Does dramatic TV have a future?
A. There’s been a lot of guff about how reality TV is going to kill off fictional television. Reality TV is cheaper to produce than drama. Production values are practically nonexistent, you don’t need writers or actors, just people willing to embarrass themselves on TV and a catchy, cheesy concept. For a while there we were all hoping that producers would run out of Reality TV concepts. After all, how many Survivor rip-offs can the public swallow? At some point they have to get bored. And they will. Eventually. (There are more cheesy concepts out in the ether than anyone realized.) But there’s another element of the market that may rescue dramatic TV before concept exhaustion does: the DVD. Reality TV fails utterly in reruns. No one wants to watch the episodes of The Bachelor that they missed. It’s like sports. Once you know who won, you’re not interested in how. They especially don’t want to watch episodes they’ve seen before. Reality TV is almost all sizzle and no steak. Who will Don
