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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 Of course, I would be blatantly untruthful if I said I didn’t heavily question my judgment while lying awake in bed for many weeks and months after that decision, which was considerably more difficult to make than I’m letting on. Perhaps I would have continued doubting myself indefinitely if not for an unexpected phone call I received in early 2001. 

 Having first appeared on my show during the second week of production, accomplished television producer and personality Leeza Gibbons and I had not communicated in almost three years. Nonetheless, Leeza’s former assistant, Rachel Karzen, who originally helped schedule my interview with Leeza, had since risen above the ranks of executive assistant to become vice president of creative development at Leeza’s production company, Leeza Gibbons Enterprises (LGE). As it turned out, Rachel had stumbled across an article in Details magazine about comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s recent visit to Valparaiso as a guest on my show. She and Leeza then decided to reach out to me with a development deal in hopes of taking my show to the next level.

With Leeza Gibbons, executive producer of The Michael Essany Show, in January 2003.

 Thankfully, Leeza and Rachel understood that the reason my show worked so well was because there was absolutely nothing contrived about my genuine desire to become a late-night talk show host or the massive support I received from family, friends, and some of the biggest names in show business. As a result, they were committed to maintaining the integrity of the series and the true story behind it.

 After shopping the project for close to six months, LGE reached an exciting agreement with E! Entertainment Television. In late 2002, E! was euphoric in response to the much-hyped debut of The Anna Nicole Show. Trying to capitalize on the influx of viewers new to their network, the programming development team had grown fully vested in finding a series to immediately follow Anna’s time slot. Incredibly, this is where my show landed.

 Though somewhat taken aback by the prospect of being wedged between Anna Nicole Smith and Howard Stern, I was at least pleased to learn the particulars of the production responsibilities outlined by the executives. As part of their commitment to keep things real, I would not only remain host of The Michael Essany Show, I would also continue to write, produce, and direct all elements of the original talk show. Producers from E! would then be in charge of all production relating to the shooting of my life and day-to-day happenings.

 With no additional concerns or tangible obstacles in my wake, I signed the proposed contract just days before my 20th birthday. Amazingly, two weeks later, producers from E! Entertainment Television arrived in Valparaiso to begin filming the first six episodes.

 Series Spin-Off . . or Rip-Off?

Invariably, reality programming centered on an individual subject is produced in one of only two possible ways. The first allows the star of the program to laugh with the audience in response to the peculiar and humorous happenings of his or her glorified daily existence. Hogan Knows Best is a great example of this approach.

 The show, which chronicled (before the divorce, that is) the life of famed wrestler Hulk Hogan as he grappled with family, work, and managing the musical career of his daughter Brooke, is arguably about as “real” as any celebrity reality show is likely to be. In most cases, the Hogans are depicted as a relatively normal family—sans, of course, their obvious wealth and notoriety. Most people, including even Hulk and his charismatic kin, agree that the Hogan family is never misrepresented in a willfully negative light. Nothing to date, in fact, has been done to the Hogans through the manipulation of the reality TV lens that could somehow result in the degradation of their character or dignity. It should be noted, however, that Hulk  Hogan later speculated that the strain of subjecting his family to a reality series may have played a factor in his eventual divorce from wife Linda.

 Nonetheless, this ideal method of reality TV production differs considerably from its popular yet regrettable counterpart—a production approach that both allows and encourages the audience to laugh at the star, not with him.

 Having spent the bulk of my adolescence cultivating The Michael Essany Show and its foundational story, I experienced a self-imposed apprenticeship on the inner workings of reality-based programming.

 I gained firsthand knowledge of the art behind relating a true story to viewers—a highly nuanced practice that requires both a commitment to the integrity of the story and an ability to interestingly translate that reality onto the screen.

 Unfortunately, my working relationship with E! almost immediately illustrated another side of the reality TV experience. I’m referring to the business behind this art, a component that can stealthily subjugate any prior commitment to the art. It’s an approach that naturally begs an obvious question: Why would any network essentially want to belittle or humiliate the subject of its own series? An honest response to this question centers squarely on the responsibility of reality TV producers to do whatever necessary to generate the highest ratings possible. Astonishingly, many reality programs are created to have a minimal shelf life. Thanks in part to their relative ease of inexpensive production, reality series can be used for a quick source of revenue, a platform for promoting other projects, or even a means for engendering short-term attention or controversy for a broader purpose.

AN UNWANTED REALITY

Reflecting today on my working relationship with E! Entertainment Television, I’m still not exactly sure what their true intentions were for The Michael Essany Show.

 What is certain, though, was their eventual desire to change course and present my life and work in a radically different way from the successful approach taken by virtually every other national media outlet.

 For the previous five years my program was commercially successful as both a provider of entertainment and as a human interest story. On account of my unusual ambitions, I was clearly a young man who didn’t fit the mold of the typical college student. Admittedly, I was not your suave leading man type. Through a consistent use of self-deprecating humor on my show, I let audiences know that I didn’t take myself very seriously. In short, I was comfortable being a dork. But instead of continuing to emphasize this Conan O’Brienstyle of self-deprecation, some at E! clearly wanted to reverse this established brand. As far as I could tell, the goal of The Michael

 Essany Show was now to make people laugh at me instead of with me. It was a method also employed on The Anna Nicole Show and a sprinkling of other ephemeral series that ultimately brought as much shame on the network as it did the individuals who were embarrassed on national television.

 To some producers within the reality genre, belittling the star of a series is a considerably easier goal to attain and certainly more instantly marketable than patiently crafting a meaningful body of work into a viable and lasting series. Because my reality show was one of the first individual-centered reality series of the contemporary reality boom, I was not initially as cautious as I should have been in adequately guarding against any and all threats to my on-camera dignity.

 From the get-go, I was naively preoccupied with all that reality TV could do for me, not to me.

 Given how favorably the production team at E! reacted to my earlier appearance on Oprah, I was convinced that the queen of daytime had also convinced those at the network to follow her lead and continue presenting my work and life story exactly as they were.

 Featured on an episode titled “People Who Love Their Jobs,” I spent the seven most valuable minutes of my career sharing the stage with Oprah Winfrey. As many have astutely observed, Oprah and her extraordinary staff are capable of making anyone look good.

 This TV magic they masterfully work on featured guests unquestionably worked on me as well. In fact, immediately after appearing on Oprah—before my E! debut—not only did my street recognition skyrocket, I also began receiving thousands of fan letters from people curious about what would ultimately become of my talk show aspirations. Understandably, at the time I believed my subsequent series on E! would chronicle the journey that so many people around the country were interested to follow and eager to watch.

 Instead, some of the producers assigned to my program quickly decided The Michael Essany Show would work best if it simply presented me as an awkward Indiana hick whose ambitions were worthy of mockery.

 We had not yet completed a full week of production, in fact, before I was confronted with a producer’s need to stage a few events for “expositional purposes.” His idea was to present another dimension of my on-screen persona by placing me in an everyday situation removed from a talk show environment. Because I was keenly aware of the need to present my life in an interesting and marketable package, I was willing to go along with the idea. On the surface, anyway, it seemed relatively harmless.

 As it turned out, one of my producers had already asked a student from Valparaiso University, whom I barely knew, to throw a party at his apartment in my “honor.” It was explained to me that the purpose of this segment was to help endear me to a wider base of viewers. In other words, until now, viewers had only known me as a hard-working young television talk show host. I was told that shooting this party segment, which would essentially feature me hanging out with a bunch of fraternity brothers, would help me appear “cooler” and more like an average guy my age.

 When the footage was finally broadcast, a number of television critics publicly referred to this segment as “unfortunate” and “uncomfortable to watch.” They were reacting, without question, to the testimonial comments recorded by producers, unbeknownst to me, both before and after my visit to the party. Methodically, each partially wasted college guy was given an opportunity to insult anything and everything about me. As I recall, the harshest mockery was reserved for the fact that I didn’t drink at the party.

 Although I was presented as a mama’s boy who presumably “couldn’t handle beer,” the truth of the matter was that I opted to not drink on national television because, at my age, I would have been breaking the law. Knowing what I now understand about the highly exploitive nature of reality television, it might have been an entirely premeditated ratings ploy to put me into a situation where

I could have been busted for underage drinking. Of course, this is entirely speculation on my part. But what is incontrovertible is how I was routinely lured into situations like that of the frat party for no other reason than to make me a laughable human oddity.

 What ultimately hurt most, however, were the times in which my family and friends were insulted on the show. Countless times my own mother and father were presented as cornfield simpletons.

 My longtime best friend and on-air sidekick, Mike Randazzo, was frequently portrayed in an equally unfavorable light. Even worse, so were some of our guests.

 One of my favorite regulars over the years was Don Tersigni, a Valparaiso resident and an enormously talented, nationally recognized comedian. But when Don appeared on my E! series for the first time the footage was edited by producers to create the appearance that Don had utterly bombed. By removing the laughs he received and inserting inconsistent footage of blank-faced spectators, the editing magic made a cruel mockery of a good entertainer and a great man. Of course, it didn’t matter to some at E! that this gifted comedian was needlessly and undeservingly embarrassed. To them, it looked funny to have a local stand-up comedian bomb on public access. It was wrong.

 By the end of the first season it was perfectly clear to me and my family that we were being thoughtlessly mocked on many of the episodes. But since we all proceeded with greater caution to not leave ourselves vulnerable to further mockery in the second season, some of our producers caught on.

 As a result, they abandoned the ridicule and instead employed a new weapon to potentially boost ratings: sleaze, an altogether incongruous and inappropriate element given the established family-friendly nature of my show. From trying to convince me to book porn stars to taping wild segments at local nightclubs, more than one executive sought to bring the one family-oriented show they had into the mature fold of their other signature programs.

 Needless to say, I resisted with full force and never backed down. Yet despite my best efforts, and as I frequently wished for contract termination, some tried vigorously to work around me in achieving their objectives for our show. They even tried to sucker other on-air regulars to do the very things that I had refused to do myself.

 Three episodes into our second season, Mike Randazzo was the newest target of these shifty maneuverings. Mike was told that they were filming a sketch with him where the audience would learn what nightlife is like for a sidekick in Valparaiso. By the time filming had begun Mike was under the impression that I had signed off on this sketch. In reality, producers reached Mike before I did. As a result, they simply informed him of what they wanted him to believe. Fortunately, Mike is a smart chap with an upstanding character. And once the producers told him what was about to happen—his limo would be filled with scantily clad women en route to a bar where he would be asked to autograph private parts—Mike adamantly refused. From that day forward Mike and I realized that we had to watch our backs at all times. We certainly weren’t prudes, but we had to maintain the integrity of a program that families had been comfortably watching for more than five years.

 Nonetheless, I honored my contract and continued hosting The Michael Essany Show, albeit with a more watchful, protective eye,  for two seasons on E!. In 2004, the program’s domestic distribution concluded and the program was sold overseas—remarkably, to a more popular tenure in Great Britain than in the United States.

 The first graduation season after production wrapped, I began receiving invitations to lecture students of film and television at college campuses across the country. Although I never delivered a homogeneous, one-size-fits-all presentation about the nuts and bolts of reality television, a number of themes repeatedly surfaced in my candid talks—specifically, the need to protect oneself from the commonly overlooked dangers posed by the industry.

 As a result of my outspoken rants, I often left the classroom feeling I had inadvertently discouraged the very core of aspiring young professionals that I had so passionately hoped to inspire. Today,

however, with more time, perspective, and professional experience after the conclusion of my first reality TV series, I can confidently reflect on my journey from fantasy to reality and celebrate a number of invaluable lessons learned the hard way.

 Chief among such insights was the heightened understanding that reality television simply cannot do anything to a person who doesn’t knowingly want it done to them. For as much as I’ve tried to blame the producers and executives I initially held responsible for distorting the reality of my reality series beyond an acceptable range, ultimately, by not taking a more proactive stance in guarding myself from such distortion, I truly had no one but myself to blame for the outcome of my show and the telling of my story. To be sure, I’m not removing the need for accountability on the part of producers who willfully and inexcusably exploit talent. In my view, limiting the number of people burned by reality television is ultimately a two-way street.

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Yes, stars need to protect themselves. But producers should never be something that stars have to protect themselves from.

 Auspiciously, the dangers of reality television are more widely understood today than at any other time in the history of the medium. Nevertheless, it remains remarkably easy for performers or producers to grow so comfortable with their positions that they still fall victim to the most common of pratfalls. After all, not everyone is injured by reality television right out of the gate. With this particular genre, the dangers are unpredictable and never out of range. That’s exactly why

 I tell every young aspirant to reality programming that remaining invisibly cynical is the most important safeguard anyone can employ while working in front of or behind the cameras.

 Naturally, the conclusion of my run on E! also brought with it a feeling of embarrassment for having my immediate body of work wholly represented by a reality television show that didn’t wholly represent me. At that time, however, I was possessed of the incorrect notion that the perceived stigma associated with a reality TV failure is somehow indelible. In truth, the mainstream market for commercial network and cable programming is so saturated with reality programming that almost anyone can be redeemed (barring extreme circumstances) from their first negative experience with a future opportunity in the same genre—that is, of course, if the opportunity and the courage to endure another reality TV whirlwind exists.

 Although we will explore in subsequent chapters the more concrete elements of reality TV (the physical production process, breaking into the genre, managing a career, and so on), perhaps the most helpful abstract lesson culled from my hands-on experience is that producers and performers alike often fail to recognize the vast creative license afforded them by this celebrated format.

 Whether you’re the lowliest of producers overshadowed by the bigwigs of your production or a star of a new series backed into a corner by network executives convinced of their creative genius, there is absolutely never an excuse for you to not exert creative influence on your project. This was a mistake I made and failed to recognize until it was too late.

 I’m sorry to say that reality television has slowly begun sacrificing its most desirable production component—creative leniency— to the pervasive trend of repeating gimmicks used on other reality programs. As many viewers are increasingly witnessing, a lot of reality television has become repetitious. In this regard, the genre has come to resemble the established production paradigms of scripted dramatic and comedic programming.

 My experience in the industry, however, has clearly illustrated that the best ideas are never used because few have the audacity or the know-how to break conventional molds, communicate the strength of their vision, or even let someone else take credit for their idea if it means saving a project or another person’s dignity.

 At all times, reality television should be thought of as big-budget public access programming. Just like the humble medium it mirrors, practically anything goes on reality television. At times it even appears that the casts of such programming are also selected on a first-come, first-served basis. Nonetheless, the regrettable trend of failing to use the very creative license that attracted many to the industry in the first place must be replaced with a broad understanding that the best ideas for reality programming have yet to be produced.

 The reality television industry is an evolutionary market, and never in the history of the genre has this market been more ready for or in need of change. Consequently, those looking to break into the business with their own creative vision should be encouraged to the hilt because, as we’re poised to explore, the future of this highly accessible industry is fully dependent on what newcomers like yourself have to offer.

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