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Summer Kicks Off Reality TV Season

Published on May 29, 2006 | Email this article

With Memorial Day kicking off the unofficial start to the reality TV season, the summer months promise to continually run reality shows thanks to their promise of higher ratings than repeats and lower costs than new scripted shows, writes The New York Times. The real kickoff came last Thursday, when Fox presented the first reality show of the season, So You Think You Can Dance.

As some summer reality shows - like Fox’s American Idol and CBS’s Survivor - have made it big and moved into regular season lineups, networks continue to search for the next reality hit. “We’re all looking for the next megahit,” said Craig Plestis, svp-reality programming at NBC, which introduced Fear Factor in summer 2001. “I just don’t want a megahit on the competition again.”

Summer is also the season in which networks experiment with unconventional shows. “It’s the time when you can take some quirky shots with shows,” said Kelly Kahl, chief scheduling exec for CBS.

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