Whatever the reason, reality has set in on TV

Money is one of the reasons networks continue to serve up reality shows.
By DUSTY SAUNDERS
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Blame Allen Funt for Anna Nicole Smith. Well, at least for Smith's reality show.
When "The Anna Nicole Show" premiered in August on E! Entertainment, viewers watched a bizarre Hollywood odyssey during a contrived search for a new home. In one house, she attempted (without much success) to squeeze her oversized body into a fashionable bathtub. In another house she got stuck under a table.
The lowlight? The sound of Smith urinating in a bathroom as she checked out the facilities.
That half-hour drew more than 3 million viewers, a considerable figure for a cable network show. And although audience figures gradually declined, "The Anna Nicole Show's" ability to draw the young viewers (18 to 34) whom networks covet led E! to renew the series for a second 13-episode season.
"Watching Anna is fascinating," series executive producer Jeff Shore told Electronic Media. "People would rather watch real life than a scripted series."
In the cable universe, where the Osbourne family is king, such decisions might raise ratings, but they don't raise a lot of eyebrows.
NBC jumps in
Even at NBC -- the network leader in ratings, revenue and, some contend, high-quality programming -- the lowbrow "Fear Factor" has a home in the prime-time schedule.
Last week the series, which premiered in 2001, played a prominent part in the network's key November sweeps schedule with a 90-minute special in which contestants descended into a pit filled with more then 2,000 scorpions in order to win a prize.
No one knows whether these were the same contestants who earlier chowed down on cockroaches.
NBC followed "Fear Factor" with more reality last summer in "Dog Eat Dog," which probably will return next July.
Jeff Zucker once spent his days lining up interviews with world leaders as executive producer on "Today." But since becoming NBC Entertainment President, he defends this sort of lowest-common-denominator programming.
"There's a generation of viewers that has grown up on [MTV's] 'The Real World' and on music videos and that doesn't like the standard sitcom or drama. Not everyone likes 'The West Wing' or '24.' It's the job of the broadcaster to find programs that will appeal to all audiences."
A 'Candid' beginning
Chances are good that a similar answer was given in 1947 by the producers of "Candid Microphone," the forerunner of Funt's groundbreaking TV show "Candid Camera," which premiered in 1948.
It's fair to say that the "dumbing down" of TV can be traced to "Candid Camera." But there's a difference when the show is compared with today's descendants: While "Candid Camera" put people into unusual, sometimes embarrassing situations, the Candid formats and the numerous series that followed on TV were gentle reality. They don't share much with the emotionally draining, often hostile aspects of today's programming.
Reasons for success
Theories abound about this dumbing down of TV, but ratings (and ultimately money) seem like the most likely culprit.
"The advent of cable opened a Pandora's box of programming," says Tracey Lynn Koerner, research director for Initiative Media, a major media-buying company. "The proliferation of channels fragmented the audience. That, along with the advertising drive to get the 18-to-34 or 18-to-49 demographic, led to the production of programming, often of the lowest common denominator, that had no appeal to television's older, ... viewers."