From The New Yorker Radio Hour: Emily Nussbaum on the Beginnings of Reality TV
Critics at Large | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.4 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2024
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Reality television has generally got a bad rap, but Emily Nussbaum—who received a Pulitzer Prize, in 2016, for her work as The New Yorker’s TV critic—sees that the genre has its own history and craft. Nussbaum’s new book “Cue the Sun!” is a history of reality TV, and roughly half the book covers the era before “Survivor,” which is often considered the starting point of the genre. She picks three formative examples from the Before Time to discuss with David Remnick: “Candid Camera,” “An American Family,” and “Cops.” She’s not trying to get you to like reality TV, but rather, she says, “I'm trying to get you to understand it.”
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| 0:00.0 | Every year, The New Yorker shuts down for the week of July 4th, so this week |
| 0:10.1 | critics at large is on vacation. |
| 0:11.8 | But this is a great chance to share with you guys an episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour |
| 0:16.4 | that we think will really be up your alley. |
| 0:19.0 | Our friend and colleague, Emily Nussbaum, has a new book out called Q the Sun, all about the history of reality television, and the other day she talked about it with David Remnick on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Guys, this book is, I love this book. It's really good. I can't wait to read it. Same. We will be back next week with a brand new episode of critics at large. but in the meantime, throw a blanket down on a beach somewhere and enjoy the conversation. |
| 0:45.5 | This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. |
| 0:47.3 | I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:48.2 | Now, reality television has often gotten a bad rap. |
| 0:53.1 | Well, it's funny because when I originally thought about writing this book in 2003, at that time, |
| 0:58.9 | I had watched the show The Real World on MTV, and at the time I was caught up in watching |
| 1:04.3 | this weird show Big Brother that had just started in the United States. |
| 1:08.4 | And I suggested writing a book about this to a friend of mine, |
| 1:11.2 | and he said, well, you better write that fast, because it just seemed like a tacky trend. |
| 1:16.5 | That's Emily Nostbaum, a staff writer at The New Yorker, formerly our television critic. |
| 1:21.4 | 20 years later, reality television is definitely here to stay, and Emily has published a new book, |
| 1:26.9 | a history of reality TV, |
| 1:28.2 | called Q the Sun. If you assume that reality TV was born with Survivor or the real world, |
| 1:34.9 | she's going to surprise you. I asked Emily to share three key reality shows, and she started at |
| 1:40.8 | the birth of television, or even before that, on radio. |
| 1:48.2 | I mean, I think most people know the show Candid Camera. |
| 1:49.5 | It lasted quite a while. |
| 1:51.3 | People are very nostalgic about it. |
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