USA TODAY International Edition
Reality isn’t always a hit on cable
More networks are trying to tap into the genre’s big audience
Breaking Bad, Burn Notice and Rizzoli & Isles are among the top- rated shows on cable. If only the networks that air those dramas had as much luck generating reality TV hits.
AMC, USA and TNT have aggressively expanded into the crowded cable genre this year in a bid to diversify their schedules. But USA Network stumbled with The Moment, in which former NFL player Kurt Warner helped contestants fulfill their dreams, and Summer Camp, a competition series among adult campers, has had a slow season. Both have averaged about 1 million viewers, a fraction of the audience for hits such as Suits and Burn Notice.
AMC has introduced reality shows with a thud, including Small Town
Security — averaging 252,000 viewers this year, compared with The Walking Dead’s 15 million — The Pitch, Freakshow and Owner’s Manual. And there was nothing heroic about TNT’s The Hero, a realitycompetition series hosted by Dwayne Johnson that drew just 1.4 million viewers; Boston’s Finest, Donnie Wahlberg’s look at Beantown cops, which claimed 1.2 million; or last year’s The Great Escape.
“We have not cracked the ratings code yet on TNT,” says network chief Michael Wright. “But at the same time, we’re keenly aware we have to continue to try, because we believe both scripted and unscripted shows are essential parts of our programming landscape.”
Sam Armando, analyst at Chicago ad firm SMGx, says “nothing’s really popping” at these networks, and he adds a theory: Unlike non- stop reality havens Bravo and TLC, they’re not known for unscripted fare, so viewers haven’t found the shows, and “it will take some effort to slowly change what people expect” from them.
AMC president Charlie Collier says, “Training audiences to come to us for original dramas didn’t happen overnight, and with unscripted we’re facing some of the same challenges.” Though it has a larger audience overall, there’s little viewer overlap between its dramas and unscripted shows. And like other networks, it seeks the recipe for reality success.
Small Town Security is an example of a show that “numerically, it could be argued, deserved little consideration for renewal last season,” Collier says. “But it had a creative voice we very much believed in, so we gave it more time to build the audience we think it deserves.”
Unscripted shows are generally far cheaper to produce, which allows networks to fill lineups with more, lower- risk original programming. “It doesn’t have to be a huge success for it to be profitable,” Armando says. “As long as it doesn’t alienate core viewers, I think we’ll see more swings before they cease to exist.”
Shows that have performed well are those tied closely to hit scripted programming, such as AMC’s Talking
Dead, a talk show that chews over the week’s Walking Dead episode. And Turner’s comedy sibling TBS has scored with like- minded hiddencamera prank show Deal With It, which has averaged 2.3 million and was renewed for a second season.
And TNT is pursuing series that hew more closely to its bread and butter: Cold Justice, a true- crime series about cold- case murders, arrives tonight at 10 ET/ PT. The show’s producer? Law & Order’s Dick Wolf, who put TNT on the map with reruns.