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When the U.K.'s Pop Idol struck, garnering record-shattering ratings, American producers reconsidered. During last season, both shows in the fourth instalment of American Idol were ranked second and third in the U.S. behind only CSI. Its franchise partner, Canadian Idol, is currently the No.1 show in this country.
[David Lyle] currently heads up Fox Reality, a 24-hour reality TV channel, which launched in 18.5 million homes throughout the United States May 24. Filled with American programming, Lyle says he also set out to incorporate international reality programming, including Hooked Up, a dating show filmed in and around Banff, produced by Calgary's Nomadic Pictures.
While reality and quiz shows have been a consistent part of television around the world, Lyle says it's only in the Americas, where Candid Camera hit in the 1950s, that a drought hit between the late 1970s to the late 1990s. The comeback came, he suggests, with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, in which the cult of the common man and common woman made its debut.
BANFF, Alta. -- When David Lyle first approached producers about doing a show called American Idol, they laughed in his face.
"They said it was too cheesy, that it would never work here," recalls Lyle, the New Zealand-born TV executive who has worked around the world, throughout his home country, Australia and Europe.
"The first one was in production in the U.K. and we were saying this is going to be big and people in the States were just pooh- pooing us, saying no way."
When the U.K.'s Pop Idol struck, garnering record-shattering ratings, American producers reconsidered. During last season, both shows in the fourth instalment of American Idol were ranked second and third in the U.S. behind only CSI. Its franchise partner, Canadian Idol, is currently the No.1 show in this country.
"People always say it's different here and that's just not true," says Lyle. "People are pretty much the same the world round."
Lyle currently heads up Fox Reality, a 24-hour reality TV channel, which launched in 18.5 million homes throughout the United States May 24. Filled with American programming, Lyle says he also set out to incorporate international reality programming, including Hooked Up, a dating show filmed in and around Banff, produced by Calgary's Nomadic Pictures.
While reality and quiz shows have been a consistent part of television around the world, Lyle says it's only in the Americas, where Candid Camera hit in the 1950s, that a drought hit between the late 1970s to the late 1990s. The comeback came, he suggests, with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, in which the cult of the common man and common woman made its debut.
"Millionaire plucked their contestants out of obscurity and then we were asked to be interested in them," says Lyle. "If you looked strange, talked funny, didn't dress right -- you still made it to the show."
When he first arrived in the United States just five years ago, he was meeting with the heads of alternative programming to pitch reality TV. If it wasn't drama and it wasn't sitcom, it was alternative. Now reality shows top ratings lists enough to inspire this 24/7 channel.
"It's for people who think that too much reality is barely enough," says Lyle, currently chief operating officer and general manager of the channel, which is not available in Canada.
"We're proud to dedicate ourselves to the fun of reality. People do tend to get a bit hung up on it, whether it's demeaning, whether it's putting writers out of work, whether it's dragging the civilization of the western world down - we just think it's fun."
Fun for shows like Idol, Survivor or The Amazing Race, but not so fun for stinkers like Rebel Billionaire, recent editions of The Bachelor, The Contender or The Next Great Champ, all of which failed to meet a significant audience.
"There are 1,000 ways to screw up a good idea," says Lyle, after several decades in the business, he says there are some fail-safe measures to consider when creating a good reality show:
- A good premise or a good hook, which can usually be expressed in one sentence.
- High quality production. (See anything by Mark Burnett).
- Superb casting (See Survivor, the last three seasons of The Amazing Race).
- Tight framing, which gets the viewer up close to the emotions of the cast.
"There are all sorts of different ways to screw it up, but the surest way it can not work is if you get a daft cast," says Lyle.
(Copyright The Daily News (Nanaimo) 2005)