”I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.” Bruce Springsteen

I am pretty sure this is the first time I have done anything remotely resembling research for one of these stories. From what I could gather, the first program qualifying as a reality show was Queen For A Day, starting on radio in 1945. The premise was unique for broadcast. I couple of women would come on the air and tell their stories. An audiometer, measuring audience applause, would determine who got what they were asking for.

It moved over to early network television in ’55 and stayed around for 10 years. The real harbinger of things to come in this genre was An American Family, airing on PBS for one season in 1973. The cameras unobtrusively traced the lives of this family, making them famous for a brief time. The audience got their first taste of a strange kind of electronic voyeurism. The presence of the tube not only recorded reality, but subtly distorted it as well.

One thing I don’t have to research is the nature of this industry, unchanged today. Reality television is far less expensive to produce than scripted series with high priced actors. Of course, the trophy goes to The Kardashians, making millionaires and billionaires out of folks, whose only talent is how to manipulate their audiences to want more of them and from them.

It also changed the tone and tenor of broadcast news. Although, it hard to ignore The Today Show, which went on the air in the early 50’s, complete with a chimpanzee. J. Fred Muggs. News gradually fused with the entertainment business, personalities becoming as important as the “facts” they were sharing. This process took quite a bit of time and really started morphing when cable TV came to life, dramatically increasing the TV alternatives for audiences.

Competition certainly breeds innovation and it seemed like overnight, there were so many alternatives for audiences. I know I have written before that eyeballs are money in the media business, regardless of format.

When I was a sophomore at Queens College, in NYC, I got a chance to work on NBC’s coverage of the  Johnson-Goldwater election in ’64. I was around some of the true legends of broadcast journalism, like Huntley and Brinkley. Man, I was smitten and kept banging on their doors until I got a job as page, an usher, working The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for a couple of years.

The head of the network at the time was a guy named Robert Kintner. He came from the world of newspaper journalism and  news could do whatever it needed to do, back in those days. In the newspaper world, editorial and advertising never crossed swords, the integrity of a story always took precedence. As I mentioned, competition increases the pressure on profitability. The bottom line is the only one line that matters in all business and reality television could get those eyeballs on the cheap. Integrity got buried by the bucks and who you believe is now who you agree with.

Today, one-fifth of US adults regularly receive their news from online “news influencers” and numbers climb to 40% for young adults, the majority claiming it helps shape their understanding of current events. By far, the most popular is a guy, who does stand up comedy, MCs mixed martial arts and has the most watched podcast in the country, Joe Rogan. What you get is opinion-based information, not necessarily having anything to do with facts. A fact is something that is known or proved to be true. 

Back in the heyday of broadcast journalism, when you veered from reporting the facts, it was called “Commentary”, an important distinction at the time. Today, it is all about audience size and all else is subservient. Influencers on social media, people who have the power to affect purchasing decisions, will be valued at $24 billion by the end of this year!

So, while opinion has replaced fact, we’ve got these reality shows proliferating the airwaves. So many of us are so unhappy with our lives. We will not only believe what we are told, we look upon the lives of others portrayed on reality TV with a kind of voyeurism and even envy. 

I lived in NYC for the first forty plus years of my life, leaving in 1987. Going back to the late ’70’s, Trump was regarded as a cartoon character, a spoiled brat with an insatiable appetite for attention. It took about 30 years for him to become his own reality TV star on the Apprentice. He wallowed in the spotlight and a monster was born.

He deserves credit for being consistent throughout his life. He did not change in order to become President. Enough of his audience changed to elect him to this office twice. He is a reflection of what has happened to the majority of people in this country. He is now the star of the biggest reality TV show: the USA, through a combination of envy and empathy for what he represents.

When he legitimately lost the election in 2020, he deemed it as being stolen from him. Here is a fact. Every reputable analyst has deemed our election system to be the best in world, period. Like I said, facts don’t matter, it is how you feel about them that makes them true or false. 

Trump learned back in the 70’s, it isn’t what you say, it is how you say it. It is the demeanor of the bully that magnetizes his followers. The idea of civility is trashed before the first words are uttered and all the angry and disheartened are energized by his giving words to their feelings. He lives in a make believe world, populated by the disenfranchised. It is a myth that he gives a shit about anyone other than himself, blatantly obvious to us old time New Yorkers.

Four men, proposed cabinet members, including dropped out Gaetz, have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct. They are Pete Hegseth (Sec of Defense), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Health and Human Services) and good old, Elon Musk, who is single handedly going to shrink the size of the government. Oh, there is also Trump, accused of sexual misconduct by 19 women, plus being found liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll.

We also have Dr. Mehmet Oz, popular known as Dr. Oz, a totally discredited physician, who will be under Kennedy, who has never been the same since the worm chewed his brain. Of course, we have Mike Huckabee, proposed ambassador to Israel, who once stated there’s “no such thing as a Palestinian.”

We can’t forget Tulsi Gabbard, proposed director of national intelligence, a friend of Putin and Assad, changing allegiance faster than the Hawaiian skies. Linda McMahon, the former CEO of WWE is eminently qualified to head up Education, accused of ignoring  rampant sexual abuse of young boys affiliated with the company.

We are in store for quite a show. I’ll tell you who is really happy and that’s the billionaires. According to Forbes, the collective net worth of the nation’s billionaires has jumped $276 billion between November 4th-the day before elections and November 12th. Our boy, Elon Musk’s net worth increased by $57 billion in that week.

With any show, it is the audience that counts. All of this is happening, because a majority of our neighbors believe this is the right thing to do and that is what concerns me. The idea of being great again, implies we were great before and we weren’t. With the exception of those billionaires, we will all be even worse off. The ailing climate is going to be punished even more. Our freedom is now under siege. America First puts compassion last. 

I spend so much of my writing time looking for the light in the darkness. Every now and then, it is good to turn the light off and stare into the darkness. If you don’t know what is coming, how can you figure out a way to move forward?

For me, it means trying harder to be the person I want to be, always trying and never arriving. 

I’ve always loved The Boss.

LISTEN TO IT HERE:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/16161803-ultimate-reality-tv-the-usa-show