1 of my friends was on Pawn Stars with an unusual item. They called in an expert to find out about the item. I sent him a FB message asking if he ever found a buyer for the item since Rick didn't buy it. He wrote back it was all an act and never saw the item until he came into the shop that day to film!! Pisses me off!

idk if it's pawn stars or some other pawn show, but my buddy's dad was on one of the detroit based pawn shows and he sold a real thing he had, but they agreed upon a price beforehand and the dealmaking for the cameras was purely for show.

i also heard Cash Cab was staged.

That's funny. I just posted my story on my FB and someone wrote back about cash cab being fake

No way.
Surely, Duck Dynasty is real!

So is 'A question of sport'! Not trolling, it really is! Watch the Chris Eubank out takes.. They tell him the answers, and he still gets them wrong. How lazy do you have to be to stage AQOS?! Its all bull****. A quiz show about sport, featuring sportsmen, and its all fake. Never watched an episode since i saw that.

wait you guys actually think any of these "reality shows" are real?

that one about pickers? totally staged.
scouts go out and either pre buy items or str8 up plant stuff, all deals are made in advance and all on screen haggling is pure acting.

the million dollar listing real estate show?
totally staged.

all deals made on screen are staged, every property has been sold before any filming takes place.
one of the guys even rents a fake apt for filming because where he actually lives won't let them film there.

i mean come on did any of you actually think there is any "real" reality show?
without fail they're all just total bs.

the most authentic you're going to get is something non-scripted but where the producers tell them what to talk about, what subjects to get into, prod them into conflict etc.

i didn't think there were actually people who were under the impression any of it was actually "real".

do you think price is right is staged?

highstakes poker was staged and poker after dark

I'm seriously surprised that there are people out there like the OP who are chagrined to learn that these shows are staged. I thought that by now this was a well known fact. My wife and I were the subjects of an episode of a "reality" HGTV real estate show several years ago. After the show's contractors remodeled a couple of rooms of our house, they filmed an open house where the prospective buyers were all just our friends and neighbors. Then at the end of the episode, they had us film a scene where we said that we were thrilled because we sold our house and got our asking price thanks to the show. In point of fact, we hadn't even listed it yet and wouldn't do so for another couple of months.

One of my friends was a plaintiff on Judge Joe Brown. I can also confirm that Divorce Court is cooked.

Probably the most "reality" we can find in these shows is Shark Tank. I mean, the products are actually for sale, and I'm sure a few of these products were known about beforehand.

Big Rich Texas was filmed at my country club, an embarrassment to be sure. None of the actresses were members, whole thing scripted. For a golf scene I pointed out to the director a nasty flaw in his setup, he didn't care and said "everybody knows all this is fake anyway".

Funny stuff. Some decent milf slut wannabe actresses walking around in 4-inch heels though.

Spoilers dammit!

My buddy was on cash cab. It's real but they don't pick up random people off the street. He was at a pub quiz night and they approached him asking if he wanted to be interviewed for something the next day. He showed up at the street corner they told him, they said there was a change of plan and they needed to go uptown to shoot it. They gave him $20 and told him to take the next cab since he wouldn't fit in their car. After he was approached at the quiz night he thought it was very likely it was for cash cab.

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The early house flipper shows were my favorite and loaded with so, so much bull****. During the peak there were tons of new people out there trying to flip places on unrealistic schedules and budgets based on what they saw on TV, and sometimes try to muscle around contractors because some douchebag on Flip this House did it.

Not that there isn't a time to do that, but the problem was that during the peak years every contractor and handyman who could swing a hammer was crazy busy and could pick and choose. Even the commercial construction folks had trouble getting subs since those guys were all busy doing cushy house jobs on their own. Plus it's harder to avoid getting ripped off when you don't really know what things should cost.

The numbers never added up either. Shows would say the house sold for X during the open house, when it actually didn't sell for 3 months and for much less. Labor costs were way low for most parts of the country and there were all kinds of unrealistic deals on cabinets and materials presumably for TV exposure, that Joe Average Flipper won't get.

So in the real world folks would buy a place and say we have 22 days and $25k, and three weeks later the only thing that's done is demo and a drywall delivery. The only guy that gave them an estimate never showed up and now the code official is there asking for the permit they don't have.

In one case a younger couple (first time reno) tore up/replaced subflooring for ~1,300 sq ft and put down some fancy $15k high-end hardwood floors on top. However it was a townhouse and required certain fire resistance rating on the subfloors that the replacement material didn't have because the contractor cut corners. All had to come up. Show that on TV.

The more I talk to friends and other people about certain aspects of TV/film/music/etc, the more I realize how few people care about any aspect of other then the actual time that whatever it is is on. Bad writing/acting/vision/etc doesn't mean anything to them. It's still a mindless activity to them instead of what it could be if they invested anything into it.

Friend of mine was an actor on Judge Judy.


He pretended to be a stoner who fed pot brownies to his neighbor's dog (didn't need to pretend to be a stoner), got thrown out of courtroom by the Judge, then still won the case.

First 48 is about the only thing on the channel that seems/is mostly real, its pretty depressing show though, but its real...

Yeah sharks tank is great, canadian version Dragons den is the same and also good. The actual "reality" shows are few and far between. Even these shows are heavily edited.

The cop reality shows are pretty straightforward. Not like you have to invent much drama to make those work.

Amount of realism in a reality show can often be detected by whether a face is blurred.

Blurred face: Did not sign release
Face not blurred: Signed release

ya i really like alaska state troopers.

can't stand cops as its just too depressing, but with AST they seem to have a much better attitude towards the destitute and seem more focused on deescalation which i like.

the only super obv "reality" show fake part is the dispatch which clearly are changed to a more common vernacular for the audience.

but thats obv a super minor nitpick.

I liked deadliest catch for a while. Think it was real but overly self aware as seasons went on.

I would've been afraid I was being taken to my own murder.

Back in the early 90's my high school friend's sister(16yrs old) and mom were on Springer. The set up was that his mom was raising his sister's kid and they hated each other. His sister did whatever she wanted(you don't own me) and was hanging around with the wrong people.



Someone approached them at a local mall and asked if they'd be interested in being on TV. They went to a back office and filled out some paper work and a few weeks later they got a phone call saying they would be on the show. They went to the taping about 1 month later.

They both got full expense paid trips(2 days/1 night) to the show and $500. The taping of the show ran longer than expected and they ended up having to stay an extra night. Springer wouldn't even pay for their hotel for the extra night.

Ya I posted about this a while back in a thread about "Hardcore Pawn". Suppose I can quote it here too.


Here is the link to the whole thread its nothing particular special though. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/63...-show-1450081/