Reality TV Survived the ’07 Writers Strike. Why Is It Hurting in 2024?

Less than a year after the end of the Hollywood’s dual strikes, it’s clear that unscripted TV has taken a nasty hit as Hollywood struggles to stabilize.

The well of jobs and freelance gigs has dried up for newbies and award-winning veterans alike, with many resorting to delivering food or selling their homes, if not leaving the business entirely.

FilmLA’s TV and film production report for Q2 2024 aptly captures the gravity of the situation. The report logged 868 total L.A.-based shooting days for reality TV productions, which is down 57% for Q2 (868) compared with the same time period last year (2,013) and 50% from the five-year average (excluding a three-month production pause due to the pandemic).

But most notably, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA walkouts did little to boost reality TV production despite unscripted shoots being able to operate without crossing either picket line.

Pulling all of FilmLA’s available data for shooting days gives a better sense of where the TV business has been and why reality TV’s present is so dire. The genre had the quickest bounceback after the COVID-19 production pause between March and June 2020, going from 30 shooting days in Q2 2020 to 1,159 by the following quarter.

Unscripted productions especially thrived during the pandemic years thanks to the format being budget-friendly, adaptable to COVID-era restrictions and able to keep up with the rising demand for content in quarantine.

But soon after the explosion came the contraction, which has seemingly hit everyone in Hollywood from line workers to executives. The whiplash of the post-COVID production boom, followed by the strikes and industrywide belt-tightening, resulted in TV production dropping as fast as it rose.

Of course, the biggest question is why reality TV’s current situation runs counter to the supposed precedent set during the last writers strike in 2007: When scripted productions halted, unscripted shows flourished to fill the programming holes, ushering in a new era for the format.

More recent takes on the ‘07 strike have observed that the reality TV boom narrative is only somewhat true. Yes, an influx of reality and competition shows were greenlighted or put on the air faster during the strike, but said influx was likely going to happen regardless because reality TV was already massive by 2007. Shows such as “Survivor,” “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” had been on the air for several years and topped TV ratings before, during and after the ‘07 strike.

Reality TV’s explosion by the late 2000s was more reflective of TV’s then-enduring popularity and cable’s years-long rise to prominence rather than a direct outcome of a strike. The thought of traditional TV thriving may be inconceivable in a post-SVOD world, but Nielsen data shows viewership consistently grew for almost two decades to reach an all-time high in the 2008-09 broadcast season.

For context, “Survivor,” the show often credited as the catalyst for modern reality TV, debuted in May 2000. By that point, household TV viewership had grown to more than seven and a half hours — 26 minutes more than the start of the 1990s. By 2003 — the year “American Idol” began its eight-year streak as the top-rated show in the U.S. — viewership crossed the eight-hour mark.

Cable channels including TLC, Discovery and MTV had found success with reality shows by the late 2000s, and more would get in on the rush: Just weeks before the ‘07 strike, E! invited viewers to keep up with the Kardashians.

But just as traditional TV’s reign waned in the years of streaming, cord-cutting, corporate mergers and strikes, reality TV’s stability also eroded. Looking back at the FilmLA data, one can see reality TV shooting days begin to decrease around the mid-2010s, the same period when streaming began picking up steam.

Today, streaming and TV studios are more tightfisted than ever, relying on established properties to drive views and greenlighting fewer new shows. Nielsen data shows that 9 of the top 10 reality shows in 2023 had been around for a decade or more or were recent spinoffs of well-known properties.

And despite some hit unscripted shows that are still intrinsically tied to L.A. (“American Idol,” “Selling Sunset,” “Vanderpump Rules,” to name three), these productions are increasingly being filmed elsewhere as studios invest more in international content.

Also, most of those in unscripted don’t have union representation to help wade the storm. Bringing unscripted workers into the WGA was taken off the table during the 2007 negotiations, and efforts to unionize have been unsuccessful since then.

While being non-union may have been an advantage in 2007, when studios were happy to finance and air wacky concepts to see what stuck, today’s unscripted workers are forced to fend for themselves in a vastly more difficult industry that’s only set to get tougher.