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benmsmith 's review for:
Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV
by Emily Nussbaum
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this title.
I adored this, because it did exactly what it set out to do in its intro for me. We generally think reality TV started with the rise of Survivor, and while that did kick off a new wave of shows and formats for the millennium, there's plenty of shows that came before it, dating all the way back to the start of television as a medium when things were being adapted from radio formats. We've always been concerned about showing real people on TV, and it's come in many flavors.
I feel like it's the highest compliment to say that this book made me want to search out each of the early waves of reality shows on Youtube - the chapter on the format of Fox's various specials in the 90s hit a particular sense memory and I paused reading to go watch a bunch of the original "masked magician reveals all" specials I remember from the late 90s. Nussbaum does a great job of tracing this all to our current moment and (please picture me making the biggest air quotes) "what it all means" in a way that's satisfying and readable.
I adored this, because it did exactly what it set out to do in its intro for me. We generally think reality TV started with the rise of Survivor, and while that did kick off a new wave of shows and formats for the millennium, there's plenty of shows that came before it, dating all the way back to the start of television as a medium when things were being adapted from radio formats. We've always been concerned about showing real people on TV, and it's come in many flavors.
I feel like it's the highest compliment to say that this book made me want to search out each of the early waves of reality shows on Youtube - the chapter on the format of Fox's various specials in the 90s hit a particular sense memory and I paused reading to go watch a bunch of the original "masked magician reveals all" specials I remember from the late 90s. Nussbaum does a great job of tracing this all to our current moment and (please picture me making the biggest air quotes) "what it all means" in a way that's satisfying and readable.