reality television was like manna from heaven for the attention merchants. It came down to simple economics, or as one television executive observed: “A reality show can grab a primetime audience just as effectively as a good drama or comedy, but sometimes at half the price.”22 For this reason, and with little remark, over the early 2000s the business of television was fundamentally reset, as the reality model, by almost any measure, became the dominant form of programming,
