Reality TV production dropped 30% since 2022, with shows like Jersey Shore and Catfish canceled. TikTok and YouTube's free user-generated content undercut expensive cable shows. Industry veterans say reality TV professionals need to start making low-budget content from their phones and monetize through sponsorships instead.
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Ultimize. Let me start with something that sounds a little depressing, but it's actually fantastic news unless you're a reality TV producer in Los Angeles. According to the New York Times, the number of reality and unscripted TV shows has plummeted by a third since 2022. A third. That's not a dip. That's a cliff dive without a parachute. Networks are canceling shows left and right. MTV is ending Jersey Shore: Family Vacation. Catfish is done after nearly 300 episodes. HGTV, Food Network, TLC, they're all cutting back. And Mark Cronin, longtime producer and creator of Bravo's Below Deck, put it bluntly: everything's contracting and there are no new shows right now. That's industry language for we used to print money and now we're printing resumes. And here's why this is happening. It's not complicated, it's not mysterious, and frankly, it's not even sad. For all the changes in the modern economy, this might be the least depressing one because let's be honest, most reality TV is mind-wasting garbage. It's people screaming, crying, dating badly, flipping houses they can't afford, cooking food they don't eat, and pretending it matters. Here's the problem for the industry. If you want mind-wasting garbage video today, congratulations, you have an unlimited buffet. Open TikTok on your phone, open YouTube, open Instagram. There are thousands of hours of this content. There are millions of hours if you look in the right place. There are billions of hours every second if you just keep looking. And here's the best part. It's all made by people who work for free. Imagine running a business where your computers are producing more content than you, faster than you, and their labor cost is zero. That's not competition. That's extinction. Even people inside the industry feel it. Chris Arundel, a longtime post-production supervisor who worked on shows like Ghost Hunters, said this to the Times, you got a bad feeling. This isn't trending upward anymore. This is trending downward. That's not analysis. That's a guy looking at his career like it just got hit by a slow-moving truck. And here's the deeper shift. Executives say 3 things are driving this collapse. Cable is dying, streaming isn't replacing it fast enough, and YouTube is eating everybody's lunch. As Paul Telegy, former chairman of entertainment at NBC, put it, There are so many things converging to squeeze the money for all practitioners. Here's the translation. This business model is getting strangled from every direction. And while all of that is happening, YouTube creators are out there building audiences, ideally like I'm doing right now. Although this isn't reality TV, I do deal with reality. YouTubers are making content and in many cases making more money. Even traditional shows are fleeing. The Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil is moving to YouTube. New shows that used to land on HGTV, now they're going straight to digital platforms with brand sponsorships. It's like watching a restaurant shut down while the food trucks outside are thriving. So let's be clear what's happening. Reality TV didn't die. It got replaced. Because if you're a viewer, why would you wait a week for a polished, edited, watered-down reality show when you can see something raw, ridiculous, and immediate right now. Reality TV used to be junk food. Now it's competing with an all-you-can-eat junk food factory that never closes. And here's the brutal truth for creators: if you want to succeed today, you have to do one of two things. You either have to be better or cheaper, ideally both. And traditional reality TV is doing neither. It's expensive, it's slow, it's overproduced, and half the time it feels like content that was already outdated before it aired. Meanwhile, some guy in his bedroom with a phone is getting 10 million views talking about his lunch. Might not be fair, but it's real. And if you're a reality TV producer making mid-six figures in Los Angeles, I'm going to give you some career advice you probably don't want to hear. Pack your bags because the old system is not coming back. Move somewhere cheaper, way cheaper, and start making your own content because the gatekeepers are gone. The audience is everywhere, and the only thing standing between you and success is whether you can create something people actually care about. And yes, that might mean your new studio is your living room, your production budget is your iPhone, and your audience feedback is instant and brutal. Welcome to the real reality show. And if that sounds scary, well, good, because every major change in media has looked like this. Unknown actors, no connections, no money, then suddenly one breakout hit and everything changes. You think Harrison Ford started as a Hollywood star? No, he was doing carpentry, building cabinets. He did it for years trying to survive. Now, imagine if he had had an iPhone. He wouldn't be waiting for a casting call. He'd be building an audience, presumably. And that's the real shift here. You don't need permission anymore. You don't have to be hired. Hire yourself. You need attention, and attention doesn't go to the biggest budget. It goes to the most interesting thing on the screen. So yes, reality TV is shrinking. Yes, jobs are disappearing. Yes, an entire era is fading away. Good, because when bad content dies, better content has a chance to live. And if you're paying attention, this isn't the end of something. It's the beginning of something much bigger, a world where anyone, everyone can create something that people actually want to watch, no network required. I apologize if I seem cold-hearted today. I realize I sounded rough on college kids earlier. I'm sounding rough on producers who do reality shows in LA. Look, I'm very compassionate for anyone who's out of a job or can't pay the bills. Believe me, I've been there for much of my early career. But at some point, just wishing doesn't make it better. Hoping things come back, but things don't come back. Yeah, I understand there was a pandemic. Some industries shut down and then did come back, but this is not one of them. So my recommendation to you, if you have an absolute passion for making reality TV or stories based on real people, you're going to have to figure out a way of doing it without some big studio giving you a big pot of money or a salary. Because I think we're only going to see these trends continue. Again, down 30% in the last few years, and it's going to continue to go down. Not because people are watching video less. No, people are watching video. They're staring at their phones more than ever, and more people are coming online every day around the world. So there's only increased demand. The question is, how do you make money from it? And the idea that there's going to be this big middleman, which is essentially what a TV network is, that's going to do all the heavy lifting for you, find advertisers for you, give you a check so you can just do the fun creative stuff. That is wishful thinking. Ultimize.
