On Thursday, I was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered by Audie Cornish, and talked about the most recent awful thing to happen on a reality show: a possible sexual assault while cameras filmed.
I also wrote about other incidents of on-camera violence for Vulture: A Brief History of Violence on Reality TV. Alas, those are just a few of the examples.
The biggest new broadcast reality show in years is the CBS series Hunted, on which contestants attempt to hide from a group of “hunters,” former law enforcement officials who use all kinds of surveillance to track the teams.
The first few episodes intrigued me, but I also couldn’t understand how exactly a reality show got access to the information they were claiming to access—ATM camera footage, GPS coordinates for cars, car rental records.
So, I set about to fact-check the show, and the result is this story:
In January, I spent time in Los Angeles at the Television Critics Association press tour, and while I was there, I interviewed many people about the reality TV shows they host, produce, created, star in, and/or write about.
Here are five of those interviews—plus one, with Bachelor spoiler Steve Carbone, that I conducted before leaving for L.A. Enjoy!
I wrote three pieces about Shark Week, which starts tonight on The Discovery Channel. All three look at what the summer stunt has done the past few years (i.e. airing fake documentaries pretending to be factual) and where it is going this year.
I love when television surprises me, and Animal Planet’s The Last Alaskans truly surprised me. It’s a show about Alaska, yes, but also one that seems like nothing I’ve ever seen before–whether it’s about Alaska or not.
Here’s my full review, and an interview with the producers about how they created the show.
Check it out; I promise it’s worth your time.
When I was in Los Angeles in January, I interviewed Rob Cesternino, creator of the RHAP (Rob Has a Podcast) empire. That resulted in my appearance on a podcast that I was observing, and this two-part story for my site reality blurred:
I cataloged a highly disturbing series of comments in the Big Brother house and the disturbing way CBS treats bigoted remarks and slurs spoken by its cast members. My writing earned the attention of the media. My reporting was cited by The New York Times, BuzzFeed, NPR, Salon, and many other outlets, while the Associated Press and other publications interviewed me about it.