Reality TV makes dollars and sense for NZ
By Kathryn Stewart
Aah, the drama of reality television. The sweet victories, the crushing defeats, the mini meltdowns, and the tears - always the tears.
In its broadest sense, reality television describes all programmes that are real and unscripted, though most people associate it with what industry folk call 'constructed reality'. Think of shows like The Apprentice, Treasure Island and Idol.
"You put framework into it, you make people compete or you put something in there to disrupt their lives and see how human nature behaves," says Eyeworks CEO Julie Christie.
Christie has been a vanguard of reality TV in New Zealand. She started her production company Touchdown in 1991 to develop sports and entertainment programmes, but later shifted focus.
"It was about the late 1990s that I realised that the New Zealand market was a good test market for the world, and that's when I started to develop formats (show concepts), which is primarily where unscripted television's heart is," she says.
It was around this time that other New Zealand made reality
shows surfaced. Top Shelf's docu-soap Flatmates first series aired
in 1997 and the all-girl pop group True Bliss formed in 1999 via
Popstars, the concept of independent producer Jonathan
Dowling.
But it was Christie who became most influential in taking New
Zealand made reality formats to the world.
In 2001, Christie pitched High Country Dance - a documentary about the singles' ball in Middlemarch - to the folks at Fox in the United States. They snapped up the concept and called it Looking for Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska.
High Country Dance was Christie's first overseas pitch. Now, everything the company makes is with a view for export - a crucial path for New Zealand's television industry, she believes, if it is to make money.
"We can't compete in documentaries, we can't compete in drama, and we struggle to compete in film. What's the one genre where we can make a difference to the world? It's obviously in unscripted," says Christie.
Phil Smith, the managing director of Great Southern TV which made The Lion Man and the local version of The Apprentice , has also had huge success with reality television.
Smith says The Lion Man, an observational documentary that followed Craig Busch and his big cats at the Zion Wildlife Park, is the biggest selling television show in New Zealand's history. It first went to air in 2004 and has since been sold to more than 120 countries and has generated around $2 million in foreign sales so far.
"It screens all the time, everywhere. It's still on air, it still gets sold every week somewhere in the world," he says.
Smith believes it is programmes like this, which show Kiwis doing amazing and unique things that make them successful both here and overseas.
With constructed reality shows, he says it is the natural drama and jeopardy that viewers hook into. And, it is not just a case of the brawny and beautiful 'toughing' it out for 15 minutes of fame and a lucrative cash prize.
"The interesting thing with The Apprentice and MasterChef is that they are real skill-based shows, they have more to them than someone trying to run up a wall or flip down something, so they've become more intellectualised."
The genre can bankroll other opportunities too. Eyeworks currently has three movies in production and a drama series and tele-movie in development - all owed to its financial success in reality television.
And, whether you love reality television or loathe it, Christie says it's here to stay.
"We can't live without unscripted television. What are we going to fill our televisions with? It's cost-effective, it's exciting, and the viewers love it."
