I blame the audience
Absolutely incorrect.
Todays unscripted shows are drawing a fraction of the audience that major network shows drew ten or twenty years ago and now the nets are shedding viewers at an even faster rate. For a long time people have understood that broadcast television is a dying industry, unscripted programs are just a symptom of that decline.
The networks like those shows because they are cheap to produce. Period, end of sentence. And for the most part, they draw a lower rating than traditional network fare but since the profit margin is higher no one minds. Remember, the finale for ABCs hit The Bachelorette was beaten by a run of the mill episode of Law and Order on NBC. But ABC probably made more money on that one night (forgetting about future syndication). While reality may have changed, the business model run today is still based on the same assumptions as when you could get 35 million people to tune into every weekly episode of Mork and Mindy. The costs of traditional programming remain too high for the current market.
In fact, the decline of network television is a sign that the audience really is looking for quality. Hollywood got lazy in the days of the three networks anything they put on could draw a crowd. But with cable, satellite, home video, the Internet, targeted networks, syndicated markets, micro-stations and all the rest choice is finally available. Its much easier to find the good stuff these days, an also much easier to avoid the bad stuff. For someone like ABC its a real problem, they have hundreds of competitors now instead of just two.
The original draw of Survivor was really its novelty factor. To be blunt, it wasnt another wacky family sitcom where a befuddled father learns valuable life lessons from his spunky (and slightly hot) daughters, or a dark cop drama where the heroic men and women in blue fight against a system thats as corrupt as the thugs out on the mean streets. The sitcom formats (and almost all of the plots) havent changed since the first run of I Love Lucy. Like I said, network television has always been a place where the lazy and untalented could makes lots of money. Maybe thats why Eisners so keen on it
But novelty looses it appeal very quickly. Survivor has no ratings pull anymore. The vast majority of unscripted shows sink without a trace. Even the ratings hits are mediocre at best. These kinds of shows are nothing but a passing fad that a dying industry clung to in hopes of salvation. The networks put these shows on not because they draw an audience, but because the FCC still wont let them broadcast static. Reality shows are simply the cheapest way of plugging the hole.
It has nothing to do with what the audience wants other to highlight that so few in Hollywood have a clue about it. That's why were all out watching HBO or the Discovery Channel or popping in a new DVD.
