TV GOES BACK TO REALITY WILL UNSCRIPTED PROGRAMS CONTINUE TO CAPTIVATE US?

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

Oh, brother. We survived television's fascination with the real thing this year only to find out there will be more of the same in 2001.

The 2000 season proved that reality TV is cheap to produce and, if the human dynamics are quirky and interesting enough, it can also produce high ratings.

``Survivor,'' CBS' pop-culture event of the year, pitted semiordinary Americans against one another on a distant island where rat was a delicacy, a million bucks was the prize and a cunning nudist's manipulations had the country abuzz. Its contestants became celebrities in their own right, and the sequel, set in Australia, will return in January after the Super Bowl.

While ``Survivor'' brought CBS big summer ratings, its other reality series, ``Big Brother,'' failed to deliver. It stranded 10 contestants in a Studio City high-tech, low-concept prison, in which essentially nothing of interest happened for three solid months, even when the show abandoned its own rules in a transparent effort to spice things up. Its contestants - many of whom seemed to be banking on future stardom - justly disappeared into obscurity.

Other embarrassments: ``Confessions,'' a shocking program courtesy of Court TV, which featured criminals admitting their crimes, was yanked from the air when there was a public outcry over the series' lack of compassion for the victims of the crimes depicted. The Fox network tried reality specials like ``When Animals Attack'' and considered crashing an airplane for the nation's edification, but hit rock bottom with ``Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?'' Two strangers were wed for America's bemusement, though the marriage was annulled when it was revealed that the network had neglected to divulge the groom's checkered past.

``It's interesting that the reality craze is interested in shaking up television, but not with anything good - they're just finding new ways to pander,'' says Rolling Stone TV critic David Wild, who believes even ``Survivor'' may have trouble retaining fans in 2001. ``They'll have to deliver blood next time. I don't think people will just go for a conniving contestant - they'll want (sex); this time, they'll demand real reality.''

There were signs of real reality at a higher level. ABC's ``Hopkins 24/7'' which essayed the life-and-death decisions made by doctors at one of America's finest hospitals. The Travel Channel's ``The World's Most Dangerous Places'' offered smart, sardonic lessons in messy global politics. ``American High'' was an intelligent, sensitive look at contemporary high school life. The bad news about the latter was that Fox viewers accustomed to its usually crass reality programming couldn't make sense of it and it was promptly canceled. The good news is that PBS will air it in its entirety in 2001.

While some of these shows are simply straightforward documentaries, many of them, and those that will replace them in 2001, prompt questions: What's acceptable in this genre in terms of exploiting their wannabe stars, and when does ``reality'' become anything but?

``Social mores have relaxed significantly over the past generations,'' says Robert Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television and professor at Syracuse University. ``There used to be rules about what you show and don't show on TV. But with the increased competition from cable and the Internet, all bets are off. Networks say, We've got to bring people into our tent. Soon, we're gonna look back at MTV's 'Real World' as the classy, early period.''

Even some of reality's practitioners are suspicious of its spiraling directions. Jeremy Mills, who created ``Castaway 2000,'' which placed three dozen strangers on a remote island off Wales for this calendar year as part of a social experiment - no prize money is involved - says too many shows are based simply on watching people squirm and suffer.

``It's easy to exploit someone lacking the wherewithal to understand fully the implications, too easy to get good TV at the expense of a person. We should protect people from themselves.''

``Castaway 2000'' drew much of its drama from the production's own haplessness - the island's inhabitants routinely rebelled against Mills and company.

``We never really expected the degree to which we would become the enemy,'' says Mills, whose background is in traditional documentaries. ``Of course, when you stand back, it becomes obvious - it's the classic group dynamic; it's the government of a small country that everyone hates. I've had great sympathies for (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair this year.''

Scott Stone of Stone Stanley Productions will introduce two new reality series early next year. They include ABC's ``The Mole,'' debuting Jan. 9, a contest in which participants must figure out who among them is a planted saboteur, and the WB's ``Popstars,'' premiering Jan. 12, charting the evolution of a manufactured girl group.

``Putting people in absurd situations is not what these shows are about,'' Stone says. ``Our shows respect real people in asking them to bare their souls.''

Scott Collins of Inside.com, on the other hand, thinks that if the subjects want to be on TV and understand the repercussions, they're fair game.

``People can make decisions for themselves,'' he says, adding that someone like ``Big Brother's'' Karen - the anxiety-ridden housewife who declared the end of her marriage on national TV - knew what she was doing when she aspired for an audience, and to try to protect her would be just as dishonest.

``By that logic, the producers of 'An American Family' (an early, seminal PBS reality series dating back to the 1970s) would have left the Loud family alone because they would have worried about the impact of the film on the family.'' Collins says. ``It's the same thing journalistically when reporters call up victims of violent crimes and ask, 'What are you feeling?' If you didn't ask questions, you wouldn't get stories, you wouldn't find out what's going on in the world.''

Joe Gantz, who with his brother produces HBO's Emmy-winning ``Taxi Cab Confessions'' - a new episode will debut Saturday - and provides reality programming on the Internet at Crushedplanet.com, believes there's a clear distinction between game-show reality and the type of documentaries he strives to make, yet understands the tension between the two.

``In the documentary arena, you sometimes get something very powerful because it's authentic and it can be great,'' he says. ``So when I see these reality things that are contrived and set up and might be entertaining but don't let you into the human spirit at all, I don't relate to it. If people use gimmicks and it works to give you some insight into human nature and it's not aggressive and not cruel, then maybe they're on to something. I don't find manipulative stuff interesting, and I don't like it when it's mean-spirited.

``On the other hand, you can be a purist and have something that's done well and not manipulated in any way, but you still won't get any insight into human nature to make it worthwhile,'' Gantz continues. ``You can do something nonmanipulative and it can still be a failure. So I see their dilemma - they want drama and they want to turn corners and have a story arc in a certain time frame. I see the motivation to manipulate things. Maybe this kind of reality will lead to something more substantial and maybe it won't.''

``Taxi Cab Confessions'' won an Emmy for its raw portrayal of cab fares sharing intimate aspects of their lives, unaware they were being captured on camera. ``I'm continually amazed at the stories we get. The world is kind of divided between people who live behind a facade and people who are comfortable showing who they are, whether that means in terms of their sexuality, the unusualness, the difficult times they've had.''

Such subtleties aren't exactly what the networks are seeking in their reality fare. Upcoming series feature singles chained to one another for entire days or on an exotic vacation in order to find romance (UPN's ``Chains of Love,'' Fox's ``Temptation Island'') or enduring tremendous physical discomfort (Fox's ``Boot Camp''). Many others, set in prisons or featuring contestants on the run or creating Web sites, have been scrapped by the networks, which calls into question just how enduring the reality trend will prove to be.

A reality series must succeed in its first run to be at all viable - repeats don't work (a second run of ``Survivor'' tanked), and they have no shelf life in syndication.

``The larger business question is, Can reality TV sustain itself over the long term?'' adds Collins. ``Sitcoms and dramas work from a proven economic model, but with reality, who knows? The networks don't know whether once viewers tire of 'Survivor' and 'The Mole,' that the genre won't shrivel up.

``Fox came up with a lot of reality ideas that work for one episode and one only. You don't want to see a series about it. You watch it once and it goes away, and you never have to think about it again,'' Collins says. ``The networks, if they're smart, could find they're a useful tool if used sparingly. If they have a good concept, with gamesmanship, suspense and compelling characters, they can fill holes with these programs, but it's apparent that people won't watch just because their shows boast real people, are unscripted and shot on videotape. You can't just have some sort of cheesy concept and expect people will watch.''

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Photo: Richard Hatch and ``Survivor'' were the year's big winners.