Reality TV is in a state of “full-scale depression” Patrick Caligiuri, a producer who has worked on shows including Big Brother, The Amazing Race and American Idol told Deadline that he knows of people who are working for DoorDash who have five Emmys on their mantels while others are driving for Uber or selling their “inherited grandmother’s jewelry” to make ends meet. He went viral recently when he posted a TikTok to his LinkedIn page titled “Reality TV is Dead”. The post, which has had close to 2,000 comments, eloquently laid out how the current state of the business was “crushing” entertainment workers.
“I don’t think anybody in the nation knows how bad it is in Hollywood, because we still are given this premise that the economy is doing great right now,” he told Deadline. “There’s a trickle-down effect. First we’re out of business, but then we’re not hiring the catering companies, the drivers, the cube trucks or the production spaces.”
It’s not just producers and other below the line workers that are suffering. As Deadline laid out, there’s a “full-scale depression” among unemployed executives, as well.
“One of my favorite network executives got let go a week after she won an Emmy,” said Hobin, the son of a steelworker.
Caligiuri says that he doesn’t want this to become an us-versus-them issue because everyone is struggling. “There is massive empathy [from executives]. One described as it feeling like they’re on one of the lifeboats from the Titanic, watching the ship go down and everyone’s swimming out there,” he added.
People working across the unscripted business are “down, depressed and scared”, according to one senior agent.
Another said that it’s tough for small and mid-sized producers to compete with bigger companies with financial muscle. “The top half of my roster is doing fine. The bottom half makes me think that a good 30% to 50% of [unscripted] production companies will be out of business in the next 12 to 18 months,” he added.
Deadline has heard of multiple instances of non-scripted production companies axing their development teams and instead just hiring people on a freelance basis. Some big, long-running shows are also cutting the number of exec producers, including people who have been on hit shows for many years.
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