WASHINGTON // In the 1960s, the American artist Andy Warhol said that even the Average Joe would get 15 minutes of fame.
He was wrong. The Average Joe has his own TV shows now, and most of them run closer to an hour.
Americans are obsessed with reality television shows - or programmes that feature ordinary people such as soccer moms, housewives and severely overweight dieters instead of actors - and they have permanently altered the television landscape in the process.
Morning talk show hosts analyse them, blog writers and fan clubs are devoted to them, and, much to the dismay of Hollywood scriptwriters - who like to think their work is higher brow - dozens more reality shows will debut this autumn with huge audiences lying in wait.
"We believe reality is far from over; it is just beginning," said Bob Boden, senior vice president of programming, production and development for the Fox Reality Channel, a 24-hour cable network devoted to the genre. "Reality TV has got stories, it's got dramas, it's got tears, laughter and romance - it's got all of the things you come to expect from scripted television."
That includes lots of viewers. In fact, the genre has eclipsed in popularity traditional staples like drama series and sitcoms.
Ten of the top 20 shows in the 2007-2008 broadcast TV season were reality shows, including six of the top 10, according to the Nielsen Company, which tracks such data. A decade ago, by contrast, seven of the top 10 shows were sitcoms.
Fox's American Idol, the "reality competition" where singers compete for a record deal, snagged the top two spots in the national ratings last season with its two weekly episodes. It had an average viewership of 27 million.
Fuelling the reality revolution are a drove of cable channels that have flooded the market with shows ranging from Bravo TV Network's Real Housewives of Atlanta to The Learning Channel's The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom.
Even the experts are having trouble keeping up. "There is as much of this stuff on the air as there ever has been before," said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, who also noted that one-liners from reality shows, such as "You're fired" from Donald Trump's The Apprentice, have developed into ubiquitous catch phrases.
"This type of thing is really at the top of the cultural agenda," Mr Thompson said. "It's become commonplace."
America's reality era began in 2000 with the first season of Survivor (Survivor: Borneo), a show inspired by a Swedish programme, Expedition: Robinson, and imported to America by the British producer Mark Burnett, who is considered a pioneer of the genre.
"Everyone was shocked when it actually worked," said Mr Burnett, who was named one of the world's most influential people in 2004 by Time magazine. "I think what we were able to learn is that untrained actors, in the right light, can be equally as compelling as trained actors."
Mr Burnett tapped into a concept that had always been on the minds of television executives, said Tim Brooks, a television historian and former executive vice president of research for Lifetime Networks.
"There's an old saying in television that the TV screen is a mirror - that what people basically want is to see themselves," Mr Brooks said. "In so many ways, reality TV was beyond a no-brainer. What took so long?"
Mr Brooks points to elements of reality entertainment dating back to a 1940s programme called Candid Microphone, the precursor of Candid Camera, in which hidden cameras recorded people's reactions to strange occurrences.
In the early 1970s, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired a 12-part documentary called An American Family, which followed a California family, the Louds, through their daily lives, which included a separation and the coming out of the couple's 20-year-old son.
But one of the biggest breakthroughs in early reality TV came in 1992 with the debut of MTV's The Real World, where producers placed five strangers in a house and filmed their interactions. Even so, it would be eight years and dozens of sitcoms later before Mr Burnett's Survivor reacquainted America with reality programming and touched off the endless cascade of shows on air today. But what is it about watching reality - and watching ourselves - that is so attractive?
Andy Denhart, publisher of Reality Blurred, a popular website that tracks the reality TV industry, said it boiled down to voyeurism.
"From an early age, people love to gossip about their friends and enemies, and reality TV is an evolved - or regressed - version of that," Mr Denhart said.
"Reality television is entertainment with consequence," he said. "It's one thing to be absorbed into a fictional universe, and another to watch people and know that what they're going through has, to varying degrees, actually occurred."
But there is an even simpler reason behind reality TV's proliferation: it is cheaper to make.
Mr Brooks, the former TV executive, said such programming was attractive to financially strapped networks facing increased competition."You don't have to pay the actors, you don't have to pay writers, and the sets don't usually amount to so much," he said.
In fact many of the genre's biggest detractors are those who make a living writing scripts for the small screen, including Alan Stevens, a sitcom writer and former executive producer of the comedy Roseanne, which starred Roseanne Barr as the matriarch of a working-class family.
"Let's say they made 50 sitcom pilots a year a few years ago, they might be making like five now," Mr Stevens said. "There's hundreds of sitcom writers out of work, and they are all fighting for the same job."
Still, he too admits being a fan of some reality shows, especially The Osbournes, which set cameramen loose inside the bizarre household of the former rocker Ozzy Osbourne and aired until 2005. "It's just hard to come up with ideas that compete with reality," he said. "Some reality shows are genius."
sstanek@thenational.ae
Company profile
Company: Rent Your Wardrobe
Date started: May 2021
Founder: Mamta Arora
Based: Dubai
Sector: Clothes rental subscription
Stage: Bootstrapped, self-funded
Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Scoreline
Liverpool 4
Oxlade-Chamberlain 9', Firmino 59', Mane 61', Salah 68'
Manchester City 3
Sane 40', Bernardo Silva 84', Gundogan 90' 1
Another way to earn air miles
In addition to the Emirates and Etihad programmes, there is the Air Miles Middle East card, which offers members the ability to choose any airline, has no black-out dates and no restrictions on seat availability. Air Miles is linked up to HSBC credit cards and can also be earned through retail partners such as Spinneys, Sharaf DG and The Toy Store.
An Emirates Dubai-London round-trip ticket costs 180,000 miles on the Air Miles website. But customers earn these ‘miles’ at a much faster rate than airline miles. Adidas offers two air miles per Dh1 spent. Air Miles has partnerships with websites as well, so booking.com and agoda.com offer three miles per Dh1 spent.
“If you use your HSBC credit card when shopping at our partners, you are able to earn Air Miles twice which will mean you can get that flight reward faster and for less spend,” says Paul Lacey, the managing director for Europe, Middle East and India for Aimia, which owns and operates Air Miles Middle East.
Europe’s rearming plan
- Suspend strict budget rules to allow member countries to step up defence spending
- Create new "instrument" providing €150 billion of loans to member countries for defence investment
- Use the existing EU budget to direct more funds towards defence-related investment
- Engage the bloc's European Investment Bank to drop limits on lending to defence firms
- Create a savings and investments union to help companies access capital
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The specs
Engine: 1.6-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 217hp at 5,750rpm
Torque: 300Nm at 1,900rpm
Transmission: eight-speed auto
Price: from Dh130,000
On sale: now
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
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Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
