Andy Sullivan: Against the Grain

Thu, 04/25/2024 - 8:00am — Diane Dyer

Who’s to blame for “realty” tv shows like The Bachelor? Well, in the ‘90’s, MTV launches a new kind of tv. The network that was already about pushing boundaries would go even farther when they debuted their original reality show called The Real World. By the end of the 1990’s, the M in MTV stood mostly for mayhem.

“I can’t watch it. I don’t watch any reality tv”, says Andre Comeau, cast member of season one of The Real World. You know it’s bad when a cast member of the original reality tv show says that about the genre. “It just gives me the worst stomachache”. That’s how MTV made parents feel when the “M” in MTV stood for music.

Almost from the start in 1981, the channel helped to define an entire generation. By the late 1980’s, MTV expands to include shows catering to older teens and late-night partiers. There were shows like Headbangers Ball hosted by ‘80’s rocker Lita Ford, Yo MTV Raps and Top 20 Countdown. Viewers would change the channel whenever a song came on they didn’t like. That’s when they started to experiment with other kinds of programming.

MTV constantly must update its content. That was where they started to get into politics. In the 1992 Presidential campaign, they had specials like Choose or Lose. Then-candidate Bill Clinton made an appearance on the town-hall show. MTV also launched Rock The Vote and solicited music’s biggest stars . However, politics just wasn’t as interesting to young people as what was on the recently launched FOX show Beverly Hills 90210. MTV shifts gears and goes looking for a youth-oriented soap opera of their own.

Two unknown tv writers living in New York take the challenge. What they create, will transform television (for better or worse, mostly worse) the next 4 decades. Jonathan Murray, who had a background in documentary filmmaking, and Mary Elis Bonham, who had a background in soap operas, were working on a drama focused on a bunch of young people. And before you say they must’ve been young people, they were not. From the picture shown on Dark Side of the ‘90’s, they looked to be in their 40’s at the time.

They pitched MTV that they wanted to do a soap opera. MTV replied “it’s too expensive. You can’t”. “Okay, what if we throw the writers out? That’ll save money”. Still too expensive. The duo said “what if we throw the actors out”? The Real World was born. So, I guess you could say cheapness is to blame for reality tv. Real World debuted in 1992. The premise was gathering young people who’d gone to New York to make something happen for themselves, put them in a house and watch them live. Despite seeming totally unique, The Real World isn’t the first show documenting regular people living their lives. That honor goes to a little-remembered PBS series from 1973 called An American Family. They found this family that had 5 children and filmed them for 6 months. The idea was that everyday people were interesting enough on their own.

The Real World format may date back to PBS in the ‘70’s but that’s about the only thing this ‘90’s MTV show had in common with the earlier decade. As I was watching this episode of Dark Side of the ‘90’s, it appears to me that. While the genesis of The Real World was supposed to be putting randoms in a house and watch them live, what they really were doing was putting randoms in a house and watch them argue. “When I saw how things were manipulated in editing, that was very scary” says a cast member of season one. Wait, reality tv isn’t real? No way! Ha

The show premiered on May 21, 1992. “What I remember mostly was how quickly it caught fire”, says Tony DiSanto, former MTV President of Programming. Wait until you hear about the contracts these geniuses signed. The contract amounted to “we own everything. You own nothing”. It has become a hit show that gets run, rerun, marathon weekend runs for years to come. They gave up their lives and images for nothing. It amounted to fame without fortune. Fast forward 8 years later and we have Jackass, Fear Factor, The Anna Nicole Show, Simple Life, Jersey Shore, etc. Reality tv is 90% of every network. Reality tv rolls on and its legacy will always be linked to the pioneers who broke first ground. The power a silly tv show has to affect people’s behavior 30 years later is striking. If you were wondering if you know anyone from that series, Mike Mizanin was in season 10 of The Real World. Fellow WWE fans know him better as The Miz.