Speaker 1: Gilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. There's no
Speaker 2: better way to unwind at the end of a long
Speaker 2: day of work than binging on reality TV. From the
Speaker 2: Bloc to Celebrity Treasure Island, Kiwis have always had a
Speaker 2: soft spot.
Speaker 3: For the genre.
Speaker 2: Right now, the country is obsessed with Married at First
Speaker 2: Sight New Zealand, back for its fourth season after a
Speaker 2: five year hiatus, and while we may still be mad
Speaker 2: about the genre, a lot has changed for reality TV
Speaker 2: since the local version of the international hit debuted in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. Today on the Front Page, aut University senior
Speaker 2: communications lecturer Rebecca to Release joins us to discuss math's
Speaker 2: obsession and the changing world of reality TV. Rebecca, you're
Speaker 2: a bit of a reality TV expert, hey, when it
Speaker 2: comes to your studies, aren't you.
Speaker 4: Thanks for putting it that way. That's really kind of you.
Speaker 4: I did my PhD thesis on the reality television genre
Speaker 4: as a whole and the things that it does and
Speaker 4: does well, so yeah, in some ways, I maybe am.
Speaker 2: I right to say that you've had first hand experience
Speaker 2: as well with this genre.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I was like a year in the first
Speaker 4: year of putting together what I would be researching. I
Speaker 4: actually appeared on a New Zealand reality show as well,
Speaker 4: which one was that I was in season two of
Speaker 4: The Bachelor New Zealand.
Speaker 2: So obviously at the moment, now Married at First Sight
Speaker 2: New Zealand is airing and people are just absolutely obsessed
Speaker 2: with it. It comes off the back of the Australian version,
Speaker 2: which is also a huge hit. Here what is it
Speaker 2: about maths that captures the audience's attention.
Speaker 4: I think it's really interesting because it's come off the
Speaker 4: back of the Australian Maths or Merit at First Sight,
Speaker 4: where there was so much talk about it, and to
Speaker 4: live up to kind of the drama that exists in
Speaker 4: maths Australia, it's a big task, but it's definitely taking
Speaker 4: on its own way into the maths format, this New
Speaker 4: Zealand version. I think there's also different reasons why we
Speaker 4: watch the different romance reality shows. So maybe you want
Speaker 4: to watch the risky, raunchy Love Island that maybe you
Speaker 4: want to see the romance of the Bachelor. But for
Speaker 4: maths in particular, we're learning about commitment and we're learning
Speaker 4: about those long term relationships. And I think that that's
Speaker 4: its own unique way into looking at ourselves but looking
Speaker 4: at our society. And so in particular here we've got
Speaker 4: what is the society of commitment in alter or? It's
Speaker 4: really intriguing and I think we as viewers just want
Speaker 4: to know that, we want to understand that.
Speaker 1: On three now week, I have another thing.
Speaker 2: Are the couples up for the test?
Speaker 1: Jeff Rockett?
Speaker 5: How are you?
Speaker 4: I just don't know what's really married at first Sight
Speaker 4: New Zealand stream first on three now.
Speaker 2: I mean I've watched Maths for a fair few years
Speaker 2: now and I have noticed myself, especially with the Australian
Speaker 2: version just the last season, that the experts they're getting
Speaker 2: less lenient with things like gas lighting and toxic relationships
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. Do you think that coming into
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four there is much more of a focus
Speaker 2: on healthy relationships over maybe the dramatic launchy ones that
Speaker 2: we like to watch.
Speaker 4: And I think with something like Maths, which has been
Speaker 4: going for a few years, we're about ten eleven years
Speaker 4: after the first one over in Europe now, so there
Speaker 4: was a period where the experts weren't calling participants out,
Speaker 4: and so because they weren't doing that, the responses from
Speaker 4: media who were following the show, from the audiences who
Speaker 4: were then commenting on the show, they started to hold
Speaker 4: the experts accountable a bit more. And so there's like
Speaker 4: a slight shift and actually the experts realizing the audience
Speaker 4: wants to see these people being called out, and so
Speaker 4: now we can see those same behaviors that we're wanting
Speaker 4: as audience members playing out on screen as the experts
Speaker 4: talk about those words like being gaslet or the word
Speaker 4: recently that we might have learned was the avoidant attachment
Speaker 4: style and that didn't even come from one of the
Speaker 4: experts this last week. But we're learning the types of
Speaker 4: words that we should be looking out for and that
Speaker 4: we maybe already recognize. We just need the language of them.
Speaker 2: Dating shows have a pretty long history in New Zealand
Speaker 2: and around the world.
Speaker 3: Why does that subgenre appeal to us so much?
Speaker 4: Or we're all humans like this is one of our
Speaker 4: basic needs is to connect to someone else, to have
Speaker 4: some type of not necessarily romantic or love connection, but
Speaker 4: a connection, and to have that feeling of being seen
Speaker 4: by someone else and so while we might have those
Speaker 4: reality shows that focus on a skill set or like
Speaker 4: it's a competition to get to the end, romance shows
Speaker 4: are really something that every single human can relate to,
Speaker 4: whether or not we want that form of connection or
Speaker 4: if we have a desire for that connection. There has
Speaker 4: been research into why audiences choose particular versions of shows
Speaker 4: that they're watching, and they found that the values that
Speaker 4: the person has in themselves in their own life tends
Speaker 4: to inform the shows that they look for. And so
Speaker 4: because so many humans have love and connection as this
Speaker 4: idea of that's an important value in their own life,
Speaker 4: they want to see those values played out on television.
Speaker 2: I guess given these shows do still drop week to
Speaker 2: week rather than Netflix, you can binge everything in one weekend.
Speaker 2: I often think about the times when you'd be watching
Speaker 2: say Er, and everyone goes to work the next day
Speaker 2: and remembers when Dr Green died, right, and that's what
Speaker 2: everyone was talking about because everyone was watching it the
Speaker 2: night before. And if I've dropped any spoilers, it's been
Speaker 2: about twenty years.
Speaker 5: Mark Dave.
Speaker 4: This morning, I sent this on so that you might
Speaker 4: know who was thinking of you all. I'm hid it.
Speaker 4: He appreciated knowing you would remember him well.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I guess that sense of it coming
Speaker 2: out every week is something like this really our last
Speaker 2: true water cooler shows.
Speaker 4: I guess absolutely. The appointment television. It was something that
Speaker 4: television has built into us as viewers from the very beginning.
Speaker 4: So even if television was only being broadcast a couple
Speaker 4: of hours at nighttime, we would schedule our lives around
Speaker 4: making sure we were sitting in front of it. Now
Speaker 4: this is generations ago, so this wasn't me personally, but
Speaker 4: now I do actually schedule my life around television. And
Speaker 4: when I was younger, it was to make sure that
Speaker 4: one night of the week you could watch say Er
Speaker 4: or Gray's Anatomy or something, as it was broadcast and
Speaker 4: you couldn't catch up on streaming. You might have to
Speaker 4: wait for the recap the next episode a week later.
Speaker 4: We actually schedule our lives around having access to that
Speaker 4: information that we can then have conversations the next day.
Speaker 4: And so now that we have streaming services where you
Speaker 4: can binge twelve episodes over a weekend, it's kind of
Speaker 4: counting on everyone being available for that one weekend to
Speaker 4: watch the entire thing. In one go. And so when
Speaker 4: we go back to these formats that are kind of
Speaker 4: drip feeding the content out to us, it forces us
Speaker 4: as an audience to be drawn back to how they're
Speaker 4: telling us to consume. We can't just leave it until
Speaker 4: two nights later because there's two more episodes now, we're
Speaker 4: so behind. So being able to put them out at
Speaker 4: a specific time on a specific day, it's encouraging the
Speaker 4: audiences to actually put in that effort. It's not as
Speaker 4: easy as just putting something on the streaming service anymore.
Speaker 4: I need to be there at a specific time and place.
Speaker 2: Maps New Zealand has returned after a few controversies in
Speaker 2: its past, most notably I remember in twenty nineteen Chris
Speaker 2: Mansfield and is on screen. Brider actually edited out of
Speaker 2: the third season before it went to air after it
Speaker 2: was discovered he had domestic charges against him in the US.
Speaker 2: What safety measures are there to protect the talent on
Speaker 2: these shows?
Speaker 4: That example is really interesting because there was concern about
Speaker 4: the wife he was married to, you know, like was
Speaker 4: she being put in a safe situation. The idea of
Speaker 4: casting these shows and doing checks before someone arrives on
Speaker 4: the show, that is a responsibility of production to make
Speaker 4: sure that they know everything about someone. There's also that
Speaker 4: negotiation from the participant in ensuring that everything is shared
Speaker 4: as well. And so while production for that specific example
Speaker 4: said that they did the checks they could, but I
Speaker 4: mean it doesn't appear if it was in a different
Speaker 4: country or something. They do have to rely on the
Speaker 4: participant as well. So there's this kind of negotiation between
Speaker 4: two parties there as to how a situation like that happens.
Speaker 4: And it also happened with f Boy Island. A participant
Speaker 4: also hadn't necessarily declared, and there again were issues around
Speaker 4: the specific thing that he had been accused of in
Speaker 4: a romantic setting. Now, these contestants could have been in
Speaker 4: a different type of format, different show that wasn't relying
Speaker 4: on their ability to perform in a relationship. They could
Speaker 4: have been in a cooking contest. But because these shows
Speaker 4: were specifically about being an intimate, vulnerable conversations and settings
Speaker 4: like they're physically married and staying in a room together overnight,
Speaker 4: there is a duty of care that is required. But
Speaker 4: I'm not sure how that could be prevented unless production
Speaker 4: and participants are working together on that. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5: The thought of being married after a stranger, especially when
Speaker 5: it's so easy to just google and see that his
Speaker 5: name was attached to something so violent. It really scared
Speaker 5: me for the women that were potentially going to be
Speaker 5: his bride.
Speaker 2: When you were on The Bachelor, did you feel looked
Speaker 2: after by the producers behind the scenes.
Speaker 4: I feel like my time on the second season of
Speaker 4: The Bachelor had different kind of stays. There's like the
Speaker 4: before you actually go on the show and there was
Speaker 4: minimal contact you're actually in the show, and once you're
Speaker 4: in production, it's all consuming and it is like an
Speaker 4: entire bubble that you cannot escape even if you wanted to, Like,
Speaker 4: you've got no phones. We were overseas. If you've got
Speaker 4: no phone, how do you get to a plane to
Speaker 4: leave the country. We were living out remotely in the
Speaker 4: north of Aucklands, so there was no way to actually leave.
Speaker 4: You're constantly kind of reinforced about how great it is
Speaker 4: that you're here, this is an opportunity, and that you
Speaker 4: shouldn't leave. And there was a point where people were leaving,
Speaker 4: contestants were leaving, and we were told no one else
Speaker 4: is leaving now, like this is that you're here, you
Speaker 4: made this decision. I think in terms of being supported
Speaker 4: during the show, if something perhaps didn't go well, if
Speaker 4: something happened behind the scenes, then you would be rewarded
Speaker 4: with perhaps a date or time alone. So that idea
Speaker 4: of what is the reward is not actually support or help.
Speaker 4: It will help you get further in the show. You
Speaker 4: can get more screen time or something. It was a
Speaker 4: weird setup, but you could definitely see that if someone
Speaker 4: went through something behind the scenes that explains why they
Speaker 4: got a date, even if narratively it didn't make sense
Speaker 4: in the show why someone got a date. I think
Speaker 4: after the show then becomes like a different stage. And
Speaker 4: so when you've been enveloped in this experience, for me personally,
Speaker 4: it was six and a half weeks of literally everything
Speaker 4: that you were doing, every single date, every moment is
Speaker 4: for the creation of a show. When you leave the show,
Speaker 4: it is completely like so jarring to go back to
Speaker 4: actually your home and to see your family again. And
Speaker 4: so in terms of support from production, once you go,
Speaker 4: it is very much waiting out the time for your
Speaker 4: next contractual obligations. So if there are upcoming marketing interviews
Speaker 4: that you have to go to I know for me personally,
Speaker 4: I did ask for support and it took two weeks
Speaker 4: for me to actually talk to someone and I was
Speaker 4: awarded one hour with a psychologist. That one hour wasn't enough.
Speaker 4: But again this was also in twenty sixteen, and there
Speaker 4: has definitely been a lot more awareness now and so
Speaker 4: in the last eight years, I could only assume that
Speaker 4: production has absolutely taken what people have said on board
Speaker 4: and are actively trying to make their productions a safer space.
Speaker 3: Well, we've heard some horror stories from over in the UK,
Speaker 3: for instance, the Love Island cast about what kind of
Speaker 3: support is and isn't given to them after the show airs,
Speaker 3: because that's when you get your phone back and you
Speaker 3: don't know how you've been edited.
Speaker 2: Have you been edited as the villain for example? And
Speaker 2: now you've got to face all this barrage of social
Speaker 2: media keyboard warriors.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: who can't understand why someone in a position who seems
Speaker 1: to have everything could take their own life. But you
Speaker 1: know what it's like to have everyone looking at you,
Speaker 1: everybody talking about what are the pressures like when you
Speaker 1: come out of a show like Love Island in reality.
Speaker 6: You're in such a hire when you leave, and then
Speaker 6: to come out and be bombarded with everyone's opinions on
Speaker 6: like whatever you do a relationship, what you're wearing, what
Speaker 6: you look like, is a lot to cope with.
Speaker 2: That must be incredibly difficult to handle by oneself.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, for years afterwards, I would still have strangers recognizing
Speaker 4: me and telling me what my PhD thesis was on,
Speaker 4: because that became part of the show, part of the
Speaker 4: story and the show. Even if myself, as a person
Speaker 4: standing in front of them was saying to them, I
Speaker 4: assure you, that is not what I was writing about.
Speaker 4: That is what the show was saying. That is what
Speaker 4: the media was saying around the show. They still would
Speaker 4: not believe you, the person in front of them. It
Speaker 4: was fascinating from this perspective of why do we trust
Speaker 4: what a show is giving us more than an individual.
Speaker 4: Why do we trust the media reports around something rather
Speaker 4: than an actual person. It doesn't matter how many times
Speaker 4: you could say something. That whole way of presenting someone
Speaker 4: else's character in a production, there's so much responsibility in that,
Speaker 4: and it's tricky. It's so strange because to me, I'm
Speaker 4: like my role here at aut is to be talking
Speaker 4: through what is the impact and role of media in
Speaker 4: our society and to have actually gone through this experience
Speaker 4: of I don't understand how I can say the same
Speaker 4: thing in twenty three different interviews the exact same way,
Speaker 4: and yet I can read twenty three different angles into
Speaker 4: what I said. It's quite fascinating, but at the same
Speaker 4: time it's quite horrible.
Speaker 2: Would you do it again?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a super crazy question. I would not do
Speaker 4: it again. But also because it's eight years later, it's
Speaker 4: the kind of thing in your life where you go
Speaker 4: back and you go, oh, I see who I am
Speaker 4: now as a person because of going through that experience.
Speaker 4: And I think one way to think of it is like,
Speaker 4: do you regret doing it? If I hadn't have done it,
Speaker 4: I would have been eight years later regretting not having tried,
Speaker 4: because ultimately, I mean, for me personally, why are went
Speaker 4: on a show is like I wanted to find love,
Speaker 4: and coming off the back of season one of Art
Speaker 4: and Matilda, it absolutely could happen. We're still nine years later,
Speaker 4: I guess at this point, following them and the birth
Speaker 4: of their children, it's incredible the love that they found
Speaker 4: and the chance to actually go on and perhaps get
Speaker 4: that that was too good to pass up.
Speaker 2: And we've seen a bit of a reality check over
Speaker 2: Reality TV in the last year. How there have been
Speaker 2: calls for the stars to unionize and lawsuits have been
Speaker 2: filed and some upheld over allegations of mistreatment on SAT,
Speaker 2: poor conditions of filming, pushback over howe were portrayed.
Speaker 3: Does Reality TV need a reset?
Speaker 4: I think Reality TV needs to actually start considering participants
Speaker 4: as just as important as the level of technology that
Speaker 4: they're using to film that the level of marketing budget
Speaker 4: that they have. They need to consider the same importance
Speaker 4: of care and creation of the character within the show.
Speaker 4: One of the foundations that are fighting for this in
Speaker 4: America that you can foundation They're like, people are not
Speaker 4: props pretty much, you're just a body. In some shows,
Speaker 4: you were just there to physically just deliver the things
Speaker 4: in order to make everything else about the show do
Speaker 4: really well. But the participant is perhaps the lowest on
Speaker 4: the level of priorities. And you know, we do actually
Speaker 4: want to know about people, Like when we think about
Speaker 4: why society are watching television, why we're watching reality television
Speaker 4: in particular, is because we want to know why people decisions,
Speaker 4: how are people behaving, and how do we agree or
Speaker 4: disagree with their behaviors. We're actually watching the shows for
Speaker 4: the participants. We're not watching them because it's got amazing
Speaker 4: high quality standards. We're not watching it for anything else
Speaker 4: other than we want to be seeing ourselves or we
Speaker 4: want to be feeling better about ourselves because of the participants.
Speaker 4: It's not just on the producers either. This is on
Speaker 4: the audience as well. If there were no participants, there
Speaker 4: wouldn't be a show, So let's try and treat them
Speaker 4: with a bit more respect.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us, Rebecca.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzidherld dot co dot z. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and sound engineer Patti Fox. I'm
Speaker 2: Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on Monday
Speaker 2: for another look behind the headlines.