So you want to produce Reality Television

An excerpt from the book Reality Check by successful talk-show host, Michael Essany,

Chapter 3, From Fantasy to Reality

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Standing next to Susan Sarandon in an elevator at the Hollywood Renaissance Theatre, I nervously bungle an attempt to break the ice with one of my favorite Academy Award-winning actresses. 

“So, what brings you here, Ms. Sarandon?” I finally inquired.

 “I’m presenting for the Television Critics Association,” she responded, visibly aware of my childlike admiration and anxiety.

 “How about you?”

 “I’m here for the convention, as well,” I replied.

 “Are you an actor?” she asked.

 “No,” I said. “I’m the star of a new reality TV series.”

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With that revelation, my conversation with Susan Sarandon ground to a halt. Her telling countenance in response to my announced status as a reality TV star communicated her genuine concern for my professional well-being.

 Though extremely polite and gracious enough to even have her photo taken, Sarandon clearly saw me as an ambitious but innocent kid potentially in over his head.

 To a considerable degree, Sarandon was correct. Although I had grown acclimated to spotting sharks, dodging shoddy deals, and sidestepping charlatans during the previous five years, my worst miscalculation in preparing for the big leagues of nationally televised reality programming was assuming that reality TV was unfailingly rooted at all times in actual reality.

Susan Sarandon and Michael Essany.

WAKING UP TO REALITY

 Despite the style of a reality series—documentary, game show, fearcentric, and so on—its overarching aim never changes: to solicit a visceral response from the viewing audience. It doesn’t matter if the response is laughter, sadness, joy, or even discomfort. Reality TV is in the business of selling relatable and emotive content.

 Whether we lambaste the performance of an unpopular contestant on American Idol or cringe at Donald Trump’s scathing termination of our favorite would-be apprentice, the genre indisputably thrives on making us react in some visceral way.

 As an unfortunate consequence of stage-managing reality programming to extract a desired emotional response from viewers, the subjects of these series are frequently rendered expendable components of the process. This is precisely what makes reality TV so highly exploitive. Its participants are always the means to an end: positive, negative, or somewhere in between.

 I was only 19 years old when my life became the subject of a reality television series. Inspired by my unusual childhood ambition to one day host a late-night talk show, The Michael Essany Show was packaged as a reality program about the production of an Indiana-based public access talk show and the interesting life and lofty goals of its “unorthodox teenage host.”

 When E! Entertainment Television purchased my series in late 2002, I was told that my work and life story would continue being represented according to the brand I had already created. Several years before The Michael Essany Show debuted nationally, I had already begun landing guest appearances on Today, Oprah, Inside Edition, The Tonight Show, and the like. Without fail, my story was always portrayed in a relatively accurate light. As a result, I effectively sold my show to an engrossed viewership long before E! entered the picture, presumably to perpetuate an already proven formula.

Behind the scenes with recording star Kelly Rowland for the premiere episode of The Michael Essany Show on E!

 Looking back, this “formula” was the product of an unlikely dream that began during childhood. As I grew up in the small town of Hobart, Indiana, during the early 1980s, few joys in life rivaled staying up past my bedtime on an endless summer evening to watch The Tonight Show with my grandparents. Over time, my admiration for Johnny Carson and the nightly routine he made look so easy left me completely out of touch with reality in evaluating my own chances for a career in network television. Hosting a late-night talk show, I thought, was a career option just as commonplace as any other trade.

 Like a million hopeful entertainers before me, watching the King of Late Night gave rise to my own show business dream. The only real difference between me and the others is that I was much too impatient to comfortably put off the pursuit of my dream until I was older.

 As I recall, the summer before my 12th birthday began my foray into the television industry in earnest. Oddly enough, it started with a weekend of simple research at the Valparaiso, Indiana, public library. For two straight afternoons I scoured tattered titles that boasted helpful how-to advice for individuals wanting to break into show business. Unfortunately, the advice I found (like the need to circulate glamorous headshots and colorful resume´s to practically every legal resident of Southern California) consisted primarily of cookie-cutter tips with little relevance to me.

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