Reality gets real: Why the History Channel owes us more EXPEDITION.

WASHINGTON, DC (Herald de Paris) - In an era when “reality” television programming rules the airwaves, it is estimated that a significantly small portion of the American television audience really understand that “reality” shows really are not real.  In fact, “airwaves” is mostly a misnomer now, too, now that television has been wrangled from the free airwaves, and shoved through a cable or beamed via a satellite, so  viewers must now buy something they once got for free.

So what is “reality” television, if it is not real?  It is a loophole; a way to produce television shows without union actors (and thereby scale wages).

“Reality” television in the modern era was born with MTV’s groundbreaking The Real World series.  The general idea was to bring college students from differing walks of life, throw them in a house, and watch what happens.  At first it was fascinating, but then the producers figured out that instead of boring fly-on-the-wall shows, they could manipulate conflict and garner higher ratings.

At that moment, “Reality TV” exploded .. and ceased to be very real, at all, just cheap to produce, which yielded higher profit ratings.  For those of you who are not clear about how it all works, the #1 reason to produce a television show is not for the betterment of art or entertainment, it is to make money – and reality television makes money quite well.

Enter Mark Burnett.  Few television producers figured out this formula for cheap, profitable success quite the way Mark Burnett did.  From Survivor to The Apprentice to Rockstar to Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader, Mark Burnett blazed a trail first laid by Real World Producer, the late Mary Ellis Bunham, the “mother” of Reality TV, and cut a swath in the wilderness, through which all other television producers have reached the oasis of prosperity.

And just when Burnett reached the pinnacle, orchestrating contrived fly-on-the-wall conflict to huge profits on a fairly regular basis; at the top of the field he helped create; Mark Burnett pulled the rug out from the below industry again, this summer, delivering an eight-show short season of Expedition Africa, on the History Channel.

Why is this significant?

In as much as a produced television show can be, Expedition Africa was as real as any reality show has been since Mary Ellis first convinced MTV to rent a loft and install cameras.  The Expedition Africa team was given a single task:  Take four enigmatic explorers, outfit them with a compass, a team of porters, and two exquisite Masai warriors, and re-trace the route across Africa taken by New York Herald reporter Henry Morton Stanley, as he searched for, and ultimately found Dr. David Livingstone, deep in the African interior.

In a daring tactical move, Burnett reversed the cheapening trend towards trashier, and move exploitative reality television – and he did it not with sensationalism or forced conflict or overweight and/or under-clothed contestants; this time, Mark Burnett cut his new path by re-tracing one of the most celebrated, most talked about, and read expeditions since Columbus sailed West didn’t fall off the edge of the planet.

But this is where it gets really interesting, because to undertake such a grueling expedition, Burnett (likely at the urgency of his attorneys) chose not to hire low-rent amateurs to front Expedition Africa, but instead a team of (mostly) seasoned explorers and survivalists.

The result was an eight-show short season so compelling, so real, and so worthwhile as to blur the lines between entertainment, education, and documentary, which if you think about it, is really what reality, fly-on-the-wall television should be doing.  After the finale, with no hype, no fanfare, no room full of de-rosed and bitter bachelorettes primed for an on-air cat fight, Expedition Africa simply ended, leaving its 1.2 Million loyal viewers feeling the same sense of accomplishment as the show’s four explorers.

Why should the History Channel give us at least one more season (meaning another expedition) of Expedition ?  Because the same way the brilliant Burnett led the industry into the entertainment desert, he has a remarkable opportunity to lead them right back out.

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NOTE:  The Herald de Paris shares no direct lineage to James Gordon Bennett, Sr., or to his old New York Herald. Our publication would not exist, however except for James Gordon Bennett, Jr., and a society scandal that sent him to live in Paris.  There, the younger Bennett published the European Edition of the New York Herald, a paper colloquially referred to as, “The Paris Herald,” in the US.  The Bennett’s Paris paper was widely known no just for its excellent journalism and prose, but also for its trailblazing innovation.  Our Herald de Paris was born in-part to honor the Bennett newspaper legacy and the New York Herald European Edition, “The newspaperman’s newspaper,” arguably the best newspaper that ever was, and to restore its principles of excellence to the daily print media.  The fact that the Bennetts sent Stanley after Livingstone is a testament to their journalistic innovation, and a joyful reminder of what a daring print media company can achieve.

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