Reality Realness

While reading Reali-TV, I found it interesting that reality TV was really started because it was so cheap to produce. I feel like many Americans would just say that it became popular because we, as a society, like to watch the drama unfold and we subscribe to all of it because "it's real." While it may have began as a cheap way to fill airtime in the 80's, it has certainly spawned into a bigger beast in the last few years. It cannot be cheap to produce anymore. Low production value is definitely obvious when you watch the first seasons of The Real World and a lot of older reality shows, but today I would venture to guess that it costs much more than it ever has to produce a reality show. Especially when you're producing shows with casts that develop big egos, as was the case with Jersey Shore. According to many reports over the last few years, each cast member of Jersey Shore made at LEAST $2 million for one season alone. Obviously the cast of The Real World isn't making that much money, but the cameras used to shoot that show are better than they were 20 years ago (and I'm sure there are more), there's better lighting, and the hotels and houses that the cast live in are MUCH nicer than they were. Bringing The Hills into the argument is kind of cheating since almost all of the cast members have admitted to it's gross lack of reality, but they were all undoubtedly in hair and makeup for hours every day, which costs a lot of money. And I bet they were making good money for pretending to be frenemies. I don't think there are many people these days that will sign up for a reality show without significant monetary compensation.