: Is this chicken what I have? Or is this fish? / It’s raw, you f***ing idiot! / I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you! / I’m not here to make friends. / I’m not here to make friends. / I’m not here to make friends. I’m here for one reason.

ROMAN MARS: Not only did reality TV survive, it exploded into an industry so powerful that it transformed American society and politics. 20 something years later, Emily Nussbaum did write that book. It’s called Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV. I have to confess, I really hate reality television. It’s shocking, I know. But I did really love this book. I talked to Emily about 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.

I mean, one of the criticisms that people have for reality television is that it’s not authentic. That it’s not real. What is your response to something like that?

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Well, for one thing that’s correct. Is it real? It depends on what show you’re talking about. And one of the things I think is appealing to people about the genre is often there’s sort of a nugget of authenticity inside something very contrived. The way I define reality television in my book is as what I call “dirty documentary,” which is a term I chose specifically because of the dirty part of it. It’s not a pure genre. It’s not a pure art form in any way. Reality television is what happens when somebody takes the tools of documentary, which people consider very esteemed, prestigious–you know–high-minded notions of cinéma vérité. You just hold a camera and you hold up a microphone and you just watch and you wait for truth to emerge. And then what you do is you cut it with something else. You cut it with a commercial format that will speed things up, put pressure on people, and guarantee responses. And there are all sorts of ways of doing this. And what I trace in this book is the history of people doing this experiment, which is essentially combining cinéma vérité documentary with game shows, combining it with prank shows, combining it with soap opera–just all sorts of attempts to essentially speed it up and make it more intense.

ROMAN MARS: In your book, you talk about how, since its inception, reality television has always been a lightning rod for criticism and that people have always had these mixed feelings about the morality of this form of entertainment–even before television itself existed. Could you talk about that?

EMILY NUSSBAUM: One of the biggest surprises to me in researching this book was that the freakout over reality television not only wasn’t modern, but it had happened before. In the late ’40s, there was this emergence of a type of radio that was new that used regular people. And at the time they called it “audience participation radio.” There were all sorts of shows like this. There were game shows. There were competition shows. There were confession shows. There were shows that were sort of humiliating. And people responded to these shows in a way that was almost an exact parallel to the way they responded to, say, Survivor at the turn of the century. There were articles essentially saying, “Who are these people? Why are these people going on the radio? What does this mean about our culture? Is there suddenly a rise in narcissism? This is embarrassing and shameful. Why are people listening to these shows?” And there were also the legitimate complaints, saying, “These shows are cheap, exploitative, and tawdry. And they’re ruining radio because they’re not paying anyone.”

ROMAN MARS: Right because these shows, from the beginning, were created to get around labor unions.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Yes. The people who created these shows had multiple motives. Some of them were straightforwardly budgetary. Like, reality TV has always been a way to make inexpensive stories without paying writers and without paying actors. It’s a strikebreaker. It’s an ununionized thing. That was true from the first shows I talked about.

ROMAN MARS: You wrote about a morally questionable show called Candid Microphone, which was created by a morally questionable guy named Allen Funt. How did that show come about?

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Candid Microphone was created by Funt for the reason a lot of these things were created, which is a technological breakthrough, which was the invention of the portable tape recorder. And Alan Funt–given his personality–I feel like he is an American titan. He was also a complete assh*le and kind of a brutal guy. But I think that his willingness to cross lines–his first thought when he saw the portable tape recorder was “I can tape people without them knowing it, and I can record them without permission.”

ALLEN FUNT (CANDID MICROPHONE): These are the kind of people whose names were never very important and probably never will be. These are the words they spoke when faced with something unexpected in their daily lives. And they never knew you would hear them because they never knew they were talking into the Candid Microphone…

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Among the things that Allen Funt created was the entire role of the reality producer, which is to say a person who didn’t just stand behind a camera and watch or tell you where to go but actually messed with you. His initial goal actually was just to record conversations. He bugged soda straws at a diner counter to record the models from upstairs talking about things. And then he bugged all sorts of places. He bugged maternity wards and playgrounds. I mean, it was really kind of crazy. But he decided that the conversations that were overheard were not interesting enough to put on the radio and what you really needed was a different kind of producer. You needed a provocateur. And he realized, “This is what will make a segment work. I have to mess with somebody. I have to throw off their sense of what’s real and what’s normal. That will create humor. That will create shock.” And he perfected this over the course of the show.

ALLEN FUNT (CANDID MICROPHONE): Let’s call this locksmith “Joe.” This day he walked into my office and answered to a routine call to open a lock. He found the lock was on a heavy chain and the chain was used to bind my secretary’s leg to the desk at which he worked calmly…

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Candid Microphone was strange enough that it actually unsettled the critics. So, one of the main critics I write about watched it–and initially he loved it. He was like, “This is a really sophisticated show. It’s like peeking through keyholes, and it gives you access to so much human behavior,” because he was recording people secretly and pulling all these pranks on them. And then, later, that same critic was horrified by the show and was like, “Wait. This is the beginning of the end for everybody because it’s intrinsically cruel. It exposes people. It makes me very uncomfortable.”

ALLEN FUNT (CANDID CAMERA): Now, we’re going to start tonight’s program with two very dangerous questions…

ROMAN MARS: But Candid Microphone was popular enough that Funt was eventually able to transfer it to television with Candid Camera.

ALLEN FUNT (CANDID CAMERA): The questions are what is a lady’s age and her weight? Now, those are two things that most ladies feel are nobody else’s business but her own. But unless you’re very brave, don’t pop these two questions. We did with the following results…

MAN (CANDID CAMERA): How old are you, and how much do you weigh?

WOMAN (CANDID CAMERA): How many times have you had your face slapped after you ask that question?

MAN (CANDID CAMERA): No one’s slapped me yet?

WOMAN (CANDID CANDID CAMERA): (chuckles) You mean people actually tell you?

MAN (CANDID CAMERA): Sure.

WOMAN (CANDID CAMERA): What kind of a survey is this that you need that?

MAN (CANDID CAMERA): I’ll tell you after you give me your answer. All we need is your age and weight. That’s simple.

WOMAN (CANDID CAMERA): Yes, that’s nothing. I’m 54, and I weigh 140.

ROMAN MARS: Can you talk about that moment–the “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera”–and what it’s doing to make this sort of thing that could be uncomfortable palatable to a person who might just reject the whole reality TV premise?

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Well, that part was added after it went on television. This is the beginning of television. And the show ran for several decades. But in the early years, it was actually very hard to transfer it to TV because once you could see a person’s face being tricked, it made it much more uncomfortable for the audience. He developed these techniques of handling audience response because if you make people too uncomfortable, they won’t want to watch. You have to ease it for them in certain ways. So, they added the theme song, which I think a lot of people know, where it’s like, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!”

CANDID CAMERA THEME SONG: When you least expect it, you’re elected. You’re the star today. Smile! You’re on Candid Camera.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Honestly, first of all, it’s incredibly catchy. It brought me right back when I listened to it. But also, the song expresses the philosophy, which is essentially that the song is a form of gaslighting. It’s basically saying, “You might think you’ve been pranked, but actually this is a huge compliment. And if you complain about it, it’s because you’re uptight and you don’t get jokes.” It basically says, “By being selected to appear on Candid Camera, you have become a celebrity. You should be happy and complimented. Your feelings shouldn’t be hurt, you shouldn’t feel wounded, and you shouldn’t feel vulnerable.” And so, it’s a form of propaganda for the show itself. And it cheers the audience up and makes them feel like you’re safe to watch this. He also created this thing that he called “the reveal,” which is that moment that he says, “Smile, you’re on candid camera.” He would ease their pain because he would say, “Oh no, you’re on camera. This is all a joke.”

WOMAN #2 (CANDID CAMERA): My age is… oh, I have to think. I was just 38.

MAN (CANDID CAMERA): And your weight?

WOMAN #2 (CANDID CAMERA): And my weight is 144.

MAN (CANDID CAMERA): Is it okay if the whole country knows this?

WOMAN #2 (CANDID CAMERA): I don’t care.

MAN (CANDID CAMERA): Okay, if you don’t care, we’ll put it on television then. It’s Candid Camera.

[THEME PLAYS]

EMILY NUSSBAUM: So, there was a lot of the show that people found really stimulating and psychologically interesting. And there were other parts that seemed cruel and sadistic. It was that mixture and the fact that you couldn’t really separate the two that made the show so powerful and made it the beginning of the genre.

ROMAN MARS: So, the prank show and Allen Funt were sort of the early origins of the genre. And a decade or so later, this next phase of proto-reality television is the game show, which was revolutionized by a different problematic man. Can you tell me about Chuck Barris?

EMILY NUSSBAUM: So, Chuck Barris is the guy who made The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show. And for a while during the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s, he was kind of the schlock king of Hollywood and he was much hated by everybody else in television for several reasons.

THE GONG SHOW ANNOUNCER: Now, ladies and gentlemen, here’s your host for the start of our show: the ultra superfluous Chuck Barris.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: One of them is they felt like the stuff he was doing was garbage and exploitative but mainly because he was making so much money and his company was really flying high.

CHUCK BARRIS (THE GONG SHOW): It’s Gong Show time again, folks. Alright, now it’s our policy to try and show you a variety of entertainment. So, right after today’s show, stick around! We’ll be demonstrating the lost art of setting trash cans on fire.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: He was a really wacky, weird guy. And I will say that when I talked to the people who worked with Chuck Barris–unlike the people that I read things about who worked with Allen Funt–they loved him. They loved working at that company partially because they experienced what, I think, a lot of people in reality TV have experienced–that they were kind of punk outsiders in Hollywood, entertaining by any means necessary. They found it really fun. It was kind of a decadent, crazy, ’70s thing. I mean, there’s a million things to say about Chuck Barris. He’s a complicated character. But the other thing is Chuck Barris got big by making The Dating Game, which was this ridiculous sort of silly game in which hot people would be– A woman would be on one side of a wall, and on the other side would be three bachelors. And she would flirt with them making various stupid sex jokes and stuff like that. He actually ripped the show off from an earlier audience participation show that was called Blind Date. So, Chuck Beris essentially repurposed a lot of the shows from the ’40s and ’50s, and then he sexed them up and made them kind of mod with splashy flowers and increasingly dirty jokes. So, that was really his gift on TV.

ROMAN MARS: I imagine if you scripted some of these raunchy lines, they wouldn’t get through network sensors. But because regular people were saying unexpected and often boundary pushing things more spontaneously, the shows got away with a lot and kept people’s attention as a result.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: I mean, honestly, just making things dirtier is a kind of cheap way of intensifying things. I do feel like he had this one tool and he used it over and over again. A lot of these shows really were about moving the line between private and public. I mean, the nature of reality TV is allowing you to peer into somebody’s private world–sometimes in a contrived way and sometimes because they’re just confessing. The show that was interesting was The Newlywed Game.

THE NEWLYWED GAME HOST: What Spanish word or phrase will your wife say best describes her bust? Jimmy?

JIMMY: Nada.

[audience laughs]

EMILY NUSSBAUM: The Newlywed Game really did use ordinary couples and had them talk about their sex lives. It was often a very sexist show. The jokes were really stupid. But yeah, it was exciting and titillating and strange to see people treat their own early marriages like piñatas and bash them open and show their conflicts and their little sex jokes–their nicknames for one another. And one of the reasons that show was green-lighted was they were initially thinking of doing it with celebrities actually, and they had a regular couple on. And the executives for the network were genuinely riveted by the site of this cute young newlywed couple just giggling and saying silly things. I mean, I think that’s at the heart of it. It was the idea of peeking inside somebody’s marriages. And I think the period that I’m tracing in reality TV traces the gradual movement through many means–like political–through people writing more memoirs, people talking about… All sorts of things, like consciousness raising groups in the ’70s for feminists. All of these things encouraged people to tell private stories in public, and this was a huge shock to the world. And reality TV was only one part of that, but I think they’re all a little bit woven together.

ROMAN MARS: Let’s talk about sort of the form that I think begins to look like what we see today but also has a little bit more of a documentary edge: the real life soap opera of American Family.

AMERICAN FAMILY HOST: This is the home of the William C. Loud family. The Louds are neither average nor typical. No family is. they are not the American family. They are simply an American family.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: An American Family premiered in 1973. This is one of the shows that only older people who read this book will have heard of because it’s been kind of wiped out of history, but it’s extremely important to the book. Basically, what it was is, unlike a lot of other shows that were on cable or network, it was a PBS show. And it was a documentary about a family that was filmed in 1971 in Santa Barbara, California. And the family was the Louds. They were a wealthy family–Bill and Pat Loud and their five children. And over the course of them filming it over seven months, Pat asked Bill for a divorce on camera. And their oldest son was Lance Loud, who was a 19-year-old, incredibly charismatic, loose, funny, openly gay, artistic guy, who was living in the Chelsea Hotel for a while in New York. The sight on television of a woman going through a divorce and an openly gay teenage son who was in a close relationship with his mom–it just blew people’s minds. And it became a show that everyone talked about when it came out in 1973. A lot of people were horrified by it for the reasons they’ve always been horrified by reality experiments, which is why are there people putting their dirty laundry out in public? Who are these ordinary people who are suddenly famous people? So, the way I put it is it was created in, honestly, kind of a high-minded way with this idea of “We’re creating a cinéma vérité documentary.” But the way people received it was as a reality show. And it really was the first reality soap opera. It was like a real life soap opera, and it destabilized the culture. It also turned the Louds themselves into the first genuine reality stars. Lance Loud really was the first gay man on television who was openly gay in this particular way.

LANCE LOUD (AN AMERICAN FAMILY): Sometimes I think of myself as the perfect combination of non-existence because I really can’t see how other people exist other than my way of life.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: But the other thing Lance Loud is, is he’s the first really self-consciously confident reality star. Unlike the rest of his family, Lance was down for this project. He loved the idea of doing this kind of arch performance of self.

LANCE LOUD (AN AMERICAN FAMILY): I love to live with a style and a certain phony put-on elegance.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: I mean, what can I say? The guy was very prescient. This was 1971 when they were filming it. This was way before its time. And this spoke to so many people. In fact, it spoke to a lot of people I interviewed for this book because a lot of people–especially young gay men–who saw this guy on television… It’s very different than seeing a documentary–there were documentaries about homosexuals–or some scripted drama. Just the genuineness of him just being himself in front of the camera, I think, just flipped a switch in the culture. And people tried to replicate this for years. And actually John Murray, who was the co-creator of The Real World, was 17 at the time that show came out. And when he saw Lance Loud and when he saw the Louds and An American Family, it absolutely got into his head. And he was like, “Jesus Christ, this is unlike anything else on television.” And when he made The Real World, it was part of a process by which he was seeking to replicate the power of that show.

ROMAN MARS: This is my period of aliveness–between American Family and–

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Yeah, it’s all Gen X people–the Real World chapter, which is a linchpin central chapter in the book. It makes sense because The Real World’s the moment that modern reality is created.

THE REAL WORLD INTRO: This is the true story. / True story of seven strangers picked to live in a loft. / And have their lives taped. / To find out what happens. / When people stop being polite. / Could you get the phone? / And start getting real? The Real World…

EMILY NUSSBAUM: All of these early experiments turn into something that’s much more structured–a different kind of workplace–a different set of craft mechanisms. And it’s very different than An American Family. An American Family was a documentary that was kind of floaty and drifty and genuinely cinéma vérité.

ROMAN MARS: And it was this amazing thing to watch. It was sort of like you put American Family through this quick-cut, MTV-style edit with canid angles and constructed with all this verve and music hits and stuff. And maybe it was just the ’90s, but there was this constant thread of people talking about authenticity all the time.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Yeah. When you watch it again, all they ever talk about is “Am I selling out? Are you being real? Are you being fake? Are you being sexy to try to be commercial?” It’s full of extremely passionate and sometimes kind of funny conversations about the anxiety about whether they’re being fake. It’s a time capsule is all I can say. And I talked to all of the seven people who were in the show, but I also talked to John Murray who co-created it with Mary Ellis–him and all of the crew. And it’s a period in their life that was so heightened specifically because of this argument. Is this a game show, or is this a documentary? Are we tricking people, or are we trying to capture something true about them?

ROMAN MARS: I want to talk about Survivor, which you point out is the moment when, after decades of people kind of searching in the dark to come up with a solution to the same problem–which is not paying writers and actors and directors–comes together. Like, all the elements were there, but people didn’t really think of reality television up to this point as this fully realized genre until the early 2000s when Survivor comes along. I was just really surprised how long it took for people to land on something like Survivor.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: It did take decades, and it’s absolutely true that there was no category that people thought of as reality TV until Survivor came along. And all of these experiments that had happened before were often short-lived, high-rated, junky, cultural crises that would create a moral outrage in the press. And then they would dissolve. They would come and they would go, and it was a series of experiments. And then came Survivor.

SURVIVOR NARRATION: Day 24 on the island. Since the merger, nothing has been more important than voting strategy. The gears are churning. Nobody is safe…

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Survivor–it took, like, a decade to get it onto television. So it has a very strange history. I would say it actually started in Scotland, on a radio show, where they did this experiment where they sent people off into the wilderness holding a then popular survival guide. And they would call in every day and say what had happened to them. The producer from that moved to England and ended up working for a different guy–Charlie Parsons–and they did a different version of it on TV where they just sent a group of quasi celebrities to an island, again, to survive for a few days. At that point, Charlie Parsons, who was the inventor of the format of Survivor, could not get it on the air. Why could they not get it on? Because there was nothing like it. Television, especially in the U.S., was dramas and comedies–half hour shows and hour long shows–and sports and news. There was no category called “reality television.” And he kept going in and trying to pitch this thing, and everybody was like, “That’s too weird. It sounds dangerous. I don’t get it.” And he tried many, many times. And he failed. And then he got worn out, and a different British producer–named Mark Burnett–bought it from him. And within a very short time, he sold it to CBS. I mean, it’s one of those strange, little, quirky moments in history where had he not bought that show, I think it would’ve changed all of television. I mean, that show had such a huge, huge influence.

ROMAN MARS: So, what was it that Survivor was able to nail that other reality shows in the past just couldn’t. What was Survivor able to do?

EMILY NUSSBAUM: I will say, straightforwardly, when I started writing this book, I wasn’t that interested in Survivor. I had started out watching Big Brother, and I thought that that was a weird, voyeuristic, fascinating experiment. And Survivor was kind of a basic show that a lot of people liked, but I just thought of it as a game show. By the time I finished my research, I was like, “I need to write two chapters about Survivor!” It was very important to me. And to me, what it is is part of it is about the format of Survivor, which I ended up feeling was all of those lines that I’m talking about–the game show combination with documentary, the soap opera, and the prank show–are all woven together in Survivor. What the outcome was was that it was a game show that was worked like a prank show, by putting people under pressure and taking them by surprise, but magically produced a soap opera with incredible characters, twists, and turns–cliffhangers–just an amazing outcome that caused everybody to want to imitate it.

ROMAN MARS: A lot of television had to change to set the stage for reality TV, but the audiences also had to change in order for Survivor to become this culture phenomenon. What was that evolution about?

EMILY NUSSBAUM: I’m not sure that the audience did change to watch Survivor. I think that, since the ’40s and throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s–there was sort of a break in the ’80s–audiences have always been drawn to kind of sensational things like this. The different change that I would say is that– And this is the one that John Murray from The Real World says is his major achievement. He felt like, starting with The Real World, they’d created an audience of people who grew up with these shows and preferred them to scripted shows and who understood them and who were deep fans of them and for whom they weren’t gimmicks or momentary sensations but something that they took for granted and enjoyed and created conversations about.

But if The Real World had set off the modern period of reality TV, Survivor is what created the industry. It was so successful, it was so beloved, it was such a huge global hit, and also it was so lucrative that everybody wanted to imitate it. And during that period after Survivor came out and, to a lesser extent, Big Brother, everybody tried to create the new Survivor. So, what happened was that there was this volcano of production, some bad shows, some good shows, and all sorts of mini versions of reality TV–new mini genres. Like, different kinds of dating shows, different kinds of prank shows– There was a trend of militainment around the time of the war, where there were shows that covered that. There were celebrity shows that were a new thing, like Celebreality. So, there was a period of experimentation where everybody essentially was trying to create the next big reality hit, and suddenly there is this explosion of new kinds of shows.

ROMAN MARS: You, in the book– And it’s sort of almost remiss to not talk about the fact that there was a reality television star that was our president.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Sorry, who was that?

DONALD TRUMP (THE APPRENTICE): My name’s Donald Trump, and I’m the largest real estate developer in New York. I own buildings all over the place, model agencies, the Miss Universe pageant, jetliners, golf courses, casinos, and have turned the name Trump into the highest quality brand. You’re fired.

ROMAN MARS: So, how is reality important to his ascendancy?

EMILY NUSSBAUM: It’s a show that is marked by two things. One of them is obviously it is responsible for Trump’s election. I mean, I just don’t think this is ambiguous. It had the biggest and most obvious repercussion of reality TV. And so, for a lot of people, it was the reason that reality TV seemed so terrible. It’s like, “Look what it led to. It elected Trump.” And it did elect Trump. So, that’s part of it. The other reason that I wanted it to be the final chapter, though, is that it’s essentially the period where the experiments that we’re talking about ended. It’s the point at which reality television became less of a chaotic gonzo attempt to create a new form of television and it was an industry. The people who made The Apprentice were making a show for network television, they were polished producers and editors, they’d done these jobs before, and they pulled off this show.

And the other thing that I think is striking about that show is that show very smartly combined two major forms of reality television that had emerged during the sort of volcanic explosion of production after Survivor. One of them is the Survivor-like show with two teams that compete. And the other one is the talent contest, like American Idol or Project Runway. And so, that was a Survivor-like show that was also a talent contest–except that the talent, instead of being ballroom dancing or fashion production, is marketing. And so, it’s the show that demonstrates the professionalization of reality television as an industry and also the centrality of advertising and marketing. And the accomplishment of the show was to place a product named Donald Trump, who was a failed product, at the center of the show and rebrand him and set him off to the world.

DONALD TRUMP (RALLY 08/21/24): That’s why, this November, Americans are going to tell Kamala Harris–Kamala–that we’ve had enough. We can’t take it anymore. You’re doing a terrible job. Comrade Harris, you’re fired. Get out of here. You’re fired. You’re no good.

[crowd cheers]

ROMAN MARS: So, when I think about the rise of Donald Trump, I think about the series of unfortunate events and bad decisions that could have stopped this totally stoppable disaster–starting with someone making the decision to actually give this guy a television show.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: I think The Apprentice has had such incredibly disastrous outcomes that, of course, I wish that it had not come to– It’s sort of hard to imagine. I mean, initially that show was turned down because some people thought that Trump was an unpleasant character as a main character. But the truth is, Survivor was so successful at that point that if Mark Burnett wanted to make a show with Donald Trump, it was going to get made. So, you can’t really– The thing I wish is actually slightly different–I wish that, when Trump was running, the political press had known how to talk seriously about reality television because I do think that there’s two schools of thought, one of which is to know nothing about it and to say, “This is damaging garbage and I hate it.” And the other side is a kind of “It’s a guilty pleasure! It’s a fun– I’m a fan!” and not to think about it too deeply. And I want people to regard it thoughtfully, which means that you can see the positive breakthrough elements of it and you can take seriously the harm that it’s done economically and politically. The problem is, when Trump was running, I think people regarded this part of his resumé as fun–as a joke. Whether they liked or didn’t like reality television, it was hard to imagine that it could have such a big impact. The reality was, when people voted for him, they voted for the guy he played on that show. And it was one of the most successful forms of editing and fakery that ever happened. And had the press not treated it so lightly… I mean, that’s the one turning point at which I wonder if they had actually taken Trump himself and the show more seriously if there might’ve been a kind of coverage that understood the effects of what he was doing. I mean, it’s so funny because when you’re writing a history book–it’s true–there are many different periods where the choice people made… You would like to rewrite it.

ROMAN MARS: Absolutely. After the break, Emily goes on one last tear about The Bachelor.

[AD BREAK]

ROMAN MARS: The Bachelor has been one of the highest rated reality series for decades. It’s popular enough that there’s a good chance you or a member of your family is in some sort of Bachelor group text as we speak. But Emily Nussbaum says, “You should probably watch these kinds of shows with caution.”

EMILY NUSSBAUM: The Bachelor–which is by far the scummiest chapter of this book–it really gets at the evil things that producers can do and the way in which, as I’m talking about the creation of a workplace, part of that is the ethic of a workplace and what’s considered acceptable. And what was considered acceptable in making dating shows is something that, I think, most people in the regular world would consider criminal and certainly just morally corrupt. Honestly, I think there’s something worse about dating shows than other shows. And a lot of reality producers agreed with me. I would ask them, “What kind of show do you like to do? What crosses the line for you?” A lot of them said dating shows. They just felt like everybody was so drunk, the girls are so vulnerable, and you’re dealing with people’s private emotions.

But the techniques on those shows–I think that it’s important for people who watch them to understand how they’re made. I think it’s important for them to be allies of the people who are on the shows, not of the producers, because you need to understand that they are in very vulnerable positions. They have to sign these terrible NDAs. They’re not allowed to talk about how the show is made. And if there’s going to be any improvement in the conditions for cast or crew, I feel like the audience has to see it from a more sympathetic perspective. The more illuminated the making of these shows is, the more people can actually make ethical decisions about their own viewing and also just about what they support in the world, including legal and labor changes that, I think, will improve the circumstances with people. If you claim to love the shows, you should love the people who make them and want them to be treated better.

ROMAN MARS: Amen. Emily, thank you so much for the book. I enjoyed reading it so much. And thank you so much for being on the show.

EMILY NUSSBAUM: Thank you for having me. It was wonderful talking to you.

ROMAN MARS: Emily Nussbaum’s book is called Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV. And there was a ton of stuff in the book that we didn’t get to. I highly suggest you check it out. It’s a really fun read.

99% Invisible was produced by Vivian Le, and edited by Neena Pathak. Mix by Haziq bin Ahmad Farid. Music by Swan Real. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jayson De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Gabriella Gladney, Christopher Johnson, Lasha Madan, Martín Gonzalez, Jeyca Maldonado-Medina, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM Podcast Family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building… in beautiful… uptown… Oakland, California.

You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our new Discord server. There’s almost 5,000 people talking about architecture, talking about Power Broker, talking about flags, talking about podcast recommendations– It’s where I’m hanging out most these days. You can find a link to that as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.