Core Response #5 - Kallan

    Although Caldwell addresses both narrative and reality TV in “Convergence Television”—e.g., using both Miami Vice and Temptation Island as examples in the same paragraph—his analysis of the “pitch aesthetic” (58) that shapes form and content seems especially apt for describing reality programming. Though this chapter was published in 2004, the “culture of production” (45) that he describes speaks quite well to my own (limited) experience working in reality TV in the 2010s. Caldwell writes, “Pitching is in many ways a kind of performance art. The ability to effectively reduce a thirty- or sixty- minute narrative to two or three short spoken sentences carries a premium in Hollywood” (58). I worked as a development researcher at a production company, which meant that I tried to come up with pitch-able concepts and prepared materials for someone else to actually pitch. All of my key tasks were guided by the pitch aesthetic. One of these tasks was to look at all of the shows currently airing on and recently greenlit by the networks we were targeting (i.e., regularly pitching shows to) and to sort them into categories by topic—e.g., for one channel: babies, weddings, wealthy families, big families, competition, etc. The next step was to note which shows, especially new shows, were clearly developed as (pitch-able!) combinations of established categories. For example, TLC had recently greenlit a show called Labor Games, which (I kid you not) combined giving birth with a game show (from a press release: “a race against nature as a camera crew surprises parents-to-be currently in labor, offering them the opportunity to win a nursery full of prizes before the baby is born” [emphasis mine!]). In addition to “birth + game show,” other combinations I found and noted on these spreadsheets included “makeover + medical” (Smile, a show about dental procedures), “dating + royalty” (Secret Princes), “dress shopping + weight” (Curvy Brides), “family + pranks” (Prank My Mom)—the list goes on. The point was to identify the categories/topics that these networks favored in order to come up with our own novel combinations of familiar categories (dress shopping + medical procedures, anyone?). The “‘just like X but with Y’ variant’” (58) process that Caldwell identifies, then, absolutely defines our operational mode. The “ideas” we prepared for pitching were more like formulas, both borne out of and easily describable by their topical hybridity (we can imagine the pitch for Curvy Brides, “just like Say Yes to the Dress but with elements of My 600Lb Life!”). 

    This process also ends up creating a feedback loop of sorts. Caldwell writes, “The industrial performance art of pitching inculcates the production culture with a clockwork-like dependence on endless variation/replication and a process of generic aggregation” (59). These repeated and remixed categories, the “endless variation/replication,” lead to both “excessive cross-genre hybridization” (58) and “generic aggregation,” with the creation of new bizarre sub-genres and sub-sub-genres, but they also produce a sameness within and across networks. Production companies pitch reliable categories and combinations-of-categories to networks, who seek out shows that fall into safe categories that their viewers already enjoy, and so on. Consequently, perhaps, while interning at a cable channel in an earlier phase of my reality-TV-"career", it dawned on me that all of the network’s shows were actually, at their core, the same show—the same type of characters, beats, arcs, musical cues etc.—just taking place in different settings (a pawn shop, a boat, Alaska). 

    All of this to say is that Caldwell’s call to examine how industrial and production practices/cultures shape and drive programming seems useful and wise. Although my anecdotes are undoubtedly less helpful that Caldwell’s analysis, I do takeaway from those experiences a grounded sense of the importance of considering industrial factors if we want to understand programming choices, "content," formats, aesthetics…at least on traditional cable networks (we didn’t pitch anything to streaming services! Maybe none of my takeaways matter anymore 😱!).