for media researchChapter 6 - "The Con"
About Mike Darnell and hoax-type shows/specials on the Fox channel
Mike Darnell created Alien Autopsy which was really just a hoax show (special)-- "less a reality show than a fake documentary that mimicked legitimate journalism" [p.154]
With the show, "Fox television trained its audience to adopt a similar attitude. Like Mulder, they should want to believe; like Scully, they could revel in their skepticism. That cynical credulity (or credulous cynicism) would become the defining quality of American culture, in the reality genre, on the news, and in politics." [p. 154]
OTHER STUFF
By the late 1990s, Darnell was producing fifty to seventy specials per year
> and then eventually other networks started to copy
"Like Eye on L.A. Darnell had shoved the Overton window wide open, forcing his competitors to program leather bikinis." [p.157]
Mike Fleiss started working with Mike Darnell to create more crazy show ideas
"Fleiss worked hard, absorbing lessons from his beloved Fox guru. Their key philosophical precept: The more divisive a show as, the more it infuriated critics, the higher the ratings. The ideal Fox show was one that smashed every button, managing to piss off both conservatives and feminists. 'We didn't like an idea unless it had a little bit of "You can't put that on television." [p.162]
Their next big project was Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? which got TONS of ratings, but also backlash and exposés from the press, and made Fox cancel all their reality programming
In the aftermath of the whole event "the press gleefully celebrated the death of reality TV, a sick, sad fad that was finally gone for good" [p.170] but Survivor was on the horizon, and with it reality tv would come roaring back
FURTHER RESEARCH
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