Reality TV’s Illusion: Why Hollywood Stopped Bankrolling Unscripted

For Mike Hurst, a New York-based sound supervisor and sound mixer on several reality series, the pandemic was the beginning of the end of production work as he knew it.

After getting through a five-week shutdown on the TLC series “Darcey and Stacey,” a spinoff of “90 Day Fiancé,” he noticed a steep decline in the number of jobs available. In three years, 86% of his client roster vanished, including shows like “Man vs. Food” from the Cooking Channel, HGTV’s “Life Under Renovation” and DIY’s (Now Magnolia Network) “First Time Flippers.”

Reality programming, once considered a cheap and plentiful way to fill the pipeline of cable and streaming companies, is in a nosedive. The first half of 2024 saw the lowest series orders for unscripted programming since 2019, according to research from Ampere Analysis. The company recorded a peak of 493 overall unscripted series orders in the second quarter of 2024, a 22% decrease from the highest recorded peak to date of 637 in the second quarter of 2022. Series orders traditionally peak during Q2 every year.

As fewer new shows get in the pipeline, Hollywood has also canceled once-popular reality series, like “Darcey and Stacey” in 2023 after four seasons, and Hulu’s “The D’Amelio Show” after airing three. “FBoy Island,” a buzzworthy dating show format that premiered in 2021 on HBO Max, was canceled after two seasons in 2022 — a casualty of the Warner Bros. Discovery merger as the streamer let go of its own unscripted efforts in order to consolidate with those of its new sibling distributor Discovery. The CW revived the show for a third season, but it failed to resonate with linear audiences and was canceled again.

Then there are shows like “Couple to Throuple,” one of the first polyamorous dating series formats released on Peacock this year and produced by Fremantle-backed Naked Television, which had future seasons put on hold indefinitely despite strong reception for its first season.

“The fear is that with the continual concentration of firms… these things have been becoming more frequent and you learn just how expendable you are,” Hurst told TheWrap. “It is becoming a race to the bottom. People are living and dying by the spreadsheet. They are hiring people that don’t break the budget.”

Another recent trend in reality production is entertainment companies are moving production out of New York and Los Angeles for cheaper spots in the U.S. and overseas.

“For these artisans and folks who want to find where that next job is coming from… you have to seriously consider looking at the creator economy and not the professional gatekeeper economy,” film and television producer Evan Shapiro told TheWrap. “There’s this misperception that this is all going to bounce back, but I don’t think there’s going to be a ‘new normal.’”

As the chart below shows, unscripted shows have been in decline since 2021, with 2022 showing the sharpest single-year decline. And 2024 saw the lowest number of shows ordered in the first half of the year.

The question is: Why?

Experts and industry insiders who spoke with TheWrap attribute the decline to a number of key factors. The end of the “peak TV” era that ran from 2010-2022 has led to an industry-wide contraction in Hollywood. Added to that, studios have broadly consolidated amid a spate of mergers — which has left fewer buyers in the marketplace — and tightened budgets across the board.

Beyond official orders, one reality TV insider estimated that between 30-50% of the unscripted projects currently in development are believed to be in limbo due to uncertainty inside some of the sector’s most committed buyers — particularly WBD and Paramount Global. There was also a glut of unscripted programming in production when the COVID pandemic shut down scripted shows, which has now course-corrected.

A low margin business

A critical piece of the puzzle lies in how the decline has pulled back the veil on reality television’s model of low cost-high profitability, much like recent controversies within the “Love is Blind” and “The Bachelor” franchises have squandered any semblance of “reality” from their premises.

Unlike scripted television, the unscripted business model has not evolved from the days of cable supremacy when reality series on MTV, E! and VH1 became part of the cultural conversation in the U.S.

“It’s always been a pennies and nickels business, not a dimes and dollars business,” a former TV executive told TheWrap.

The reality TV model is built on format ownership. Cable networks like MTV and VH1 pioneered a low-cost model where production companies of original reality formats sold the shows to networks, which in turn took ownership of the U.S. version of that show and financed its production. For decades, reality TV producers reported the money coming in from distributors to fund these shows as a revenue stream. They spent the bulk of those funds on production and delivery of the show, but made a profit from charging the network for equipment and services they provide to the production, such as camera equipment, editors and more.

Unscripted shows are much cheaper to produce than scripted. The cheapest reality show averaged below $100,000 per episode, while the more expensive ones were estimated at around $500,000 per episode in a WGA report about Nonfiction Television from 2013. “American Idol,” a top-rated and high-budget reality competition series, had an estimated budget of $2 million per episode. In contrast, scripted shows are averaging an episode rate of around $9 million, according to a C&I Studios report from January 2024.

Producers kept the rights to the show’s format when they originated overseas. With shows like the Emmy-winning Peacock show “The Traitors” and summer hit “Love Island USA,” along with long-running favorites like NBC’s “The Voice” and CBS’s “Big Brother,” production companies could make a buck selling the format for international versions of the show.

A hit franchise or two raised a production company’s profile enough to land it big investments, as well as merger and acquisition opportunities within the marketplace that led to big profits for its founders. It’s how Endemol and Talpa Media founder John de Mol Jr., creator of the “Big Brother” and “The Voice” formats, made his fortune in the 1990s and early 2000s.

But as the cable television landscape has dwindled, most reality TV concepts gathering buzz in the U.S. have moved to streamers like Netflix, which can then distribute international versions of shows like “Too Hot to Handle,” “The Circle” and others in-house. This undercuts smaller production companies from possible profits, while they face pressure from distributors to deliver shows at a lower budget, despite costs increasing like they have for scripted content (though not as significantly). Add in the industry-wide slowdown in content spending — including in the reality TV sector, which hit saturation levels in 2021 — and the reality industry is left with a perfect storm for its outdated business model.

Unscripted is not going away, however. The number of reality TV hours released in the U.S. in 2023 was estimated at over 8,200 hours by Ampere Analysis, compared to 3,200 scripted hours (based on total hours per season for shows that premiered that year). Established franchises like “The Voice,” “The Bachelor” and “Real Housewives” continue to spark interest and eyeballs.

Much like the scripted sector, the contraction has left distributors with a narrow view on what makes a show worth greenlighting. This includes whether a pitch comes with recognizable IP or a big producer attached to guarantee audience interest — like Max’s “Fast Friends,” inspired by beloved sitcom “Friends” or ABC’s upcoming reboot of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” executive produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. Or if it features or is backed by a big-name digital creator, like Hulu’s hit “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Or if it has a tie to sports content, like Netflix’s “Simone Biles Rising.”

This decline, however, underscores how the business model that kept unscripted producers in the black since the MTV “Real World” days of the 1990s has cratered with the demise of cable and the rise of streaming. As distributors are cutting show orders, producers are moving many of their projects out of the sector’s former epicenters in Los Angeles and New York for cheaper shooting locations in other states, or overseas.

But Ampere Analysis principal analyst Fred Black believes that while the industry’s consolidation wave is not over, the content cutback may be reaching its bottom.

“I doubt we will fall much further in terms of content,” Black told TheWrap.

Big shifts explained

For Black, Hollywood’s unscripted slowdown is due to both an industry-wide course-correction after the glut of Peak TV, and part of streamers’ cutting back on overall content spending. The pandemic led to an increase in unscripted shows, given their faster turnaround times to get on the air and because those productions dealt with fewer restrictions than scripted.

“It made sense to make a lot of that content, and it turned out the audiences really liked it. So networks kept making it, even after [the pandemic] finished,” Black told TheWrap. Distributors noted there was too much content being released that was “effectively gaining no audience recognition.”

Companies started to reduce their output, with corporate consolidation helping to accelerate the process. The WBD merger led to the fusion of development efforts across the companies’ content, which explains why the streamer Discovery+ went from ordering a peak of 41 unscripted series in the first half of 2021 to only two in the first half of 2024. (Discovery+ content now also lives on Max). Social media platforms that had started to invest in the production of unscripted shows also significantly reduced or shut down their efforts in recent years — like Facebook Watch and Snapchat — meaning the loss of even more buyers.

Streamers overloaded on unscripted content, Mark Koops, co-managing partner of INE Entertainment, an unscripted-centric production company behind recent shows for Disney, Discovery and TLC, told TheWrap. The producer, who co-created the 2000s hit NBC-USA Network show “The Biggest Loser,” said that market leader Netflix doesn’t need more than “a couple new bestsellers” periodically to keep its subscribers happy, since the streamer is also seeing success from amplifying older shows in its expansive library.

With fewer funds to spend on content, Koops said that streamers are focused on taking “safer swings” by leaning on IP and big names, like Netflix’s “Squid Game: The Challenge” and YouTuber MrBeast’s “Beast Games” on Prime Video, both of which are being produced in the U.K. and Canada, respectively.

As with scripted, the idea of a “12-month annual cycle” for a reality show on a streamer to deliver a new season has “completely gone out of the window” without the push and pull of advertisers’ budgets, Eric Day, the co-managing partner of INE Entertainment, told TheWrap. He added that the business seems to now be operating on an 18- or 24-month timeline.

“Nobody’s buying against the need to deliver for a consistent, bankable audience when it matters to advertisers — it’s only when it’s something they absolutely know will be undeniable for their platform,” Day said, noting the “very high bar” creates a culture of “avoiding risks — which is where the biggest unscripted franchises came from, historically.”

Even as the broader U.S. labor market is picking up, the now-global marketplace for unscripted content has further jolted U.S. staffers, especially in Los Angeles.

“LA is its own worst enemy,” Koops said. He noted the cost to shoot a scene in a coffee shop in Los Angeles might be upwards of $5,000, while venues in other cities are often willing to host a reality show for free in exchange for the brand exposure. “It’s not a friendly town to shoot in anymore.”

These days unscripted shows like the Endemol-produced Fox series “MasterChef” and “Beat Shazam” (produced by MGM Alternative Television, BiggerStage, Aploff Entertainment, in association with Shazam) are more likely to hire local crews and fly their U.S. contestants abroad than shell out a higher cost to keep their U.S. staffers.

“Salaries and compensation in the U.S. are just higher and they’re used to bigger teams,” Koops said. “Some of this now, with so many people not being employed, is because you just can’t afford to have as many people on any one show.”

The situation has affected thousands of workers on both coasts, forcing many to go outside their skillset to find work. Hurst, whose income currently sustains his household, was forced to cut his day rates. To supplement his income, he has taken PA jobs, including as a camera PA for a Rhode Island football club. He’s also been “quietly trying to integrate additional jobs,” including podcast and live sports production, though he notes that “no matter what industry you are in, there is no safety net.”

As TheWrap noted in its Holding on in Hollywood series, Brooklyn-based Erin Browne, an unscripted TV producer, has turned to food stamps and working for artificial intelligence companies for close to minimum wage; while in Santa Monica, unscripted development executive Erin Copen Howard has started a self-funded Etsy “wish seeds” business to try to support her three small children.

A way forward

Even as unscripted production undergoes a slump in the U.S., some reality genres are going strong. One of those is sports, which Netflix has mastered through its slew of sports-centric docuseries like “Full Swing” and the upcoming NBA docuseries “Starting 5,” which premieres on Wednesday. Creator-led projects like Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” also appear to be gaining traction in the marketplace.

Born from a TikTok-driven scandal back in 2022, “Mormon Wives” capitalized on a group of Mormon “MomTokkers” by making the already established influencers the show’s main characters. It’s a go-to strategy for companies like Select Management Group, which helps digital-first talent, including YouTubers Gigi Gorgeous and Tyler Oakley, build up their business ventures.

Filmed in Utah — which has seen an uptick in local unscripted production with shows like Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” and the upcoming “Sold on SLC” reality series — “Mormon Wives” has worked hand-in-hand with social media to draw eyeballs to the series.

“It’s not about changing how things are released or shown, but it’s about changing the marketing of it all,” Lisa Filipelli, Select Management Group partner and “Mormon Wives” executive producer, told TheWrap. “We don’t view social media as a competitor. We view it as a way of helping enhance what it is that we’re doing.”

Hulu renewed “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” for 20 additional episodes last week, after becoming the streamer’s most-watched unscripted premiere of 2024. The show scored 409 million viewing minutes in its opening weekend in September, according to Nielsen.

Black also sees “brands coming in and helping fund” unscripted projects as a path forward. Such partnerships are already making their way into hit productions, including ad spots for Pizza Hut and Coffee Mate that were incorporated into the anticipated “Love Island USA” Season 6 reunion on Peacock, which aired this past summer.

Though the subject matter and presentation will change, the industry will find a way to keep the safety net secure, Black said.

“Audiences will switch off if you don’t have any fresh new original content,” he said. “Unscripted content is still an obvious way to [help with] that.”

Alexei Barrionuevo contributed to this story.

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