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March 1, 2001 - Art Bell
02:49:31
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - CBS Big Brother - Reality TV - Brittany Petros, Burt Kearns
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Time Text
Welcome to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening and or good morning, wherever you may be across this great land of ours, from Guam, the island of Guam, the rock in the west, eastward to the U.S.
Caribbean and the Virgin Islands.
Actually, it's not all the U.S.
Caribbean, that part of it anyway, the Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to the pole.
It's Close to Pose AM and I'm Art Bell.
Good morning.
I'd like to welcome WBZT in Boynton Beach, Florida.
I'd like to welcome WAJRFM in Salem, Fartsburg, West Virginia.
And I'd like to welcome WMDA in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.
Maybe Ambridge.
Ambridge?
Ambridge?
Somebody will tell me.
Uh, anyway, 1460 on the dial.
Welcome, all three of you, as we continue the drive toward 500 affiliates, coming soon.
Well, this is going to be an interesting, different kind of night.
We're going to be interviewing one of our nation's great tabloid TV producers, reality TV producers, who's written a book called Tabloid Baby.
His name is Burt Kearns, and we'll do that in the next hour.
In a few moments, this hour, we are going to interview somebody that my wife and I fell in love with during a program that was very controversial called Big Brother.
I wonder how many of you remember Big Brother.
Some of you will have seen it only on TV and you probably thought one thing about the show and others will have seen it on the net.
My wife and I fell in love with the show and we just sat and watched it on the net nearly 24 hours a day.
That was when I had not much else to do, so we watched Big Brother, and we watched it on the net, and we saw just about every moment of it.
And I just, my wife and I, just fell in love with a little girl named Brittany Petros.
The little pink-haired girl.
The little green-haired girl.
She, uh, the little, uh, brunette.
You know, she kind of changed a lot.
Her hair changed a lot.
And since we're going to talk about reality TV in the second hour, I thought it would be very, very interesting to bring on one of its actual participants.
Brittany was, as far as I'm concerned, the star of Big Brother, and the show kind of suffered after she left, and a little before she left.
We'll talk about all of that.
There is, by the way, I think, a Big Brother 2 coming.
It looks like CBS is talking about Big Brother 2.
One of the actual participants in Reality TV is going to be my guest in this first hour.
I think you'll enjoy it, Brittany.
She's really something.
But first, and this is really important, something came in five minutes before broadcast time.
And as usual, I sent it to Keith Rowland, who, doing the admirable, incredible job he always does, already has it on the website.
It's the damnedest thing I ever saw.
Dear Art, I'm a local truck driver in the Salt Lake City, Utah area.
Today, March 1st, I was traveling north on Beck Street in Salt Lake City toward Woods Cross, and something seemed to flash through the upper part of my windshield.
I looked up, and whatever was moving was no longer visible, but what remained was very strange.
I have enclosed seven small pictures for your inspection.
The one called Sky Ring 5 shows telephone poles And the top front corner of a semi-trailer in the bottom left corner of the picture.
These may give an idea of how far and how large this thing was.
I'm no expert at such, but I estimate it was about three miles to the north of me.
If you have any ideas about what this might be, I'd sure like to know.
I apologize for the low resolution, but I use a cheap little digital camera when I'm in the truck, and this is the best it will provide.
Actually, they're pretty good.
And he has sent us photographs of what he calls a sky ring.
And I think a sky ring is a really good description of... Or as good as you can get.
What in God's name is this?
All of you out there, you help us decide.
It's a UFO.
It's definitely unidentified.
And maybe you can help identify it.
But it looks like exactly what he calls it.
It looks like a sky ring.
Anyway, sit right where you are.
Brittany Petros coming up.
Alright, here we go.
Who is Brittany Petros?
Well, along with 10 other people, she, in her case at least, she gave up her job, quit her job, in order to go into the Big Brother house with 10 other people.
In a big reality TV experiment that had been done all over Europe, and it was the hottest thing in Europe, and they thought they'd try it here in the U.S., and they did.
And Brittany was selected to be one of the ten people who go into this house.
She was born in Robbinsdale, Minnesota on September 4th, 1974.
And here she is.
Brittany, welcome to the program.
Hi, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
What an introduction!
Wow!
Well, we really, as I said, my wife and I fell in love with the show.
What we want to do, if we can... By the way, the guest I'm going to have on in the next hour turned down the job of producing Big Brother.
Really?
Yeah, the show you were in.
So, that'll be kind of interesting.
Yeah, that'll be interesting.
And he's listening to you right now.
Now, I guess I want to start at the beginning.
How you were selected and what the selection process was like for Big Brother.
What was it like?
Well, it happened a little bit different for me than it did for the other house guests.
Generally, what you were supposed to do was take a camcorder and videotape yourself, and then everybody got applications off the internet, and then they mailed in this videotape and application.
You didn't do that?
No, I didn't.
One day, I kind of just got to work early, and I was going to go to a movie, and in the newspaper, next to where the movies were, there was a little ad, and it said, Do you think you could live with nine strangers on camera?
Is it worth $500,000?
It's a really small little ad.
Well, that was a prize.
$500,000.
Yeah.
And I thought, you know, I could do that.
And I was kind of at the point in my life where I wanted a change.
And I had never, when I went to college, I never lived in a dorm.
I was never in a sorority.
I've kind of always lived alone.
I've had a roommate here and there.
But I thought, wow, that'd be really neat to live with nine people from all over.
Just the whole concept I thought was interesting.
So I went.
Down to the local place in Minneapolis, and I signed up, and they had a whole bunch of people.
We just all went in a room, and we stood on this little X taped on the floor, and they said, tell us why you're interesting for two minutes.
Go.
I rambled.
I have no idea to this day what I said.
They said, thank you very much, and I left.
And about a month later, I got a phone call, and it's funny because my old job was pharmaceutical sales, and we did a lot of things For indigent patients and sharing and carrying hands kind of things.
Sure.
And I get a phone call from a lady and she says, Hi, this is Jill from Big Brother.
We want to have you come in.
And I said, Big Brother?
Big Brother?
And I was thinking of a charity or something and I thought that I had missed an appointment.
And I'm like, Oh my God, I'm so sorry.
I don't remember you.
I was so embarrassed.
No, for the TV show.
I'm like, the TV show?
What are you talking about?
And then all of a sudden, it dawns on me, and I'm like, oh my god, then I got really excited.
And then they called me back for another interview.
And actually, when I got called back for the semi-final interviews, I was at a town, I was at a work conference.
My company had merged with another company, and I was learning a new drug called Celebrex, and I was in Arizona.
And I needed to come home for my big brother, Interview.
I was supposed to be in Minneapolis at 10.
Well, I couldn't.
I couldn't do it because my flight wasn't coming home until midnight.
And I didn't want to leave my job and risk that for just a semi-final interview.
It wasn't even final.
So you were going to miss it?
Yeah, I was going to miss it.
So I said, you know, I have to go to this meeting.
So I went to the meeting and I had called the girl several times back and forth again.
Oh, is there any way I can do it a different day?
Or is there any way I can do it from Arizona, and no was the answer.
So, Friday night, I packed up my bags, and I put them at a bell stand, and I went to the morning conference, and at 9.30, I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and I ran to the bell stand, got my suitcase, hopped on a standby flight, and got back to Minneapolis at like 5.
Wow.
So I had missed the whole day for the Big Brother auditions.
They had done group activities where they, you know, they did team-building stuff that I missed, and I came in, and I'm like, I was begging, I'm like, please can I just do my Individual interview and they said they let me, but they said it would hurt my chances, but they picked me to go to finals and I went.
You were telling me something off the air about the final finals when you were actually, I guess, almost on your way to the Big Brother house.
Yeah.
And you were telling me, now obviously they're going to try and pick very outgoing, aggressive People, I would think, for something like this.
Yeah.
And you fit that category.
You're definitely really outgoing.
And you were telling me, though, that there was a contestant in that final bit of time with you that was even more outgoing.
Yeah, I was actually really keen.
I mean, both of us that were picked to go in the house, we were not the most exciting people.
They narrowed it down to 64 to go to L.A.
for the Final audition, I mean, and there was one girl who was flashing people, and she didn't have underwear on, and there was people... She was flashing people without underwear.
Yeah!
Yeah, I was figuring that was going to get her on the show.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, there were some nuts that were down there, and, you know, people were hooking up and having sex in the hotel.
I mean, we weren't supposed to talk to each other, so they divvied us up, and...
I think we were in like five different hotels.
People were hooking up even then?
Yeah, people were having sex in the hotel, and they got disqualified, obviously, but I'm like, wow, they knew each other.
We got down there and we were told that if we interacted with each other, we were automatically disqualified.
Some of them couldn't help themselves.
Yeah, and some people were sneaky.
I mean, there were some pretty crazy people, you know, and people that went to these final interviews and they were going out drinking and partying.
I mean, I was actually really mellow and I was thinking, like, goodness, they're never going to pick me.
Well, Shirley, at this point, you knew a little something about Big Brother.
I mean, once you got that close to selection, I'm sure that you did a little research on, for example, what happened in the Big Brother houses in Europe.
You know, I didn't.
You didn't?
No, I really did not think this through before I went on it.
I, it just, um, I, I really, I don't know why exactly.
I told him that everybody wants to know, you know, well, what was it that drove you?
I just, I just did it.
And then when I got picked, we had nine days.
Between being told we were moving into the house and moving into the house, and I just, I was so busy.
What do you do, settle your final affairs?
Yeah, I mean, I own a duplex in Minnesota, and so I had to, you know, prepay bills for, like, the tenants and stuff, so their water won't get cut off, and I had to, I mean, I had a company, I mean, I had a good job.
You know, I get my company car service and get that turned back in, and I had, um, I was in pharmaceuticals, but I had a lot of drugs, you know, in my basement.
Did you go to your company and say, can I just have a leave of absence and come back?
No, I didn't, because there was really high security, uh, with Survivor had just started, and it was so big that they were thinking that Big Brother was going to be like that, and so we had private investigators that actually, you know, called people at our work, and a private investigator came to my duplex and was Asking my tenants all these questions.
We were told that if we told anyone we were going on the show, we'd be disqualified.
Really?
Yeah.
So I told my company that I had gotten a job at an internet company that hadn't gone public yet.
And I was really sorry that I couldn't give proper notice.
I mean, you know, I gave them a week.
And I just apologized all over myself and just told them that I couldn't give them any information because it hadn't gone public.
And it was just too big of a risk.
If I had to ask for a leave of absence, they would have wanted to know why.
And too many people would have known.
It would have jeopardized my chance of... All right, well, you went into the house with Eddie, Curtis, Josh, George, Will, Jamie, Karen, Cassandra, and Jordan.
And so my question would be, if you rush forward to when you first entered the house, what kind of impressions, what was going through your mind when you walked into the house and sat down with all of these people?
Well, the first, the very first thing that entered my mind is it was A lot nicer, the structure and the people were a lot nicer than I thought they were going to be.
I pictured like a dirty, scummy, you know, youth hostel type thing.
Yeah, I pictured like cement floors.
I mean, like I said, I hadn't researched it at all.
I just really didn't think.
And I come in and it's, you know, bright colors and stuff.
And it's like, wow, these are normal people like I thought they would have.
Just crazy.
You know, I don't know what I thought.
It was weird because the first night we all sat at the table and talked to each other, and the person that I thought I was going to end up being closest to was Jordan.
I felt immediately connected to her, and obviously we all know how that turned out.
Jordan was a stripper, right?
Yeah!
I mean, I thought that her and I were going to become friends in the house that first initial night, and my whole views on everybody just changed daily in there.
Alright, well, on Survivor, everybody had to have a plan, kind of a strategy, to win the game.
Now, in Big Brother, I'm curious, why did you not form an alliance?
Or did you?
Well, I initially thought about it.
I mean, obviously I went in there for the money and to stay, and that's, you know, kind of a reaction that, yeah, you know, you're going to try to make friends with certain people and form alliances and nominate to the best of your ability to stay in the house.
But for me it turned completely emotional and I ended up nominating.
I would go and they didn't really show this on TV but I would go into the red room and
nominate two people strategically and then I would go, but I can't because they are my
friends.
Oh my gosh, the poor red room people were ready to kill me.
I would change all the time when I was in the red room and every time I basically voted
on who I liked the most, my friends who I bonded with the most.
I couldn't stick to the strategy.
Was the editing fair... Yeah, I mean...
Definitely edited for the most interesting, not always the most positive.
I mean, anytime there was any kind of emotion where someone cried or someone yelled, that made it on TV.
They were right on that.
Yeah.
So, I mean, they didn't show people praying, and they didn't show people reading books, and they didn't, you know what I mean?
But, please, it's a TV show, and you know what I mean?
I told you, I was sitting watching on the web, and those who watched on the web saw an awful lot more.
Uh, than those who watched on television.
Yeah.
They made up a 30 minute show every night.
Yeah.
And there were only certain things they could use.
Yeah.
And a lot of things they couldn't use.
Yeah.
Now, one of the things they couldn't use, you remember the chicken crisis?
Yeah.
Poor little chicken.
Well, lucky.
Lucky little chicken, I guess.
Lucky.
Let me tell you something.
You might not know.
On the web, it came down completely differently Brittany, the chicken, of course, got its, what, neck cut or slashed on the chicken wire?
Yeah, it got stuck in between a post and the wall.
Well, it's the only time they really censored things, and I mean they really censored things.
Really?
Oh, yes.
Do you remember the conversations going on about what CBS was going to think or people were going to think of CBS?
Uh, depending on how they handled the chicken.
You remember all that?
Kind of, yeah.
Animal rights things.
There were some fairly cruel things said about CBS, and that's when they began to edit.
They switched the camera off you guys and took us to the chicken cam.
Oh, that's right.
I was really mad because they took forever to take that chicken.
We were in the register forever!
That's right.
And so you were, I guess, complaining, and they were probably sitting back there, CBS and the company that ran this, Animal, is it?
Then I'm sure they were trying, they were saying, God, do we go in?
Do we interfere?
Do we go in and save the chicken?
What do we do?
Yeah.
And most of that conversation got edited.
You couldn't even see it on the web.
I didn't even think of that.
You didn't know that, huh?
No, I didn't know that at all.
Anyway, the chicken, I guess, survived.
I think it was the same chicken.
You do think it was the same?
Well, Eddie keeps saying it's a different chicken, and they fool me, but I think it's the same chicken.
In other words, the old chicken bit the dust and they substituted one, and who could ever know the difference, right?
Yeah, well, the one that we got back, his eye was all funny and was closed, and we had to give it medicine and stuff.
So, did you guys see that?
That we had to give the eye drops?
Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
I think it was the same one.
Either that or they jabbed another chicken in the eye.
Listen, are people... How much like rats are people?
In other words, getting all thrown together that way.
After a period of time, do some of them begin to eat each other alive?
It's almost, I don't know if it's so much that you eat each other alive, you start eating yourself alive inside because you are so focused on maintaining your sanity that you just, you do anything and everything you can to not be irritated, to not be bothered, and to just deal because you don't have any other choice besides go crazy or deal.
So for me, it was very much turned internal.
I actually felt more stable and more healthy with Will and Jordan in the Big Brother house because I had a platform to let things out.
Well, those two that you just mentioned, Will and Jordan, they were both the antagonists.
Big time antagonists.
They really had things going in there, didn't they?
Yeah.
It was a nice outlet for me, because when I yelled at Will, I got it out.
And maybe I got out frustrations on other house guests towards him, too, and he was a good, easy target, because he was so obviously not nice, you know?
He wanted to sleep with the girls, huh?
Oh, God.
You remember that?
Oh, yes.
Oh, Lord.
He said, do I have to go?
I mean, I'll go if you say I have to.
I remember every minute of that program.
Oh, that's funny.
Oh, I'm embarrassed!
Hello!
Hi!
As a matter of fact, I watched you and Josh cuddling in bed late at night, all night long sometimes.
Oh, no.
Oh, yes.
Oh, no.
Many of us did.
We had a high-speed connection and it was as good as a regular... That's another thing!
You guys didn't know, did you?
You didn't know that you were on the web 24 hours a day.
You assumed there was a web camera.
Yeah!
And that it was like one camera... We'll get back to that in a moment.
We're at the bottom of the hour, so...
Stay right there, Brittany.
Brittany Petros, who is a big brother, house guest, is my guest right now, and we'll be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from March 1st, 2001.
2001.
The Man Who Killed My Father.
2003.
The Man Who Killed My Father.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
She is certainly a dancing queen.
What a cutie.
She's Brittany Petros and she was a house guest on Big Brother, CBS TV series, Big Brother.
There is a Big Brother 2 coming, that's what we hear anyway.
So we'll get back to Brittany and more of what went on in the house.
some of it behind the scenes in a moment once again from the big brother house uh... now free is
britney petrose who's in california i think right brit
Yeah, I'm in L.A.
now.
Alright.
Did you know that, I mean, I remember that Jamie and George and several others Would go to this one camera, and they'd sit in front of it, and George would talk to his family, or Jamie would do this or that, and was it thought in-house that there was one camera for the internet, and then sort of one for everything else for broadcast?
Yeah, well we thought that there were certain cameras, well we were told that the cameras in the shower and over the toilet would not go anywhere, so we figured that the ones hanging on the walls that we could see were internet cameras.
And we thought the ones behind the walls that we couldn't see were the TV cameras.
I see.
Because we figured that they wouldn't be using aerial shots for television.
No, it was every bit of it was on the net and they followed you everywhere.
Not into the bathroom, but everywhere else.
And all night long.
Did you ever hear guys snore like that?
They were bad.
You're still a virgin, right?
Correct.
I am.
He was the loudest snorer.
And the boys room was stunk in the morning.
Yeah, they were boys, alright.
You are... you are... you are still a virgin, right?
Correct. I am.
And you told them, going in, that you were a virgin.
Yeah.
Now, obviously, they wanted action in the house.
Now, how likely are they to get it with a virgin?
And therefore, how likely are you to be picked to go into the house?
So, what do you think was the psychology behind their picking you?
Well, after I got out, I found out that they had kind of already decided to pick me before I told them I was a virgin.
That's not something I said.
Right away, because I didn't want to be on the show because of that.
Okay, so they didn't pick you because of that?
No.
I mean, where are you going to put it on an application, first of all?
You know, extracurricular activities.
I don't have intercourse.
You know, I didn't put that down anywhere.
Really, like I said, it wasn't... It was just something off-handed that I did.
And then, what happened is when I got to the finals, they said that they were going to do an extensive physical exam and drug test.
And, you know, we'd have the private investigators and such, and they were very clear that anything, anything that you haven't told us, we're going to find out.
And if we find out and you haven't told us, you're going to be disqualified.
I wonder how many people at that point turned around and walked away.
Yeah, I'm sure.
I'm sure a lot of people did.
And, um, so I, it was funny because I turned off the camera.
I got up to leave and I was like, oh God, she said five times an extensive physical.
And I turned around and I said to the interviewer, I said, okay, there's something that I haven't told you.
I haven't exactly had sex yet.
So they knew this then, before the final, final, right?
Yeah.
But it was kind of like icing on the cake, I think, because they had already liked me, they had already picked me, they had already seen me on camera in my interviews, and then that just shocked everybody.
Because I don't come off as a stereotypical virgin in someone's head, because I don't I'm not exactly sure what a stereotypical virgin is, but... But, you know, you think of someone that's real timid or real, you know... Oh, no, that's not you.
Religious.
That's not you.
Yeah.
And everyone's like, what?
You're a what?
And it just... Yeah, I mean... I kind of think that they probably, and this is just my own idea, but it's not so much the actual sex that they would want, because you can't show that on CBS.
It's the sexual tension.
I mean, you look at soap operas, you look at... It's the Navy that gets people to watch.
Of course, in Europe, they did show it.
Yeah, but you're completely different than the United States.
Yes, it is.
So, then, maybe they hoped that you'd lose it during the show.
I mean, they had to be hoping that, I'm sure.
Well, I told them that that absolutely would not happen in my interviews.
They had asked me if I was opposed to, you know, hooking up with someone.
And I had said, you know, if I meet the man of my dreams and I fall in love, I might kiss on TV.
I said, but he'd really have to be something.
Well, to all the audience, it looked like that's exactly what you had found with Josh.
You know, I thought I had found that, too, to be honest.
I really, I thought...
It's just different in the house.
Well, from outside the house, I'm telling you right now, everybody was rooting for you and Josh.
They were thinking, boy, you know, when this is over, those two are going to get together and it's going to be the most righteous thing.
Yeah.
But that didn't exactly happen.
Yeah, it, you know, it didn't.
So, I mean, I thought that was going to happen, too.
And, and we got out and, okay.
You were in love with him.
Maybe.
No, look, it showed.
It showed.
I remember you walked outside when he was outside with, I think, Jordan, and you were tromping around out there, and you were so jealous.
Do you remember that?
Yeah.
Anyway, listen, I loved you on the show, and I think a lot of people loved you.
I want to ask you a couple of tough questions about a couple of the other contestants.
Okay.
Jamie, the beauty queen.
To some, some would say the somewhat vacuous beauty queen.
But then again, I wasn't in the house with her for all that time you were.
What are your impressions of Jamie post-show?
Post-show?
She's pausing to put together her words here.
Yes.
Jamie's a very difficult one for me to pinpoint.
My feelings towards her change a lot and I think it's because I can't quite figure it out.
I can't quite figure out if she's actually that nice and actually does like everybody or if she just doesn't say what she thinks.
I mean, I really Flip-flop.
When I went into the house, I didn't like her.
Immediately, the first night, I had actually in my mind that I was going to nominate George and Jamie first.
And then all that stuff happened with Will and Jordan, and the moment where it changed and I liked Jamie was Jordan and I had sat up all night and plotted this big, stupid, lame scheme to hurt Josh.
Right.
And Jamie pulled me aside and she said, I watched you talk with Jordan.
That's going to look really bad.
Jordan's manipulating you, and you're going to look horrible on TV.
That's all she seemed worried about, her image on TV.
Yeah, but it was nice of her to do that, because if Jordan and I would have done this, it would have looked really bad, and it probably would have made viewers not like me and Jordan, and it maybe would have saved Jamie.
At the time, that's what I was thinking in the house, and I was like, wow, she actually did something.
For my best interest?
Yes.
But hanging out with her outside of the show, I mean, that's her.
I mean, what you saw is her.
You know, especially if you watch the internet, I mean, she's very consistent with who Jamie is.
What you see is what you get.
So, you went to Las Vegas after the show, right?
Uh-huh.
With a group.
Yeah.
And she was in that group?
She was in that group.
And the Jamie we saw on TV was the same Jamie with her hair down going to Las Vegas?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, which is very nice.
Uh huh, yes.
It's just, yeah.
Alright, I'll just leave it there.
Listen, why do you think the American public, this is what puzzled me, drove me absolutely nuts, the American public consistently voted out the most interesting, confrontational, People, it must have been driving CBS out of their minds.
I mean, they put in a certain number of very confrontational people, and you all in the House nominated them, and the American public on a regular basis voted out the most interesting people.
Why?
Well, I think the most interesting people are usually the people that have the most out-there personality, and when you have the most out-there personality, You have the most people that come.
I mean, if somebody doesn't do anything, how can you not like them?
Because they don't do anything.
They just kind of sit there.
So you're going to go towards someone that's a more obvious pick.
And I think that the viewers became identified with us on a personal level, because we're not actors.
We're us.
And everybody in that house reminded a viewer of someone in their past or someone in their current life.
And, you know, say Will reminded you of a bully that you hated growing up.
Here's your chance to get him.
Vote him out, you know?
And in a way, you get, you know, I don't know, pleasure, I think, of getting rid of the bad people.
And I think that it's not only the most interesting, it's... I mean, the most interesting to watch, unfortunately, are usually the most conniving, the meanest, because you're like, oh my god, I can't believe they're doing that!
And it's interesting.
You remember Karen, right?
Yes.
Karen did some things on television that really surprised a lot of people in describing the troubles in her marriage and saying her marriage was going to be over and all the rest of it.
She also began to have some real emotional difficulties at one point in the show.
You were there through all of that.
How close did Karen come to losing it?
Oh, I think she did lose it.
I don't think it was close.
I think she totally lost it.
She, outside of the house, is much more stable.
I mean, that house was not something that Karen should have been living in, and it's good that she got out when she did.
Because she is so much more stable, so much more, I mean, she's a completely different person outside of the house.
She, uh, yeah, you were looking at her, and particularly on the internet where you could see it all, Boy, you could just see from the expression on her face that she was not going to keep it together much longer.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm glad she left when she did, because I think it just would have gotten worse.
And she's so happy now.
She's moved out to California also, and three of her kids are already out here, and the fourth one's coming.
And she just, you know...
In that very first show where she began to talk about the troubles in her marriage, I said, oh my God!
I'm sure some of you in the house probably went, sort of went, whoa!
Backed away from that one a little bit.
Yeah.
Here's one for you.
There is probably Big Brother 2 on the way.
Yeah.
I heard that there definitely is.
Yeah.
And I guess they're going to use a different company to produce it or produce it themselves.
I have no idea.
But for you, Brittany, the question is, if you were producing Big Brother 2, had an opportunity to have input, how would you change the whole lash-up?
Well, one thing that I think would have solved a lot of problems was to let us see an episode once in a while.
So we would get the gist that it was whole conversations that were being shown on TV.
The big fear was editing, and I mean, we were so crazy in that house, we were thinking that They would, you know, chop up sentences and chop up days and like piece together things and make us say things that we never even remotely thought of saying.
And so, and the more reserved we got, the more the big brother people tried to make us, you know, say, say things we didn't want to say.
Like we'd have topics for discussion, you know, what do you dislike about your house guests?
Well, that just made us more withdrawn.
I mean, it was a big fight.
So I think I think the best way to get people to open up and be real is to get them to trust you.
And the best way to get them to trust you is to let them see how they're being edited.
And I think that would have made a world of difference.
If I would have seen how I was edited, I think I probably would have voiced a few more opinions, because I did bite my tongue a lot in that house.
I mean, we all did.
And at certain times, as you saw, I just couldn't.
And I lost it.
Yeah, just a few times.
Yeah.
By the way, how's your toxin level?
My toxin level?
Yes, you don't remember?
You don't remember lying on a bed saying, I have toxins in my body and I gotta get rid of them?
You don't remember that?
Come on now.
Oh my god!
I have toxins!
Oh lord!
You have to not have that good of a memory.
You're embarrassing me.
I have a really good memory.
That of course was a general reference to Uh... build-up of sexual tension.
Yes, breaking the seal.
Breaking the seal, yeah, which was a sort of a code phrase.
Yeah.
Anyway, anyway, yeah, I believe that.
I saw it all, Britt.
What about, what about the crisis now?
You referred to the attitudes of the house guests to Big Brother, and you're right, and eventually it built up, that there was, it became so much resentment against Big Brother, they thought You were being set up in a zillion different ways, and George talked you all into walking out.
Yeah, I was gone by this time.
I know, but you were watching.
Oh, I was watching, and I was going, oh man, they're crazy!
But I could understand why they would do that, because it's tremendous peer pressure.
Like, you can never... I couldn't even fathom the peer pressure, unless I lived it, that you have in that house.
And normally, when you think of peer pressure, you think of someone wanting you to do something bad.
So you can understand how it built to that level, then?
Yeah.
Oh, definitely.
I was watching it going, they are crazy, and if I was there, I'd be agreeing with them.
I know I would.
Well, now I remember you had an opportunity to send Josh a message, and you'd been in a little, I guess it wasn't known to you at the time, kind of a tiff with George, because George had his hometown folk voting In one way.
And they had corporate sponsorship for the telephone calls and all the rest of it.
And I'm telling you, we were going so nuts out here, Brittany, that my wife and I almost hired an airplane to fly one of those banners over.
Oh, funny.
So then when you got out and you got to see all of this, you had an opportunity to give Josh a message.
And you told him, as I recall, you can only trust... What did you say?
I said, you can for sure trust Curtis and Eddie, and I have questions about the rest.
Pretty strong message, actually.
Yeah, and I was in a very difficult position because I had not yet seen the tapes.
I hadn't had the benefit of being able to watch the live feeds.
I mean, I left the show, went to New York, did a big press tour.
I hadn't even seen the show.
I have all my friends and family, everyone giving me their two cents.
And for everybody that liked one house guest, somebody else hated them.
And I couldn't get any information out of the behind-the-scenes people because they were all still working and they were supposed to be neutral.
And it wasn't until the whole show was over and done and all these freelance people went on to another job, then they started spilling the beans with stuff.
The general gist that I got was pretty much everybody thought Curtis and Eddie were trustworthy.
And then I had, of course, my connection with Josh.
So I was like, OK, those three.
Were you upset with George?
I know when you came out of the house, your mom said you were the most popular.
George had you voted out and described a little of what was going on in his hometown.
That got to you for a while, because in the AOL interview, you were obviously pretty upset about that.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm going to spill the beans about something here.
Josh is going to kill me.
When my mom had said that to me when I got banished, I wasn't even thinking about that I can't believe I'm telling you this, but, and all listeners, but, when they announced my name, and we got in the circle to hug to say goodbye, I don't know if you remember, but, you know, we all individually hugged, and then we all got in a big circle and hugged.
I remember, yes.
Josh mouthed the words, I love you, to me.
Oh my god, really?
And I was like, oh my god, oh my god, and then I went to the door and he kissed my eyelids, And I went outside, and my mom was saying, George's family, and I was thinking in my head, Josh just told me he loved me!
I didn't give two craps what my mom was saying.
And then I went to the live show, and I'm trying to talk to Julie Chen, and I'm like, what just happened right there?
And so it took me, you know, and it's crazy because you add to that the fact that I hadn't heard noise, and everybody's clapping and talking.
There was so much background noise, I couldn't even focus.
I couldn't even think of anything.
It was horrible.
You were really in love with Josh, weren't you?
Yes.
You know what I was in love with?
What?
I was in love with what I thought we were going to be, or what I thought we could have been.
I was in love with the idea.
Unfortunately, it was extreme situations.
It just... Life just isn't like that.
It just didn't... You know... Didn't happen?
It just didn't happen.
I mean, and you know, obviously, all the signs were there.
I mean, everybody saw the show.
I mean, you know, he... I mean, you saw everything with Jordan and... I sure did.
Jamie, I mean, it's crazy for me to think that things would be different outside the house.
I mean, we did.
We had talked about this.
Josh has a radio show, an internet radio show I should say, and we talked about this on Saturday.
We did actually kiss when we got out of the house.
Oh, you did?
Mm-hmm.
And actually it was weird because I was really hurt and I didn't want to go to the last show.
I didn't want to have to see him because of the tape.
And the moment that we were alone for the first time, I mean, when you think about it, we met The day we moved into the house together.
Like, I didn't even see him at finals.
I guess he saw me, but I don't remember seeing him.
I guess I gave him the sports page, but I don't remember it.
But I had kind of had this relationship and whatever, and I'd never been alone with him.
Hey, Britt, I'm going to ask you to hold on for a few more minutes.
I've got just a couple of more questions.
All right?
Stay right there.
We're at the top of the hour, and we'll bring Bert Kearns on shortly.
But just a couple of more questions for Brittany Petros, house guest on Big Brother.
There's another big brother on the way, so we're told.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
Don't touch that dial.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
Doing alright.
A little driving on a Saturday night.
Come what may.
Running down the dead way Jenny would sneak
She always looked for people she'd meet On troubled tracks
She had another wheel to give to life She'd never let go
She'd never let go She'd never let go
She'd never let go Tonight's program originally aired March 1st, 2001.
Ah, Jenny was sweet.
What can I do? What can I do? I'll never remember what to do.
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired March 1st, 2001.
Ah, Jenny was sweet. She'd always smile for the people she'd meet, and so does Brittany Petros.
She was a house guest on Big Brother, the reality TV series Big Brother.
We're about to have Burt Kearns on in a moment.
He turned down the opportunity to be the producer of Big Brother, but boy, he knows a lot about reality TV and that's what we're talking about.
Just a couple more questions for Brittany Petros.
I just couldn't leave it where it was last hour.
Britt, a couple of more questions.
I'd like your impressions of other reality TV.
You know, like Survivor, for example, and The Mole, and some of the other ones that are running.
What do you think about the whole craze?
Well, I think what's interesting about it is that they're real people.
And so, I think it's kind of cool.
I mean, it gives a chance for, you know, regular Joe that are nobody to do something crazy.
And with Survivor, I mean, who would ever get an opportunity?
I mean, the challenges that they do, being on islands or, you know, I didn't get to see the first one at all since I was in the house, but I actually met a couple of them and just, you know, I think it's great.
The experience is terrific.
Would you do it again?
I wouldn't do Big Brother again, no.
No.
I'm just not emotionally up for it.
Listen, what's up for you now?
What comes next for you?
The most famous thing about you is probably your hair color, which changes all the time, your bubbly personality, and the fact that you're a virgin.
Do you remember Married With Children?
Yeah.
Do you remember Bud?
Yeah.
Do you remember when Bud ran the virgin hotline?
No, I didn't.
Where people would call, you know, and they were in danger of possibly, you know, they were lusting after somebody, and it was Bud's job to run out and talk them out of doing what they were about to do and remain a virgin.
Well, now it's a really big deal.
If I ever do decide to not be a virgin, it's going to be this huge, huge thing.
There'll be a national announcement.
Oh, dear.
No, but I mean, otherwise, what would you like to do?
Do you want to do a talk show, for example?
Oh, I would love to.
Yeah, I mean, I have an agent.
I'm with Amplified and Staten Fraser, and a manager, Hines and Hunt, and I've done a few little hosting things here and there, and I've started taking acting classes, and I have a few things coming up.
There's this thing called the Seminar Center.
Oh, New York, that's coming up March 12th.
Actually, they're getting a bunch of the Big Brother people together.
There's six of us that are going to be out there to answer questions.
So there might be something ahead for you.
Yeah.
I think you do a wonderful talk show.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, I would love to.
I have a lot to say.
Is there a way that people, how do people contact you now that you're not on the show?
Oh, well, I'm having an official website made.
It's going to be through Celebrity Boulevard dot com.
Right now, it's a little one-page thing.
It's called www.britsofficialsite.com.
And they can probably email you from there?
Yeah, they can email me from there, but it's going to... They're hooking it up to the celebrityboulevard.com, and I think it's eventually going to become brittanypetross.net, so... All right.
We'll watch.
We'll keep track of it.
Brittany, you're a sweetheart.
You're a real sweetheart.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for being here tonight.
Thanks for having me.
Good night.
Okay, good night.
There you have it, folks.
That's Brittany Petros.
She's really something.
I don't know if you got a chance to see her or not on Big Brother, but she was something.
All right, coming up in a second, Bert Kearns.
And you're going to find this absolutely fascinating.
I'm sure you've watched a lot of the shows that he's been involved in.
Tell you all about it in a second.
First, very quickly, For those of you who just joined the program this hour, we have a series of photographs taken by a truck driver in Salt Lake City, Utah, that defy explanation.
They came in about five minutes before the show started.
I got them to Keith Roland, as always, and he got them up on the website, boom, like that, by, you know, at airtime.
You can only call it a sky ring.
That's what the trucker who took the pictures calls it, a sky ring.
I have no idea what the hell this thing is, but I would like your help.
It's on my website now, and these are some of the most amazing pictures you've ever seen.
This thing has form.
What could it possibly be?
On my website, if you go to what's new, it'll say UFO in Salt Lake City.
Follow the track and there'll be seven photographs of this incredible thing.
This really, really weird sky ring.
And any help we can get from you would be appreciated.
Obviously taken from all the different angles.
Well, you go be the judge yourself.
Coming now, Bert Currens.
He's a veteran television producer, writer, journalist, who's written the story of reality television in more ways than one.
The author of the recent book, Tabloid Baby, that's his baby, An uncensored history of tabloid television is also the executive producer and creator of Court TV's The Secret History of the Other Hollywood and The Secret History of Rock and Roll with Gene Simmons.
Documentary specials, producer and co-writer of the two-hour documentary Death of a Beatle for Court TV, producer and writer of one-hour episodes of the network's Mug Shots series, including the recent Puff Daddy, Rapper Under Fire.
He's also been a contributing producer to VH1 Confidential.
This just goes on and on.
Who Killed John Lennon?
Who Killed Bob Marley?
Is Tupac Shakur alive?
Segments among others.
Executive producer, creator, and writer of Hollywood Animal Crusaders, a documentary special featuring John Travolta and Cher for Discovery Channel's Animal Planet Network.
Producer and developer of Miramax's The Best Money Can Buy.
Co-producer of the HBO documentary Panic with Kim Basinger.
I get panic attacks, as she does.
Ripley's Believe It or Not, a writer for Ripley's Believe It or Not, writer of Fox's Bizarre World special, producer and writer for the NBC primetime series, you asked for it, remember that?
It just goes on and on and on.
Do you remember the one about animals and when animals attack and all of that?
I mean, his credentials go on and on and on.
Eminently qualified to speak about reality TV.
He's Burt Kearns.
His book is a big one.
It's a pretty hefty book, as a matter of fact.
Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes said, Sad, funny, undeniably authentic, tabloid baby, tells the tale of what befell too much of mainstream television news over the past couple of decades as the bad drove out the good.
That was Mike Wallace.
Maury Povich said, Bert was there for the birthing of tabloid.
The birthing of tabloid!
He became the heart of the genre, and now he's written the Bible.
And the Bible is tabloid baby, and here is Bert Currens.
Bert, welcome.
Oh, thanks for having me, Art.
My goodness, you have been a busy boy, haven't you?
Well, but I can't hold a job after hearing all those credentials.
Yeah, and I just made it through half of them, if that.
I mean, you did a lot of stuff.
It's been a long, strange trip the last 15 years or so.
From television, yeah.
We've got a lot of time on radio, unlike TV, where everything's pinned down to the second.
So we can just sort of relax and do it.
I interviewed Brittany Petros from Big Brother, as I'm sure you heard in the last hour.
I think you heard it.
Oh yeah.
And you had the opportunity to be the producer for that show?
Yes, I was offered the job to be the producer of the weekly live show.
That they brought out where one of the contestants would be kicked out of the house.
Banished.
You're quite a fan of that show, that was great to hear.
It was also very refreshing to hear how Brittany, even though now she's traded Minnesota for Los Angeles, really was a real person on that show and that really came out where she wasn't an actress and she didn't seem to be a They want to be a celebrity, but a real person.
Yeah, the Brit tonight was a Brit you saw on TV.
Yeah.
And I suspect the Brit before the show, too.
She's just herself.
Unfortunately, you're going to see fewer Brits as these shows become more successful, as they begin to, you know, sculpt reality more and more in trying to get ratings, you know?
Well, that is the name of the game, isn't it?
Ratings.
Now, Big Brother I don't know.
It was kind of a mix.
I mean, it was a big disappointment for CBS, ratings-wise, as compared to Survivor.
But on the other hand, I guess the ratings were not totally awful, were they?
We have to remember, Big Brother was quite different.
It really was like a laboratory experiment.
And it was on the air as much as four times a week, as opposed to just once a week.
with the show like survivor they've got a lot of time to to
scope the action to direct the action to create drama out of reality
with big brother they were really having a flap things together on a daily
basis and didn't have time to take
uh... the activities and turn them into you know as uh...
a sculpted drama as they would on a on a on a show like survivor sure
one thing that big brother did show that
reality is often boring
got a thrill a minute it's not what the fact that impact all the time
And that was one of the things that they think about now as they're going into a second season of Big Brother.
Well, as you considered possibly producing that TV show, what were your thoughts about how you would have produced it?
Would it have been different than what we saw on TV?
Were I producing Big Brother, first of all, I would have begged them not to put it on every night.
I think it would also depend on which characters you're following every day.
They tried to split it up a lot, as far as who they were following and what kind of action was going on.
Right.
The worst thing about the show, and not that it was a bad show, was that the TV audience was allowed to vote every week.
So I found that the most compelling characters were getting thrown off the show.
That's right.
But I mean, to be fair, the house guests were also nominating the most compelling characters, and then the audience was following through and voting them out.
Right.
It even seemed as if the people in the house were forgetting that it was a game for survival there.
That it was, you know, a last man standing kind of game.
Where they were trying to keep more peace in the community there, and to keep in some of the people who would have caused them trouble and maybe made their own chances a bit better.
Well, if there is another Big Brother, and I guess there's going to be, they're going to have to devise a way, I think, to change the whole dynamic of the thing.
And I'm not sure how you would do that and allow the public to participate and have voting to banish somebody and all the rest of it.
Same thing's going to happen, isn't it?
I think they might stack the house with a lot more Will Megas.
Might be a whole house of Will.
Yeah, they might do that.
Is that what you would recommend if you were doing it?
Well, yes, I would recommend that if they're going to keep the show on, you know, four nights a week, three nights a week, and be turning around the reality that quickly, Yes, I would think they would have to do that, as well as maybe devising some more activities for the people.
The activities that they had each day weren't the most compelling.
Would you take on that project now if you were given another opportunity to do it, or would you turn it down again?
To be honest, I would turn it down again.
I come from a different era of reality television.
Believe it or not, a decade ago, the term reality television actually referred to a type of television that reflected reality.
I don't consider these really to be examples of reality.
What about Survivor?
Survivor is a soap opera, and it's a game show.
And it's an expertly crafted show.
It's a wonderful drama.
The show tonight had so much emotion, and it was like watching an episode of a great nighttime soap opera.
Yeah, wonderfully.
We can talk about it now.
It's already aired.
Uh, and of course, Mike, uh, one of the, uh, uh, one of the stranded, um, players somehow or another inhaled the smoke from the fire that he was in front of, and I probably caught something toxic, passed out and fell into the fire and was badly burned.
Into the fire, yeah.
Badly burned.
I guess we're not going to find out until the CBS morning show how he fared, but it didn't look very good, did it?
No, it didn't look good for his chances.
Although rumors, you know, the survivor sites and CBS are very good at floating rumors.
One rumor is that someone is going to be brought back to the show after being airlifted off the island.
Originally, the rumor came out that it was a young woman who had been bitten by a crocodile that was taken out of the outback.
That was an intentionally floated rumor, wasn't it?
They do that, yeah.
And it has really stirred up talk about the show.
It was one of the ingenious devices that they came up with in the first season, when they were on that island, is to plant their own rumors.
And it's been brilliantly done.
The latest came today.
The word was that the older gentleman in the tribe had fallen off a horse and broken his collarbone.
That he was going to be brought back.
Really?
That still might happen.
Really?
So everyone was taken totally by surprise tonight when poor Mike fell into the fire.
Well, I don't see how they could bring anybody back since they didn't do what they normally do and boot somebody off because he was taken away.
That would add a week to the whole thing, wouldn't it?
Right.
It wouldn't if the ratings were good.
They would love nothing more than to have another week.
Yeah, you've got a good point there.
It would certainly build that.
Another example of just how good Survivor was, was what happened after Mike fell into the fire as they were taking him away.
Something you rarely see on television today.
They let everything unfold in silence, without words, for many minutes.
That's right.
Just that music.
I was surprised to find myself really touched and moved by the dramatics of it all.
They know how to push the right button.
So, obviously, there's going to be a Survivor 3 and 4, probably.
Oh, yeah.
Survivor in space.
That'll be the one.
Actually, they're still working on that show, aren't they?
Well, it was my understanding, and there was a story, that the producer of that show had reached an agreement with the Russians to put somebody up on the Mir space station.
But, as you know, the Mir space station is about to come crashing back to Earth.
Maybe, maybe they'll have to work something out with the International Space Station.
Yeah, there's too much lead time in television.
Yeah, exactly.
Television is a very different medium, isn't it?
I've done television, probably more TV than I would rather do, and I've been invited to do so much that I've just turned it down, Bert.
I don't like TV.
I like watching TV, but I don't like doing TV.
It's not the same thing.
It's not spontaneous.
It's all scripted.
It's all right down to the very split second.
It's usually... Every TV show I've been on, everything's done at the last second in a total panic.
Yes, it is.
And television is also all about ratings.
Ratings that are measured every minute.
And you live or die by the ratings.
And yes, television and reality don't always mix.
I got into television in 1980.
I got into television news in New York City and I spent a decade doing mainstream television news.
And then in 1989, I like to say that I was kidnapped by a group of Australians and brought on board a pirate ship called the Current Affair.
Ah, Current Affair.
And went along for quite a wild ride as I watched television change with the tabloid television revolution.
And it was quite a trip.
What was a current affair like?
I mean, I know what it's like from having watched it, obviously, on television, but I mean, behind the scenes, what was it like to do?
Behind the scenes, a current affair was like being in a wild, uninhibited newsroom on Fleet Street.
Something from another century.
When a current affair started in 1986, It was started by Rupert Murdoch when he came from Australia, bought the Fox Television Network, and wanted to start up his own news magazine.
He wanted 60 minutes of his own.
Instead he decided to do 30 minutes, called it A Current Affair, stole the title from a very stodgy public affairs show that still airs in Australia, And instead of hiring the greatest minds of television or television news in America, he went to the bars of Sydney and pulled out his Australian newspaper journalist, threw him onto a plane, and said, you've got a half hour a night of television to fill, go ahead and fill it.
You're kidding!
And these guys literally reinvented television from the ground up.
A Current Affair started as a late night show in New York City.
I was on at 11.30 at night and it was live.
They filled the half hour the same way they would have filled the New York Post or filled any of the newspapers that they had run at the time.
They just found the most interesting stories and they covered them in ways no one else had covered stories before.
They were newspaper men and they were used to creating pictures with words.
So when they were doing a story they said, and they didn't have video for it, well why don't we reenact it?
Why don't we Create, you know, pictures with pictures.
Why can't we do that?
Well, that's against the rules.
You don't do that in news.
Well, why not?
That's where the rules went out the door, huh?
And the rules went out the door, that's for sure.
All right, Bert.
Hold on.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
We'll take a break here and come back.
Bert Kearns is my guest.
His book is Tabloid Baby, and he is certainly uniquely qualified to write such a book.
Current affair, huh?
We'll talk more about that in a moment, and when the rules went out the window.
And the rules, in fact, have gone out the window, of course, as you've watched TV morph over the last couple of years.
I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
The Coast to Coast AM concert, on March 1st, 2001.
The Coast to Coast AM concert, on March 1st, 2001.
Deep inside, the sound, the smell, the touch, the something.
Inside that we need so much.
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound, or the strength of an oak when it's deep in the ground.
The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac and the sun again.
Or to fly through the sun without burning a wing.
To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing.
I've always singed in our memories home And we used them to come to find
Fly, fly with your soul Take this pain, all this drip
Just go on and Why, why would you so, take his place, on this trip, just
for me?
Why, take a free ride, to the place, I've always seen, in my dreams?
Why, I've been waiting for years, with my heart and with my fears,
and with my life and all my rest, but by now, I know, I'm never in Rome.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
It is indeed, and boy have we got a UFO for you.
On my website right now, put up five minutes before airtime, sent by a trucker, and it's called a Skyring.
That's what he calls it, and it's... I couldn't do any better in describing it.
You tell me what it is.
It's all at www.artbell.com.
Seven photographs up five minutes before air time.
Go take a look.
Once again, back to reality TV and so much more, and Bert Kearns, our guest.
Burt, welcome back.
Okay, we were talking about the rules being virtually thrown out, and that, in fact, is just about, if you look at the timeline, that's just about when it really did happen, isn't it?
Yes, when tabloid television really took over the national news agenda in the early 1990s, things began to change.
There was a time when there was a real separation between the church of network news and the state of America.
There was a real separation between news and entertainment.
Those lines began to blur when tabloid TV came on the scene.
Back in the late 1980s, you would get your local news at 6 o'clock, you'd get your network news around 7, and then at 7.30 you'd tune in to a current affair to get the dessert, to get the fun stories.
Well soon, because the ratings were so great on shows like A Current Affair, doing those fun stories, the network started to do the same stories as well.
By the time you had the O.J.
Simpson trial, There was no delineation at all.
You were getting tabloid stories all day.
The O.J.
Simpson trial in itself was reality TV, wasn't it?
That was the ultimate soap opera, the ultimate murder mystery, the ultimate story that brought in all the elements that made a great tabloid story.
And by this time, the networks joined in.
It's hard to remember a time when the network news people didn't cover these kind of stories.
Remember back in 1992, Palm Beach, Florida, there was a report of a rape at a mansion there.
A wealthy young man was accused of rape.
A U.S.
Senator and a Rhode Island State Representative were material witnesses, possibly involved.
The network news did not cover the story of William Kennedy Smith and Ted Kennedy for an entire week.
When they finally did cover that story, They covered the quote tabloid media covering the story.
They were having their cake and eating it too.
Are they still, that's kind of a snobbish approach, are they still approaching it that way or have they given up all pretense now?
I think the pretense is still there.
But if you look at your TV guide at any night, we used to have five nights a week of a current affair and hard copy.
Now we've got five nights a week of Dateline NBC, 2020, 60 Minutes 2.
They're covering the same types of stories, with music, with drama, that we were covering back in the grand old days of A Current Affair and tabloid television.
And the secret is that many of the same producers who were trained on the tabloid shows are now working for the networks.
They call them the tabloid babies, believe it or not.
I'm sure that's true.
Here's somebody, Jackie in Tennessee, who says, how far does Mr. Kearns think that reality TV will eventually go?
An actual death on TV?
Well, I think reality TV has already gone that far.
There's a show called 60 Minutes who showed a man being put to death in what was purported to be an assisted suicide.
Oh, I remember that, yes.
And it was 60 Minutes who did that in the name of news and also in the name of ratings as well.
Tabloid television did have a real morality.
When you think of tabloid television now, you think of what it became.
It became very sleazy, it became graphic, very celebrity fawning toward the end.
That was at a time when there was so much competition and such a proliferation of tabloid shows that it got very far away from the source.
But in a tabloid reality world, Then you would never show that sort of footage, someone dying.
Because we always remembered that we were a guest in someone's home at supper time.
And the key to good tabloid television was that no matter how salacious the subject, no matter how edgy the story might be, you can tell any story to any audience if you tell it the right way.
How close to lying can you come?
How close to lying?
Yeah, how close to lying, that's right, that's the question.
In other words, how close, in telling a salacious story of some sort or another, a lot of personalities have screamed bloody murder about the, quote, lies, end quote, that were told about them.
So, in telling the story, as you insert drama and license for drama, how close to actually lying have you seen it get?
I found that tabloid television, believe it or not, came the closest to getting to the truth because of the tabloid form.
Tabloid TV was allowed to be biased.
Tabloid TV was allowed to speak on behalf of a character or show a story through someone's eyes and not pretend otherwise.
I think that the lies come in the omission.
I think the lies come in not telling certain stories.
I never was involved in a story in tabloid television where we were lying.
Did you ever worry that you were misrepresenting the story in some way?
Kinder word, misrepresenting, I guess.
I worried about it when I worked for the so-called mainstream news.
To be quite honest, because when you work in mainstream news on television, all you are trying to do is do the same story everyone else is doing.
And making sure you get the same story everyone else is getting.
And most of the time the stories that you're seeing on television news are stories that have already appeared in a newspaper somewhere.
Because they only want to do what's tried and true.
Tabloid television was the first time in television where we were coming up with our own stories.
And if someone else was doing that story, we weren't interested in it.
What about people's privacy?
Now, I know that you've got to get the story, and I know there's a lot of paparazzi running around out there and getting in people's faces and sometimes getting their nose broken for the effort.
How much of that sort of thing have you seen?
You know, go get me a good picture, and I don't care what you've got to do, just get it.
That was the name of the game in the heyday of of reality television when there were ten shows competing for the same story.
A lot of money being thrown around to get those stories.
Yes, it was no holds barred and sometimes it did get ugly.
Witnesses in criminal cases would be harassed.
Witnesses in criminal cases would be paid.
Going back to the William Kennedy Smith case, the star witness in the case sold her story to a current affair for $40,000 and her testimony It proved to be worthless.
Her testimony was thrown out of court, and the defendant was found not guilty.
Yeah, and in most cases, and I remember this as a matter of fact during the OJ trial, in most cases, if tabloid TV was able to get to a witness and get them to tell their story and pay them for it, that was the end of that testimony, right?
Oh, most definitely.
And that was when things really got out of hand.
Tabloid television did get out of hand.
As the people who were running it really lost the sense of morality, where the story was everything.
How many times did you come up against the wall with something like that, where you said to yourself, look, I know what I'm doing, and I don't know if I can do this?
I left tabloid, the world of tabloid television, as it was, around 1995, 1996.
I was sitting in a parking lot in a van on a very cold night in Denver, Colorado, outside an ice skating rink where there was a rock concert going on, and the star of the concert was Kato Kaelin, O.J.
Simpson's house guest, who knew a bit more than he was willing to tell on the witness stand about what went on the night his dear friend Nicole Simpson was slaughtered.
And we in tabloid television, we in the media, had turned Cato Kaelin into a celebrity.
And he was on a tour of shopping malls throughout America signing autographs for charity during the day and at night making some money by appearing at rock concerts.
And that's where things have gone a bit wrong here.
And it got to the point where today... And that was it for you?
Yes, that was where I really... I write about that in Tabloid Baby.
That was really where I got to the point where I said, you know, what are we doing here?
Is this where we wanted to end up?
Today, we wind up in a society where celebrity is everything, and it doesn't matter why you're famous.
It doesn't matter if you're Linda Tripp or Monica Lewinsky or Charles Manson or, you know, Bill Clinton.
You're all in the same boat.
The boat of celebrity, and that seems to rule now.
Over the years, I've done a whole lot of thinking about that, and I love doing this radio program.
I mean, it's in my blood.
Radio's in my blood.
I just dearly love it.
It's what I do naturally, but I hate the celebrity part of it, and a lot of people don't understand that.
I'm sure there are a lot of people who crave celebrity, but they should be very careful what they wish for.
What's your take on it?
How many people who are famous actually like the famous part of it?
When you speak to people who do have fame, very few say they enjoy that.
They're the perks of celebrity.
Yeah, you can get a table in a restaurant.
Right.
You can get to the front of a line in a movie theater.
Right.
But you have lost your privacy.
That's right.
And that's a big price.
And there is no privacy today.
Despite, let's say, with legitimate celebrities, people who have achieved fame through achievement or through their art, whether they're movie stars or singers, they too have to live in a very secure bubble.
We're in an age now where everybody wants to be a celebrity.
Whether that would mean hurting a celebrity, puts your name right up there.
An era that began with Mark Chapman.
We're in an era of stalkers now.
Yes, indeed.
In fact, you've done, you did mugshots, right?
Right.
I've done several of those, of the mugshot series.
What did you learn in that?
Well, what I learned from mugshots is, well, first of all, everyone who is accused of a crime is innocent.
I can tell you that anyone who's behind bars is innocent.
Yes.
But you also learn about The celebrity that goes along with notoriety.
Yes.
When I was offered the job for Big Brother, I got the call on a cell phone.
I was standing across the street from the LAPD's Rampart Division Headquarters, where the great police scandal of 2000 had broken out.
The story of Rafael Perez, the rogue cop.
Rafael Perez, you know, behind bars selling his He's basically trading testimony for his freedom, was also at the same time working on who he's going to sell his book rights to, and who's going to play him in a movie.
That's what lawyers do now.
When you deal with lawyers, they are interested, and they'll let you talk to their client if they can get a good deal for it.
They're looking down the line for that movie of the week.
And in just about every story that I've covered, that is what they're looking at.
That's incredible.
It's a strange place that we've gotten to now.
It is.
Could the average person with average ethics and morality, average being the key word here, walk into the kind of work environment you had in tabloid TV and survive a day?
If that person had a very strong liver.
This was an Australian culture we were dealing with and there was a lot of drinking going on.
It was like the old front page atmosphere.
It was a chance for young people to go as far as they could on their own moxie and their own skills.
The people got a lot of chances to do a lot of things.
One thing that the early days of tabloid TV and reality TV did was change the face of the people who were allowed to bring you stories.
The reporters on the tabloid TV shows were not your blow-dried Anchor people are, you know, reporters that were off that assembly line.
They were real people telling stories.
Because, yes, average people did have a chance to get in there and tell stories, yeah.
You worked on When Good Pets Go Bad.
Part 2, I guess.
Yes.
Do you recall the scene, and I'm not sure if it was in that show or not, but I'll never forget it, where some cat ran up a guy's leg and started biting his crotch.
Yes, one of the funniest and most painful pieces of video in the history of videotaping.
That was an animal control officer, I think, holding up a cat for an adoption ad.
Yes, that's right.
And the cat got loose.
Oh boy, did it.
Working on When Good Pets Go Bad 2, not even 1, producing the second episode was a real education for me as to where reality television was going.
Tabloid television was gone by then.
This was in 1999.
And we'd entered a new era of reality TV where reality was totally gone now.
These shows take videos that could be 20 years old.
They add sound effects.
They add a story.
You may think that these tapes are new, but they've been around and circulating for years.
And it's just, you know, reality used totally for entertainment.
Well, when you speak about reality TV, you keep referring to it almost as in the past tense.
It's really still going on.
Oh, no.
Reality TV has morphed into quite a different beast than it was ten years ago.
Reality TV, the premonitions and the forecasts that were contained in the movie network back in the 70s, which seems so far out and so much the product of the imagination of Paddy Chayefsky, Have come true in so many different ways.
You think we're getting close to seeing the Soothsayer on a network TV show?
Oh, most definitely.
I think we've had a few Soothsayers in the last 10 years.
It was funny, for me, in tabloid television, the natural transition led me to a show called Strange Universe, speaking of Soothsayers.
Ah, Strange Universe, yes indeed.
Which was another interesting show, and actually, I joined it in its second season and was its executive producer in its second and final season.
We treated it the same way we treated a current affair back in the late 1980s.
What we did at a current affair back then was thumb through newspapers.
The days before the internet, we would have papers delivered to us and I would read personally 200 small town newspapers a day.
And that's where we would get our stories from.
They weren't gotten from the National Enquirer or the Weekly World News.
I think you all listen to me, too.
Well, yes.
In this strange universe, we would run bit parts of your show.
I remember the bottomless pit was wonderful.
That was Mel's hole, actually.
Actually, you all came in and did a profile of me that was very, very well done.
I still think it's one of the best profiles that was done, along with the one NBC did.
Uh, for the Today Show.
But it was really, really a nice profile and I enjoyed your people.
And yes, then when Mel's Hole came along, y'all actually went up to Washington and did an investigation.
Yeah, I wanted to find that hole.
Uh, I guess you found some military boot prints and some other things that you reported on.
Actually, never quite located the hole itself, but some pretty suspicious activity up there?
Most definitely, yes.
And we would find that, you know, By following these stories throughout America, a lot of the stories that the mainstream media, of course, relegates to, you know, so-called kooks and the so-called fringe, are really stories, you know, from small-town America, and that's what we try to bring out.
And I think that's why Tabloid TV was successful in its heyday, and that's where we touched a chord when we did Strange Universe.
You've worked on so many shows, what would be your favorite?
Well, I always consider a current affair to be the glory days, the early days of a current affair where we're one day, you know, we're covering a story in Kansas, then we're back at the bar across the street from the office watching the television set there and noticing that there are people standing atop the Berlin Wall and realizing that communism is ending, getting on a telephone calling Rupert Murdoch and saying, can we borrow your plane to go over to Germany?
And being the only independent syndicated television show at the Brandenburg Gate as communism is falling.
Yeah, what does that say about... That's an incredible story.
We'll pick it up right there.
We're at the top of the hour.
Standby.
Burt Kearns is my guest.
We're talking about reality TV.
I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM from the High Desert.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
tonight featuring a replay of coast to coast am from march first
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Tonight, featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
Tell you what we're gonna do.
We're gonna ask a few more questions of Bert Kearns.
And then we're gonna open the phone lines and let you ask any question you want.
Somebody with this big a background in reality TV, I'm sure you've got a favorite show.
But in a moment, we're gonna ask about some of the new stuff.
You know, the mold.
Boot Camp, coming up.
And the incredible Temptation Island.
Good Lord, where is it going from there?
In a moment, we're going to take your questions for Burt Kearns this hour.
But first, I want... There's a couple things I want to... Actually, Burt, what is it?
I'm a real victim of reality TV.
I watch cops all the time.
I love cops.
I watch, in fact, The Mole, which I don't think is that hot.
I will probably watch Boot Camp, and I have been watching, heaven help me, Temptation Island.
Now, I don't know what to say about Temptation Island.
This is, folks, if you haven't seen it, where they take several committed couples, committed to each other, and throw them on this island with all of these really good-looking guys and gals and have them date other people and torture their partners with little videos of what they did the day before.
It's incredible.
And somehow, like a car wreck, you know, I'm drawn to watch it.
You have comments on Temptation Island?
Well, as only the Fox Network knows how to do, they took the new reality show and gave it that extra salacious twist.
They sure did.
It just makes it nice and naughty.
And of course, the show wound up this week with a very nice moral.
I believe all the couples decided to stay together.
Oh, you're kidding.
Did they really?
Yes, they all decided to stay together.
I believe at least one of them um... proposed on the show and they're going to get married
that's also the way fox likes to work it gives you
the most so salacious stories and take it to the edge and then bring that wraps it up with a
nice ball but it's all like that again was
compelling television they've already ordered up another season of funny mother
island temptation island two
and i think it would be a good day going to probably agree on a four-part
article could be brought in the ratings and the mall brought in the ratings as
well dinner really i didn't think it was going to fall Somehow, there was something about the mole, even though I've been fascinated by it, that they did not seem to develop the characters as well as they did, say, on Survivor.
Oh, right.
And you couldn't tell what was going on half the time.
It took me a couple of weeks of watching it to figure out exactly what was happening.
It was sort of a mission impossible on a very nice vacation.
But it's done well in the ratings anyway, huh?
I think it brought in the demographic that the network was looking for.
Yeah, it did almost as well as Temptation Island did.
And here comes Boot Camp.
I mean, where is all this going, Bert?
You've been in the biz, and you've been there, so if you were to look ahead and try to decide where it's all going, where is it going?
Well, I think this will burn itself out, this This latest reality craze.
I mean, imitation is the sincerest form of television.
And it all began, of course, with who wants to be a millionaire.
Yeah, that's right.
Remember that?
That was lightning in a bottle that summer.
The ratings went through the roof.
Then came Survivor.
Well, let's not leave millionaire for a second.
I really, really, really liked that show along with the rest of the country.
For a long time.
But then, somehow, it began to wear a little thin.
Now, I don't know how the ratings are doing recently, but for me, it began to wear a little thin.
And they weren't getting so many millionaires.
In fact, most people were walking out with a thousand dollars.
Right.
And it's no longer the tentpole show.
I mean, ABC, which was number one, I believe, in that first season of The Millionaire, was struggling to be number three in these latest ratings.
They relied too much on it.
And also, For whatever reason, the way the questions are skewed, the contestants are all the same type of person.
Except when they have a celebrity show.
Pretty much middle-aged white guys.
Yeah, you're not seeing a lot of women, you're not seeing a lot of people of color.
And part of it, I think we all get tired as people only make it to $32,000, having to sit through those $100 questions.
You just want them to get rid of.
So, they've tried a couple of things, you know, adding a lot of money.
I think we're almost up to $2 million or something, unless somebody won.
I haven't seen it in a while.
But they've tried a number of things to spruce it up.
The host was a good host.
There's no question about that.
He did a great job.
He's great.
In fact, I was once a question on who wants to be a millionaire, which caught me by surprise.
What was the value?
Actually, it may have been...
May have been $125,000 question.
Did the person get it?
Yes, they did get the question right, and I was not the answer.
At any rate, that one just hit me cold.
I had no idea.
I think it was this last summer.
So anyway, once you've done Temptation Island 1 and 2, where do you go from there?
How much more salacious can you become on network TV, even Fox?
Well, then it moves over to the internet and you get what they have, the show Sex Survivor.
It just gets wilder and wilder.
I mean, the other thing that you have to look out for now is when is someone going to get seriously hurt?
We saw what happened today on Survivor.
Tonight on Survivor.
Well, that man was seriously hurt.
I mean, they showed the skin peeling off his hands.
He obviously was badly burned.
Yes, it was hard to look at.
I thought they were tasteful in what they showed, but even then it was much more than anything I've ever had to see on CBS.
But then it goes to show that these are supposed to be game shows.
And these are people who are really putting their lives on the line.
I mean, there was trouble behind the scenes at Temptation Island.
There was a hurricane that tore through that set.
Really?
During the production of that, two people were killed.
Two of the people who worked on the island, who ferried the contestants and the crew members back and forth, were killed in this hurricane.
That struck.
A lot of the crew members were stuck on this island.
I didn't see that report.
Where did you get that?
Well, I got the report from people who worked on the show.
There was a report.
It did hit the, quote, tabloids early on when that happened.
I don't want to say that it was covered up, but it wasn't greatly publicized.
Well, they certainly did not include it in the show.
No.
And there are other things that aren't included in the show.
When you watch Big Brother, one of the funniest incidents During the show Big Brother was when two guys, the Big Brother house was located on the CBS television city lot.
That's right.
And I don't know if you know this story where two guys had come to pitch a comedy show and they realized that they could walk right past the wall that surrounded the Big Brother compound.
So they took, they printed up a fake newspaper.
Oh, I remember that very well.
And they stuffed them into baseball, into like tennis balls and threw them over the wall.
That's right.
And the folks inside the house read it.
And remember Chicken George?
Read one of the fake stories that President Clinton said bad things about him.
Uh-huh, and he was ready to leave the show.
Right.
They had to bring people in, counselors in.
They let him talk to his wife, I believe, to assure him that it wasn't what happened.
That's right.
They decided not to include that in the actual show.
It probably showed up on the web, Cap.
It did.
It did.
All of that showed up on the web.
I'll tell you something.
Occasionally, they would even censor the web.
As I was telling Britt, when something got a little too hot to handle, Especially when there was criticism of CBS.
All of a sudden you were looking at the chicken cam.
A bunch of chickens walking around.
Right.
When things got too hot.
Not the case in Holland where the show originated.
That became the biggest show in the history of Dutch television because one of the contestants began to have sex with all the other ones.
She was a housewife who went berserk.
Within the confines of the Big Brother house.
And they showed it too, didn't they?
And they showed it, and the ratings went through the roof in Holland.
Why do you suppose European television is so much more open and will show these kinds of things, and we don't?
Or are we headed there?
Well, I think the morality in America is a bit different than it is in Europe.
You know, as we all know, America is a bit hypocritical when it comes to sex.
We have, and a bit moralistic.
We're kind of prudish, actually.
A bit prudish, well, sort of the same way that Fox television is.
Again, very salacious, but then again, we have a very nice traditional ending to a series like Temptation Island, where, you know, anything goes in Europe.
And that's why now we're looking toward Europe to see what's going to be on our station next year.
By the way, my wife informs me she's reading news indicating that Mike, who was flown in a helicopter after the burns, had third-degree burns on both hands.
Yeah, you could tell.
Absolutely awful.
The skin was off.
It's funny, you're talking about these desert island shows.
The television show, Current Affair, back in 1993.
Peter Brennan, the man who invented tabloid television and reality TV back in the 80s.
He went on to create the show Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown.
No kidding.
Came up with an idea for Sweeps.
You know, the Sweeps ratings month are very important in television.
Back in 1993, we said, what if we put a divorcing couple on a desert island?
And let them sit there and see if they can patch things up.
Really?
So we found a couple, brought them to an island that was deserted, and it was just the two people and a camera crew.
We put them in their own tent, we gave them food, we put the camera crew in a separate tent, and let them actually spend a week On this beach, and the camera crew kept a respectful distance most of the time, then went in and followed them around.
There were two things we didn't realize.
One, we weren't prepared for the number of mosquitoes on the island at night.
So after the first day, the couple were covered in welts from mosquito bites.
Not exactly good camera fodder.
Then after several days, they began to warm to each other, and they had a very romantic evening.
Which was followed by the morning when they began to confess to each other their sins.
Whereupon the wife confessed on camera to her husband that in the three years of their marriage, she had more than 50 affairs, including one with his brother.
50 and one with his brother.
And we were lucky to get everyone off the island alive.
But I was going to say, you know, that could have turned out very differently.
It could have turned out with somebody dying and then what?
But it raided through the roof.
That was a first.
If that, in fact, had happened, would that have been shown?
If that had happened, we would have been in a lot of trouble.
I don't think we would have allowed them to kill each other.
I don't think we gave them the weapons to do that.
They were in bathing suits.
They took all the sharp objects.
Yeah, we made sure there were only mosquitos there that caused damage.
But that, I think, is a danger of where these shows might be headed next.
As you see, they don't.
The production companies that put these shows together are often not equipped to deal with the dangers.
I mean, you look at even a show as silly as Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire.
Oh, yes.
Glad you brought that one up.
That show was, again, done by a production company that usually does clip shows and Fox specials.
Suddenly, they were marrying off a woman to a guy whose background they hadn't checked well enough.
It got incredible ratings, and then it got in incredible trouble.
Yes.
I mean, there really was a national pang of conscience after watching that show.
Because, again, it was funny.
It was a, you know, can you top who wants to be a millionaire?
That's a typical Fox, you know, show planning meeting.
Hey, let's say you want to marry one.
Yes.
It's a funny idea.
But then you realize that they were really playing around with something that is Sacred.
Yes.
It was marriage.
They were marrying someone off, you know, to someone that she didn't know for money.
And then you find out that this woman who had married this gentleman, whoever, you know, for whatever reason she had, could have been placed in very serious danger if the charges that had been leveled against him turned out to be true.
Well, so that actually then there is a case where despite the fact that the show got tremendous ratings Uh, the pangs afterward prevented, uh, who wants to marry a multimillionaire or a billionaire too.
Right.
I think they followed up with a sexiest bachelor special instead.
I remember that.
They had like a pageant for bachelors.
But yeah, I mean, that was, that was one that everyone, you know, put on the brakes and said, what are we doing here?
Bert, who sits around and thinks these things up?
Well, these kind of shows, there are a number of independent producers and production companies who sit around and say, you know, how do we get on this bandwagon?
What's the next one?
What do we do?
There's also a mad genius at Fox named Mike Darnell, who they keep tucked away there, and they say, we're never going to do one of these kind of shows ever again.
It was so embarrassing.
But when they need the ratings, they go to the genius, and he comes up with these shows that will rate at all costs.
I had, uh, my wife and I had an idea that we wanted to submit to Fox, and somebody has, uh, actually we did submit it to Fox, and we thought, you know, do something like Big Brother, except instead, go to a place, a haunted house, and I mean a real haunted house, and put ten people in there and in their rooms, and then proceed, uh, after you've told them the story of the house and you've related the real hauntings that have actually gone on.
Uh, MTV is very good at this.
With special effects, proceed to scare the holy hell out of them.
And see who's gonna run out, who's gonna bail, uh, how the bonding, the sexual tension, all the rest of it, it'll go on, but I mean, just really scare the hell out of these people.
And I haven't heard back yet, but we'll see.
No, that's a tremendous idea, and I know there have been haunted house-type specials, um, considered, and that's a great one.
That's a good one.
If you actually went to a location where there really was an act of haunting going on, obviously during the whole show, the people would have no way of knowing whether it was, say, Fox's special effects, or whether it was the real thing.
And if you began with people in separate rooms, you sure as heck wouldn't end up with them in separate rooms.
Alright, listen, let's take a few calls.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Burt Kearns.
Hello.
Hi Art, my name is Melissa.
I'm calling from London.
Hi Melissa from London, Ontario.
I'm calling to tell you about a show called The Lofters, which is based in Toronto.
That's a Canadian show?
Yep, and it actually features live feed on the internet.
Do you want the URL?
No, don't give it to me on the internet, but we can find it.
It's called the Lofters.
And what is it all about?
Basically what it is is they sent eight people, four guys and four girls, to live in a loft for a year.
And the main difference with the rest of the shows that you've been talking about tonight is that they actually get paid to stay there for the entire year.
Nobody gets kicked off.
Nobody, you know, there's no voting against a certain person, no alliances or anything like that.
But they actually make TV shows on the live feed.
Just like Big Brother?
That are basically produced by the people who live in the loft.
That's just like Big Brother then?
Well, yeah, basically like Big Brother.
I never actually saw Big Brother, so... Well, is this just the tension between them?
Is that Kind of what they focus on?
Not so much as the type of programming that they're doing.
I mean, there is a nightly show, weeknights, on a channel here.
But basically it shows them interviewing people.
They get to go and interview rock stars.
They chat with people on their website.
Um, so there is a lot of contact with the outside world.
So it's an internet, uh, only thing or it's on TV as well?
It's on TV as well.
I see.
So it's like big brother.
Um, and as for the cameras, they're everywhere.
They're everywhere.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, there's a lot of that going on out there now.
Um, the, the Jenny cams, the, the, the, the dorm cams, you know, 24 hours a day, you can watch people live.
Oh, the Jenny cam.
This is Jenny.
Yes.
Jenny is a housewife.
Anyway, what the story was, she was a housewife who just decided to expose herself in more ways than one on the Internet.
Now, here's a question for you, Bert.
How far are we from the time when television may be co-opted by the Internet?
I mean, there are obviously things, there are no rules on the Internet.
You can literally show Anything.
So, a version of Big Brother that would be done on the Internet would be pretty wild stuff.
Well, I think that we are already there.
As soon as we have that technology where we can flip through the URLs, the same way we flip through TV channels, that's the day that television has been co-opted by the Internet.
Right now, I have a website called tabloidbaby.com, which really is the only tabloid television magazine show that's out there and it's on the
internet and we're developing it on the internet where you know
posting stories every day and columns and opinion
and on and video streaming video the same way we would do it
when we're doing a tabloid television show only now there's no one
telling us you can't do that well you know a lot of people who have dial-up
accounts don't know but if you get high-speed internet really high-speed internet and there's more and more that
available uh... in cities and now even in the country by satellite
You can get a stream that is so good that it's virtually television.
It is.
It's 30 frames per second of TV.
It's absolutely amazing and we're going to be able to do a lot on there, aren't we?
That's next.
Actually, anything at all, huh?
It's there.
Alright, hold on.
My guest is Burt Kearns, and we're going to take another half hour of questions here about reality TV.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
Do you feel like you ever want to try my love and see how well it fits?
Baby, can't you see when you look at me?
I can't kick this feeling when it hits.
All alone in my bed tonight.
I grab my pillow and squeeze it tight.
I think of you and I dream of you all the time I used to be your man
Difficult to write my deeds.
To find an answer on the road.
I used to be a heartbeat for someone.
I used to be a hard beating, poor dumb one But the times have changed
And there's a saying, the more hard work gets done Cause I never really missed you, you gave me the freedom
From the day that I was born I played the side Well, I thought you'd see the truth in me, how I feel was
mad Give me peace of mind, my daddy never had
Cause I never really missed you, you gave me the freedom in time.
Tonight's program originally aired March 1st, 2001.
Good morning, everybody.
We're talking about reality TV, and we're talking with Bert Kearns, who wrote a book called Tamloid Baby.
That you're definitely going to... If you want the real behind-the-scenes look at everything that's going on, tabloid baby has got it.
Believe me.
And of course, his website as well, which is linked from ours.
you can check it out by going to www.rfl.com, the guest area, and the links will be right there for you.
All right.
Here's one that I've got to ask.
I guess I don't mind admitting it.
I'm hooked.
My wife is hooked.
She's got a compulsion about this kind of television.
I don't know, tabloid television, but reality TV, what we're calling reality TV now.
Temptation Island, The Mole, especially Survivor, and on and on.
You know, each one of them, we absolutely love them.
We unabashedly admit it.
I don't know what the hook is, and actually that's the question, Bert.
What in the world is the hook that gets you into shows like this and just absolutely grabs you and holds you?
I think it's very similar to the appeal that tabloid television had 10, 15 years ago.
You are able to look over the ticket fence into the house next door.
Voyeuristic.
It's voyeuristic, it's our native curiosity, and you're looking at the drama that goes on on a daily basis between people.
The one show that I'm hooked on is a show that I find to be much must-see TV, the show called Blind Date.
Blind Date?
It's a syndicated show, and on every show they just take two people and send them out on a date together they've never met before.
And one of them usually treats, you know, the other one quite horribly.
And there's a little bit of a drama every night in these little 15-minute vignettes of, you know, what's going to happen on this blind date.
And you're watching real people, you know, acting, you know, in their lives.
Well, there's something about it.
There's something about it.
I mean, we... I don't want to say exactly we plan our lives around Survivor, for example, but that's almost true.
Sure, but Survivor is...
Such a good show, by any terms.
I mean, it is produced, it is directed, it is edited, it is sculpted into compelling drama with beats, just as many beats as if you're watching the show Law & Order.
It's done so well.
I guess that's it.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Burt Kearns.
Good morning.
Hey, how's it going, Art?
This is Ryan in Tampa.
Hi, Ryan.
First of all, I'd like to just say, you know, everyone's welcoming you back.
I've only actually listened since Mike Siegel's has been on, since you've been actually doing a good job filling Mike Siegel's job.
So, good for you.
Thank you.
But anyway, my question, actually, my question is, what does he think of the Extra and Inside Edition, I guess, that are the tabloid television now?
And my question also is, why does it seem like when you're watching one, You flip over to the other one, and they almost have the exact same two stories, which I find... Are they using the same writers, or are they buying the same story from somebody else?
I mean, sometimes you just flip over, and you're like, I just saw this story a half hour ago.
Yeah, that's a very good point.
And he should be qualified to answer that, Bert.
Yeah, but I think that the shows today that are sort of the leftovers of the tabloid era really don't have the same appeal that they did In the heyday.
I think if you want to get your good tabloid television, you've got to look now toward the Dateline and to 2020 and 60 Minutes 2.
Those are the kind of stories.
Shows like Extra, Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood.
They are doing what local news shows do.
They look to the daybook.
They find the stories.
Oh, look, there's a Michael Jackson story today.
Let's do something on Pamela Anderson Lee.
They are just following each other.
So whatever's hot is hot.
The way it was, what I write about in Tabloid Baby, is how it started when it was, let's find the story, let's go out into America and find stories that no one else is covering and let's make them the story of the day for the nation.
Whether it was the story of the teacher who hired her students to kill her husband, or the mechanic out on Long Island who was having an affair with a 16 year old who would go on to shoot his wife.
Those are the stories that you would see on these tabloid shows and not see them anywhere else.
Since they're so popular, Bert, and they depict that sort of story, isn't there kind of a negative bounce that has people eventually thinking that this is what America is all about?
That we've become a tabloid nation?
Well, I've got to tell you.
We have, huh?
We have become a tabloid nation.
I mean, when you have Dan Rather leading off his newscast talking about gap dresses and cigars in the Oval Office, you don't need Maury Povich to give you sensationalism anymore.
I mean, you take, you know, beginning with O.J.
Simpson carrying on through Bill Clinton, they've done more for, you know, the tabloidization of America than any tabloid producer could ever hope to do.
Point well made.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Bert Kearns.
Hi.
Good evening, Art.
This is Ann from the Missouri Ozarks, and I listen to you on 1100 AM out of Cleveland, Ohio.
Hey there.
Good evening, Bert.
Good evening.
I have a couple questions for you.
The first one is, knowing that you've been exposed and documented many different stories and situations, do you remember a very strange and one of the more bizarre stories about a couple who had a log home in the Black Hills, or was it the Black Forest of Colorado?
And we're constantly bothered by ghosts, apparitions, and strange lights.
Yes, I do.
I remember covering that on Strange Universe.
Was that the portal?
Yes.
Yes.
I have experienced many strange things myself, but nothing has bothered me as much as the two images that appeared on, I believe it was their master bedroom mirror.
The mirror, yes.
Do you remember that?
I remember that.
I remember the still photographs.
Yes, as like the old timer said, it literally made my blood curl.
That was the most The most bizarre and strange, those two images just were awesome.
Let me ask you a question.
Of all of the shows that you've done on Strange Universe, what do you consider the most bizarre story you documented?
There were so many on Strange Universe, from people who have great memory and recollections of having sex with aliens, to the stories of Mel's Hall.
The one story that I could not understand Was the story that I know that Art is well acquainted with, was the story of the strange lights over Phoenix, Arizona.
Oh, yes.
What looked to be either a very obvious UFO invasion or some sort of government testing.
Who knows?
A story that was covered on all the local news that night and then totally dropped from the mainstream media.
Not covered again.
We saw that tape.
We ran that on Strange Universe.
And we made a bit of a campaign out of it, saying, why isn't the mainstream media covering this?
Why did this story just go away?
And never really got a satisfactory answer to what the lights were, or why nobody was interested in covering it.
Are you the ones, Bert, that... Did you open that story back up?
Because the Phoenix Light story happened.
We did it on my program.
Big deal.
Then, like, two or three months went by, And then all of a sudden the mainstream media grabbed it and ran with it, and then it was a big story all over again.
The mainstream media grabbed it right a few months later, and they acted as if it had happened that very weekend.
That's right.
And that was what was strange about it.
For some reason they did jump on it.
It was like somebody threw a switch.
Yeah.
I could never figure that out.
And young lady, you were talking about portals?
Yes.
You might want to take a look at the photographs we just got up on my website from this truck driver in Salt Lake City.
It could be a portal.
I'm gonna go check him out right now.
Check it out, all right?
Thank you.
All right, thank you very much for the call.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Burt Kearns.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hi, where are you?
Well, I'm in Nashville.
This is Panther Guy in Nashville.
All right.
And, um, first of all, a week from Saturday I'll be 52, and I like to say I do not like reality TV.
You don't?
No, no.
Now, in Strange Universe and these kind of programs like yours are, I love, okay?
And the thing that Dan Aykroyd had, you know, some time back.
Yes, I'm wanting to get Dan on the air.
Oh great, yeah, that would be great.
But the thing of it is, you know, I have too much reality, too much drama in my life every
day to have to watch someone else's reality.
I just yearn for the days of, you know, the old Hoagy Elvis movies where you went to the
movies for two hours and didn't have to think of anything.
You were entertained, you know, no one was, the boys in the hood, and you know, these
every kind of movies that bring the streets into your living room.
Yeah, you're talking about pure escapism, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And that's why I watch either TV or go to the movies.
is for pure escapism but i have to ask for the question you know you talk about these cop shows and and the uh...
uh... the the court shows you know i judge gdm
and these people i mean please give me a break
uh... it would seem to me that real fitting a lawyer of judges
would would be offended by some of the things that these people get away with
saying to these people at that real true dedicated policeman would get upset
to see these other policemen on t v and and we all know we all you know
most of us at that that understand our rights in the constitution
know that they've burst those time that they do things that at the head of if the defendant said hey look at this
they'd they didn't do right here
you know you know i i i feel exactly the opposite A lot of times, Judge Judy will say something to some defendant, and I'll go right on.
Of course!
Judge Judy and Judge Joe, they run courts of common sense, and they're not really that different, not that far off from a typical small claims court, where the rules are a bit looser, and the judge rules the rules.
It was funny, I was involved in a small claims action against a landlord last year, And, first of all, I started getting letters from these court shows saying, come on our show instead of settling in court.
And then going into court, now you find a lot of the judges and referees seem to be auditioning for the Judge Judy Show.
Well, but my point being is, how could Judge Judy say to someone, I know you're lying, you're lying, you're lying, I know you're lying.
Well, because that person has signed a paper saying, you know, I've given over my case to Judge Judy and it's her court.
Yeah, and a lot of people don't read, do they, Bert, the fine print?
In other words, these cases, whatever amount of money is awarded is paid by the TV show, right?
Right, and both sides will get some money.
Oh, now that, I didn't know that!
Yeah, well that's why you would give up your right to have your case heard in court.
You'll get an appearance fee for, you know, for showing up.
Oh, so it's great if you're from Nashville and you get a free plane ride to Los Angeles.
So it's a win-win.
It's a total win-win situation.
Yeah, it definitely is.
But people still walk out of there angry.
And that's what makes the show successful because Peter Brennan, who runs the show, who is featured in the book Tabloid Baby, is the man who invented a current affair.
Peter took, when he started Judge Judy, he made sure that the cases that that that they picked in the people that they brought on
where people who were very adamant you know the fact that they were right and that they wanted
to win their cases and that's the thing people do forget there on
there on television by the way of the person who turned me on to you was renee
barnett you know renee great producer you worked with renee uh...
on strange universe right here
and renee over the years has fed me a lot of really really interesting guests
she's quite a lady all right i was to the rockies you're on the road bird current
high where are you alright
thank god you're back uh... thank god i my i am it would be a pretty good yes sir
victory items darva conger
yes had no intention of uh...
one of your contract which you are not sure i would think the other women on the children would do a
class action to against her
for and you know for taking the space that they could use because
A lot of planned marriages or put-together marriages often work.
So in other words, let's see, sued her for a loss of income.
For breach of contract.
Well, a loss of their income, right?
Potentially.
She was supposed to have married the guy and gotten away with the money.
Right.
Not so far out.
You know, one of the original Survivor contestants has sued the show.
Oh yeah, I've heard about it.
What's going on there?
Well, Stacey Stillman, who actually is an attorney, she was booted from the island in the third episode.
Right.
She is claiming that the show was rigged.
She claims that she was voted off the island after the producer spoke with two of the other castmates and asked them to protect old Rudy.
Because Rudy was a great character, they wanted to keep him on the island, but now she's suing for the prize money plus an extra 75 grand.
Rudy was a great character.
So do you think there's anything to it?
I guess you can't really comment on that, it's obviously going to go to court.
I don't know, but what's very interesting is that the producers of Survivor fought back Very aggressively against the suit, and pointed out the fact that Stacey is in violation of her confidentiality agreement.
Everyone involved with these shows has to sign a very ironclad confidentiality agreement.
And also, CBS basically owns the rights to their lives for as long as they live.
Oh really?
Remember poor Richard Hatch, the naked fat guy?
Yeah.
He was offered the hosting role on Saturday Night Live.
And they wouldn't let him do it, because it was a competing network.
Wow.
So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
So they really got him tied down tightly.
Yeah, and so, simply by filing suit, they're contending that Stacey Stillman is in violation, and owes them $5 million.
Caller?
Item number two, the 10th victim was a movie.
And it was a movie about a reality TV show, where people, one person would be a victim, and one person would be the hunter, and they would actually go out and try to kill the victim.
And the victim would try to figure out who the hunter was and kill the hunter before they got them.
And if they got through ten spots, they would win a million dollars and all kinds of publicity and become famous.
Probably by the year 2006.
What do you think, Ferg?
I think probably tomorrow morning they'll be discussing them at Fox.
It's funny, there is a show in development, which is quite similar, where they're going to drop Two people in a city in America and have bounty hunters chase them.
And they've got to get to a certain point before the bounty hunters get them.
You're kidding.
I believe the name of the show might be Bounty Hunters.
Sounds good to me.
Right now, yeah.
Sounds good to me.
Ordinary people going up against the professionals.
As far out as you can imagine.
That's how, again, the day of network is here.
Caller?
Item number three is Mardi Gras in San Diego.
We have things going on in San Diego at Mardi Gras night that never happened before in San Diego.
On the streets, anyway.
They got nudity and they got talking.
It's totally crazy and wild.
On Fat Tuesday, February 27th.
And I was wondering why some of the TV stations haven't actually come out and filmed some of the stuff that's going on out here.
Maybe HBO or somebody.
Oh, right.
That's very interesting.
One of the things I've noticed in finding stories to link to on tabloidbaby.com, I go through newspapers all around the country.
And the New Orleans Times Picayune has Mardi Gras cams that you can click into on the web all over New Orleans, from karaoke bars to the street to clubs, where the entire city seems to be just wired with streaming video and live cameras.
Well, I know in certain cities they overdid it a little this year with the Mardi Gras celebrations.
They didn't quit at midnight.
Uh, the police had to move in, it was a big mess, and I'm sure all of that will eventually be reduced to entertainment.
Well, Seattle got it to come up into the next morning, didn't it?
Oh, I wasn't going to say that.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Burt Kearns.
Hi.
Hello there.
Is that me?
That's you.
Well, I, uh, thou art thou.
I'm, uh, I'm also interested in how the media seems to come up with stuff just before it occurs.
And of course, I always think about, you know, movies with the comets hitting the Earth and stuff, and then the next thing I hear, we're landing something on an asteroid.
And it's, I don't know, it all seems to be rather linked somehow, but I don't know how to put it into words.
Yeah, in other words, fiction preceding reality, but it's always been that way, hasn't it, Bert?
It always has, you know, and reality has always proven to be much stranger than fiction.
Yeah.
Listen, I always like to give my guests a choice.
I'd be more than happy to.
There's a million questions for you and a million people who would like to talk to you, so I can hold you through for another hour, and or you can get some sleep and get to bed.
Your choice.
If you'll have me, I'd love to.
I'd love to stay on.
All right, then staying on you are.
Stay right where you are.
Tabloid Baby is the book.
Burt Kearns is the author.
Check it out.
It's on my website right now.
I'm Art Bell from the high desert.
It's Coast to Coast AM, reality radio.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
This is a song that I wrote in the early days of my career.
I wrote it in the early days of my career.
Long ago in days of old, there lived a knight who wasn't quite as bold.
As the night should be He rode an old gray mare called Beth Searching for a damsel in distress Just to see if he Could set her free See the night in Rusty on the ride to a raid
Trusty sword is hanging at his side with a rusty blade
Up the tower steps he sneaks but as he moves his rusty arm
You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
We're talking about reality TV and tabloid TV with Burt Kearns.
He's been there the whole time, from the very beginning.
He's written a book called Tabloid Baby, and it tells the whole story.
Believe me, it really tells the whole story.
The behind-the-scenes stuff and the The rough stuff that you might not expect would be told, he tells.
So if you'd like to investigate Bert Kearns further, see about the book, go to my website.
There's a link right there.
You can buy the book if you want as well.
as he sent to kiss his bride, he found that he was rusted up inside
in his battle dress this is too good not to finish
I can't get How they still got married and had twins.
They came in tins.
Every suit of armor ever made has a kink.
Chainmail plants with a missing link Sound of lightning and thunder
Sounds like the crack of lightning and thunder over the survivor people.
Some of the rainstorms they've been going through lately.
We're talking about reality television, and we're talking about tabloid television, and we're doing it with somebody who knows what he's talking about.
Burt Kearns.
Burt, welcome back.
Thanks.
Nice to be back.
All right.
A lot of people want to ask you a question.
I'm looking forward to boot camp.
I went through boot camp down in San Antonio in Texas, and it was horrible.
Absolutely horrible.
I was crying like a baby after about three days.
Saying, Mama, and I want to come home.
And that's true of just about everybody.
And from what I can see of the previews of Boot Camp, they're going to make it just like the real thing.
It's about as real as it gets.
And so I'm really looking forward to it, remembering my misery.
And believe it or not, my mother was one of the first marine drill instructors in the US Marine Corps.
I was born on Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where she was a DI.
That's great.
Yeah, that's the truth.
All right, we've got lots of people with questions, so here we go.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Burt Kearns.
Good morning.
Hi, Burt.
Hi, Art.
Hello there.
First of all, I'd like to say I'm a little bit of a radical.
I have no TV and don't plan to get one.
What's the matter with you?
And I'd like to say, Art, stay on the radio.
You're Mr. Radio.
You never belong on the TV.
Just stay on the radio.
Trust me, I know.
And I think it's interesting that Henry David Thoreau said, never read the newspaper because there was no TV in that day.
He said that it's just gossip, it makes you judgmental, and it takes your focus off the important good things of life.
But I'd like to ask Bert, if he thought the Truman Show was prophetic, and if he ever feels a twinge of guilt, you know, maybe just a little twinge of guilt for what's going on on TV now.
Bert?
Question one, yes, the Truman Show was a bit prophetic.
And again, when you look at people who have these internet cams where you can follow them around all day, unscripted, just following their lives, it's out there now.
That's what's happening now.
And yes, do I feel a twinge of guilt over what we have wrought in television today?
Yes.
And I would say the answer would have to be yes, because in some cases it's a twinge of pride when you see that today that more of america is being
uh... covered by the news
yeah but here's a fair question on your side of things a defense for you
and it's that uh... what which is first of course of the card in other words
are you guys producing something that
you can't people penalizes people
suckers people in puts a hook in a minute you know certainly the hooks in me
It's in my life.
We both love these things.
Aren't you really just giving people what they want, or are you creating the market itself?
I mean, you must wonder about that a lot.
I think that we found the market.
Back at the time that A Current Affair first You know, caught the public's fancy.
It was fulfilling a need that was out there.
There was this great country called America with lots of great stories that the networks referred to as flyover country.
That was a country they would fly over on their way from the beltway from Washington or from New York City on their way to LA.
The great unwashed, they would call it.
America.
Right.
And what tabloid television did was bring back stories from America.
You know, it's funny.
Back in the 80s, there was one network correspondent who was covering American stories.
He was a man named Charles Kuralt, and he portrayed himself as the lone man in the Winnebago.
He'd pull into town, and, today I met a man who made a Liberty Bell out of cheese, or, you know, today I met a man who can play Song of Joy, Ode to Joy, on milk bottles.
And he did stories about America that painted it as a very homogeneous, folksy place.
It was only after Charles Kuralt died that we found out the rest of the story, as they say.
The story of a man who had left his family behind, went out to work, and kept a mistress, and kept another family in another state.
And that was the story of Charles Kuralt.
We found that out after he died, that he had a second family in Montana.
And that was the type of story tabloid television was covering all over America at that same time.
The story of the minister having an affair with the choir mistress, or the judge with families in two separate towns.
And that was really a portrait of how America was changing, how morality was changing at that time.
And that's why people got hooked.
They were getting the real story.
And you think at some point, in other words, is it going to just keep going in a linear fashion, getting wilder and wilder, or is there going to be a turnaround point, and how far down the road is that?
Well, I think there are always times of backlash.
We've had that backlash before.
We had that backlash against tabloid TV, when people started running away from the term tabloid while at the same time embracing it.
As the networks embraced it, they would say, you know, we're not tabloid.
The same thing is going to happen with reality shows.
Here, you're going to reach the glut.
They're going to run out of compelling ideas.
I mean, we have a few shows that are great television shows.
There's a lot of imitators out there.
A lot of them are titillating.
A lot of them are darn good examples of television.
But there's going to come the point where somebody's going to get hurt, or even worse in television terms, they're going to stop rating.
That's right.
If the ratings go down, that's probably... If the ratings go up when somebody gets hurt, we're in trouble, aren't we?
Yeah.
Although the ratings probably really went up for Survivor tonight.
So, then we've had these troubles.
Yeah, well... Alright, Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Bert Currens.
Good morning.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi, I'm Delores from Camp AR.
That's way up in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Yes, it is.
And I'm also the spokesperson for the American Refugee.
Right currently we're dealing with H.A.R.P., but I do have something to say.
About this subject, as a person who doesn't get on the internet and lives a pretty secluded life, and I have a little bit different perspective, I think, than what y'all have been talking about.
What is yours?
Well, the thing about it is, I can see where this could end up being more abusive than what you've been talking about.
I mean, the American public has like a craving to see people injured or hurt or murdered.
Absolutely.
And I see a society that's coming apart where it's alright to kill, hurt, maim.
And it's like our people have become like bloodthirsty.
They want to see blood.
They want to see people die.
And they want it in a virtual reality setting so they can feel like they're a part of it.
No, I think you're raising a really, really good point.
Bert, I can't remember, oh yeah, Sheriff Burnell, right?
Okay.
You know Sheriff Burnell, don't you?
Or of him?
Of Sheriff Burnell?
Yeah, he's the sheriff who's in all of these cop chase things.
Oh, right, yes.
I guess he must be retired, because I can't imagine he has any time left to actually be a sheriff anymore.
You call him sheriff, that's right.
Okay, I know who you mean.
And he's just everywhere now.
And these shows are full of, for an hour, you get car chases, police chases, and you see some of the most horrendous crashes, where people are maimed, sometimes killed, and it's all done Ostensibly, you know, we're getting bad guys.
But what's the real thing that they're selling?
They're selling the car running off the road, going into a ditch, disintegrating, hitting a train, some giant explosion, people getting hurt.
The lady's right.
Most definitely.
And one thing these shows do is they desensitize you to the reality.
These car crash shows, these chase shows, They add sound effects.
If you listen, every time there's a crash, it's the same clattering, it's the same sound.
Every time a car hits, it's the same drum.
They add music.
They add sound effects.
They take chases that took place 20 years ago and put it next to a chase that happened yesterday.
but we also have to think when reality does strike
i can't think of and i i would also i thought of the very interesting
comment on america of how everyone
seem to be very touched and the and very disturbed
by the accident that took the life of dale earnhardt although the accident itself
was not one that would satisfy our
but you know it are animal instincts to really see from the that look so horrible
but it didn't look that bad but when people found out that this man was
killed in that crash i think people really were were touched by the reality of
it and second
so i don't think i don't really by the
idea that we've lost our humanity I think that, yes, in our society of the internet and video games and sensation, we're always looking for the next thrill.
And I think that these car crash shows really feed that appetite.
But at the same time, to me, they're not real.
Because they turn it into this sort of entertainment.
When you see the real thing, It's very different.
It's very different, that's right.
It is.
But packaging it the way they do on television has just been very successful, and it's true of most of the Cops shows, certainly the new breed of them.
I mean, if you really think about why we're watching, that's what we're looking at.
Alright, East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Burt Kearns.
Hi.
Hey guys, what's going on?
You at the moment?
Hey, I actually got one question and a couple of comments.
Sure, where are you by the way?
I'm in Timber, Nebraska.
Okay.
First of all, regarding the Dale Earnhardt crash and the things it takes to get America charged up, things like that, I think partly what might have something to do with the fact that people like to see things like that is the fact that people are sitting in front of their TV watching things like that.
No, we're very well aware of that.
This was going to be on a scale way, way beyond that.
They like to see things because they aren't doing anything.
You know, there is nothing going on so they are sitting in front of their TV and computer
and they are not doing anything.
Second, actually Art, there is a TV show that is kind of what you alluded to before about
MTV's Fear.
There you go, that's it.
No, we are very well aware of that.
This was going to be on a scale way, way beyond that.
This was going to be a long running series, done much the way Big Brother is done and
we proposed that a long time ago.
Oh, I see.
And then, like you said, you insert some things that really aren't necessarily happening.
Absolutely.
But you do it with your actions.
Absolutely.
And actually, you kind of beat me to the punch there.
My question was for Bert.
Do you think that MTV's real world started this, you know, kind of brought into the mainstream
this whole reality TV thing?
It definitely started there.
The craze for this fake reality.
I mean, what is more unreal than putting, you know, eight kids together in a million dollar loft, you know, with cameras all around, you know, with cameras 24 hours a day, with producers chasing them around and following them and prodding them into confrontations.
And we called it reality.
Again, they sculpted it into very good, dramatic television, and they got better and they got more Sophisticated as each season went on.
But, again, it's called reality television, but I think it's pretty far from most of the reality we know.
I agree.
Wes for the Rockies, you're on the air with Burke Hearns.
Hi.
I'm here to start, Bill.
It is.
Yeah, I'm in Longmont, Colorado.
My name's Scott.
Yeah, Scott.
I was just wondering if your guests had ever heard of a show called Cheaters.
I was watching a daytime talk show today, and they had the host of it on there.
They do, they take cameras and they follow a couple that suspect their spouse of cheating on them around.
Oh no!
Oh yeah.
I swear, I saw it.
Oh no!
Oh yeah.
Yeah, and they actually confront them right there on camera.
Oh my god.
So I just wondered if you'd heard anything, but I couldn't find out what network it was on or anything.
I believe it was a syndicated show, and private investigators are able to sell that video they have for shows like that.
Yeah, I just thought that was pretty crazy.
Isn't that liable to end up with, you know, as one TV show that we all know about, ended up with somebody murdering somebody else?
I mean, it seems to me that that's what we're flirting with, with the kind of concept he just talked about.
Well, when you take people's lives and turn it into entertainment, and people's emotions, and you hype them up like that, Yes, you're flirting with disaster.
I write about that in Tabloid Baby, a couple of incidents that have taken place over the last decade that have not gotten a lot of publicity.
People who committed suicide or were killed because of tabloid television, because of television shows.
There's a gentleman in Ohio who Well, it was videotaped on a lover's lane with a woman who was not his wife.
And it was at a time when one of the tabloid shows was trying, was urging its viewers to get out with their video cameras and be proactive against crime.
Well, they had this, they had a videotape of this gentleman, you know, with a woman who was not his wife, and they made it national news.
And he begged them, and his wife begged them not to.
And instead, they chased him down the street, they covered the court hearing, they followed him around, and he responded by putting a bullet through his chest.
And there really was no excuse for that, because it broke all tenets, not only of tabloid television, but of just basic human decency, of turning someone into a victim.
And that was a lesson that was learned, but also kept very quiet.
Yeah, I kept very quiet, I'm sure.
And that's one of the reasons why my book has been kept a bit quiet, and ultimately blacklisted by a lot of the powers that be in the media, because I do talk about that.
What's this going to do to your career?
Well, I'll tell you.
It didn't help my career when the book came out.
I was sort of laying low for about six months.
My career was at a standstill, because a lot of people were offended by what I wrote.
Because I do name names and I have documentation and point out what happened over the past 10 years of news and how we got to the state we are in today.
How a show like A Current Affair would lead to a show like Dateline, which would lead to a journalist like Brian Gumbel, who was so much against tabloid television, becoming basically the announcer for Survivor every morning.
That's a very good point.
People don't like to hear that.
People don't like to see where the bodies are buried or to reveal how the sausages are made.
The sausages won't taste very well if you see how they're made and that's what I do in tabloid baby.
My career now is going just fine.
I produce documentaries now.
Documentaries?
And there are a lot of good people out there who have Who have given me work and hired me because of my book, because they liked what I wrote.
And I have to thank them for it, as I thank you for putting me on the air, and many people know about the book.
Wasn't tabloid TV and reality TV always walking that fine line between the best story you can tell and a possible disaster?
I mean, it's always kind of near that line, isn't it?
It always was, because we were always going for those stories that were right on the edge.
the stories that had all those classic elements, stories that really came from the heart but
aimed for the gut.
Of course, you're going to walk that edge because that's where the drama is.
Were you ever in a situation where you had a story and the person was begging you for
the sake of their lives and privacy not to tell it?
Yes.
one case it was a gentleman who committed suicide when someone else ran
the story Alright, we'll find out about that in a moment.
Stay right there.
This seems appropriate to me.
See what you think.
Only in America.
Actually, that's not true.
It's in Europe too.
It's all around the world right now.
It's the craze.
Reality TV.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
Only in America, land of opportunity, yeah.
Would a classy girl like you fall for a poor boy like me?
Only in America.
They say that you're a runaround lover, though you say it isn't so.
They say that you're a runaround lover, so you say it isn't so
But if you put me down for another, I'll know, believe me, I'll know.
But if you put me down for another, I'll know, believe me, I'll know
Cause the night has a thousand eyes, and a thousand eyes can't help but see if you are true to me
So remember when you tell those little white lies that the night has a thousand eyes
You say that you're at home when you phone me, and how much you really care
So you keep telling me that you're lonely, I'll know if someone is there
Cause the night has a thousand eyes, and a thousand eyes can't help but see
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight, featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 1st, 2001.
It certainly is.
We've got a whale of a set of photographs up on the webpage for you right now.
A trucker in Salt Lake City took them, and it sure looks like a portal in the sky to me.
You tell me what you think.
Anyway, Burt Kearns is here, and we're talking about tabloid television.
His book, Tabloid Baby.
I love that name, Tabloid Baby.
You can link to it on the website right now, and you can take a look at those photos and do whatever else you want.
It's all at www.artbell.com.
Once again, here's Bert Currens.
Burt, welcome back.
Good to be back.
Where were we?
I was thinking about all these, you know, the night has a thousand eyes, America's got a thousand, a million video cameras out there, and that's contributing to all of this, huh?
Oh, most definitely.
The influx of home video cameras, the rise of the home video camera revolution is what really drove reality television from the beginning.
Reality television was a very hungry machine, putting out a television show a day, and all the greatest stories that were done on tabloid TV and reality television through the years were based on home videotapes.
and home videotapes were so different are so different than
tapes that are shop professionally
because you're really getting into someone's life but you know when you see
you know of videotape that was shot by a person a family tape your you're
getting a look inside their family
and from the beginning actually the for the very first uh...
story that really launched tabloid television with a story called the uh...
the the preppy murder new york city all yes the young man who had uh...
strangled a woman in central park and lawyer come up with the
very novel defense of rock Well, in the middle of the trial, he pled guilty, and while he was awaiting sentencing, a videotape came to light.
Somebody came up with this tape and sold it to a current affair for $10,000.
It was a tape of the suspect who had just pleaded guilty to murder.
Uh, at a slumber party with a bunch of girls who were friends of the victim, and he was twisting the head off a doll in a grotesque parody of the crime in which he had just pleaded guilty to.
A Current Affair ran it, to great controversy, and also the highest ratings in the history of the show.
That was the first case, really, of both buying a story and featuring home video.
From there, it was just non-stop, from the Rob Lowe sex video, to the video that drove the Amy Fisher case, to the video that flew around during the O.J.
Simpson trial.
Tonya Harding?
Tonya Harding.
Now there were some videos.
And that started something new, this bizarre era of notoriety and celebrity that we're in now, where criminals cash in on their notoriety with videotapes.
With sex tapes, you look at Tanya Harding's husband, you know, sold their honeymoon video.
Their honeymoon video.
I mean, that's quite a guy.
It's enough that he sold himself to a current affair, sold his story there.
But to do that, if you remember Divine Brown, the hooker in the Hugh Grant story, the actor who was arrested in Hollywood, she cashed in by appearing in porn movies.
Everyone's a celebrity.
It doesn't matter why you're famous.
I'm kind of curious now, with people virtually willing to do anything to get on TV, or to make a little money, or to do both, from the point of view of a tabloid TV reporter, what does that do to your own estimation of humanity?
I mean, here you are encountering those people willing to sell themselves Virtually anything of themselves for fame and or money.
Do you begin to get cynical after a while?
I suppose you do, huh?
You begin to get tired.
I know to speak personally about it, you begin to get tired of it.
You begin to feel a bit dirty because ultimately it begins to rub off.
And what happened is it rubbed off on the shows and the shows themselves.
You know, we're victims of their own success.
They were so successful in featuring this sort of video that it just totally got out of control.
All right, back to the calls.
We've got a lot of calls for you.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Bert Kearns.
Hi.
Hello, Bert.
Hi.
Hi.
That's a small world out there.
You remember so-called hard copy, right?
Sure do.
Well, they called me their secret weapon.
Basically working the same stuff you do, basically, and I work behind those investigations also.
I was just sort of wondering that, hey, you could see how things are sort of swinging now.
It's sort of funny, if you remember the movie, Death Race 2000, and they were killing people on national TV, sort of like guns.
It was like, you know, a bunch of race cars, and they're killing people for points across the United States.
Sort of funny.
And that's the way we're getting, basically, you know?
Getting sort of hardcore out there.
Most definitely.
There's a new film that's coming out in about two weeks called 15 Minutes.
It's a Robert De Niro movie and it is about two killers who come over from Russia and document all of their killings with a home video camera and then sell it to a TV show.
Unbelievable.
Gee, I've been doing this for a while too and there's a lot of times where you see celebrities doing things that would actually destroy their careers and you have to back out then.
I'm sure you probably run those same circumstances, right?
Oh, sure.
Really?
Really?
You mean there are things that you don't show?
That's what I was asking at the bottom of the hour.
That brings us back to that.
There was a moment when there was somebody who begged you not to show something.
You had the story, you had the goods, but it would have destroyed them and they begged you and you did what?
Well, I know for a fact, in the case of the person from Ohio, Who had committed suicide after one of the shows ran the tape.
Our show was offered that and we didn't want to air it.
Because it was an example of making a victim out of the little guy.
And you don't do that.
It's different if you're a celebrity who breaks the law or embarrasses himself in a way that leads to criminal charges as Rob Lowe did.
With the video he made with the underage girl at the Democratic Convention.
It's very different.
You do take these on a case-by-case basis.
Sometimes, when you are in the heat of battle in a ratings period, you go too far.
And that's well documented.
Yes, indeed.
We can all tell when the ratings periods are here, that's for sure.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Burkhart.
Hi.
Hello, Art.
Hello, Bert.
How are you guys doing tonight?
Just fine.
Where are you?
This is Mike in Abilene, Texas.
Okay, Mike.
I've just got a quick comment and a quick question for Bert.
You know, this whole idea about people being, you know, folks being obsessed with death and gore and what have you, that's really not a new thing altogether.
I remember back in the early 80s, maybe, or mid-80s or so, you know, the Faces of Death videos came out and they were banned for a while.
Then whenever they found their way to the video shelves, you know, in the video rental stores, They were the highest rented videos out there.
I mean, they just couldn't get enough copies of them, you know, and those were pretty doggone graphic.
That's right.
There's still a good market for them.
But you know, it was kind of underground.
It's getting to be mainstream now.
I know.
There's almost a cult following, and it's amazing how many people are still watching them.
But my question for Bert is, basically, you know, trying to figure out why reality TV is so successful, I can't help but think that You know, Hollywood has done everything you can imagine.
Every kind of angle they've told, every story, every kind of way.
And, you know, truth is actually stranger than fiction.
And anybody that listens to the art show, they're like, the time knows that.
I mean, you know, if you think about it, we can only be fooled so many times.
We can only see so many special effects, so many things.
We know it's not real.
And I think that that's partially what's due to success.
I just wondered how you feel about that, Bert.
Well, definitely.
And some of these stories that are real, the stories that we choose to tell are the stories that contain all those classic elements of passion and revenge and lust and love.
And it's funny, a lot of the stories that first appeared on tabloid television went on to become films.
There was a movie called American Beauty, which won the Best Picture Award a few years ago.
That was actually inspired By the Joey Buttafuoco-Amy Fisher story.
Was it really?
Believe it or not, these stories do contain the elements.
I mean, a tabloid story is a very classic story.
I didn't know that.
I mean, think about the ultimate tabloid story.
Take a young man who is reeling from the death of his father.
He sees a ghost and he finds out that his mother is having an affair with his uncle.
Right?
That's Hamlet.
Sure.
And that's tabloid.
I just heard earlier tonight, Bert, that Shakespeare... Did you ever see a story on CNN?
That Shakespeare was a pot smoker?
Yeah.
Maybe even cocaine.
They found... In other words, he did some writings that were interpreted one way, but now they're beginning to interpret them another way because they found pipes with apparent traces of marijuana!
And maybe even cocaine!
Boy, is that going to shatter some beliefs out there about Shakespeare and about the way things were versus the way things are.
Exactly.
And Shakespeare was a real populist, blood-and-guts playwright.
As you remember, a lot of his shows, they'd have beheading scenes and execution scenes for the folks down in the pit there, and they would replay that scene over and over again for him.
He was a playwright of the people.
So Current Affair or some other program like it could have a Sort of a Shakespeare's a pothead segment.
Oh, definitely.
That would be, as a matter of fact, that story is posted tomorrow morning on tabloidbaby.com.
Really?
That's how I knew about it.
I picked it up out of a paper out of the Times of London today.
Amazing.
And the headline is, Shakespeare was a pothead.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bert Kearns.
Hi.
Hello.
My comments don't necessarily have to do specifically with reality television, but I wanted to bring up a book that I was given back in a sociology class in college.
It's called Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.
It's a pretty interesting book.
Kind of a scientific approach to the whole thing.
It states in pretty plain English that there are actual medical problems that can come up with TV addiction, and I don't think... Excuse me, hold on one second.
Hold it.
Alright, sorry about that.
That's alright.
Medical problems.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, I was talking to my girlfriend about this, and I kind of liken television addiction to trying to quit smoking cigarettes.
I've had more success trying to quit smoking than I've had trying to quit watching TV.
Far fewer people, I think, attempt to quit watching television than actually try to quit cigarettes, and they both seem to be about as addictive.
Yeah, where are the Surgeon General warnings, huh?
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So I would encourage everybody to take a look at that book.
I'm not sure if it's still in print, but again, it's called Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.
It's pretty interesting, and it's from a guy named Jerry Manders.
Thanks for letting me talk to you guys.
You're very welcome.
Bert, you do a lot of television.
Do you watch TV?
I do watch television.
I have a four-year-old, so I watch Rugrats, I watch the Cartoon Network, I watch Barney once in a while, and I finally get control of the TV right around 10 o'clock.
And that's when I get to watch Law and Order.
Oh, Law and Order.
But I'll tell you, when I want to see my tabloid stories now, I'll turn on the Today Show.
Because they cover those stories now.
They cover them differently.
They do them with live shots.
I have comments about the Today Show that I'll refrain from making.
Actually, they've been very good to me, but I did have one close encounter of the... Well, anyway, let's take another call.
First time caller on the line.
You're on the air with Burt Kearns.
Hi.
How are you gentlemen doing?
Just fine, sir.
Where are you?
I'm Andrew.
I'm calling from Burlington, Ontario.
What I was wondering is, have either of you gentlemen read either The Running Man or The Long Walk by Stephen King?
The Running Man especially.
The book really reminds me of what you guys were talking about, Bounty Hunter, that show that may be coming out.
Did Running Man become the Schwarzenegger movie?
Yeah, it did.
The book and the movie, aside from the basic premise of you die if you lose the game, were completely different.
But the book was just excellent, and it was really scary because you could really see it happening.
Well, I'll say this about the bounty hunter thing.
When you described that, I had not ever heard of this before, but I thought, man, what a good show that's going to be.
Yeah.
You know, I'm looking forward to that, Bounty Hunter.
There are a couple of reality shows out there now that are in development where they're pitting ordinary people up against the professionals.
Oh, really?
Surveillance experts.
The Bounty Hunter Show is the one that's the big one now.
Here I am looking forward to it.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Bert Kearns.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Yes.
Bert, hi.
Hi.
This is Ryan.
I'm in Boise.
I'd like to say hello to Mandy in Anchorage.
We're not supposed to do that, but you did it.
I've got three things.
First of all, Art, have you ever heard of Radiohead?
No.
They're a musical group out of London.
They were nominated for Best Album of the Year.
They have songs about aliens, about the future.
Their last album was called OK Computer.
Their next album is called Kid A. Send me a sample.
I'd love to.
And my question is, you guys seen the movie Fight Club?
Oh yes.
Have you ever played the video game James Bond on Nintendo?
No.
It's a role-playing game where you're a first-person run-around killing people as though you were James Bond.
And my question is, is how do these things get green-lighted in the media?
Are they trying to train people for life after the Armageddon or whatever?
Is there some kind of underground... because I don't understand how they would let a movie come out that tells you how to make a bomb or how they would let a video game come out that shows you how to sneak through a building and kill everyone in it if there wasn't somebody behind it that understood the usefulness of this In other words, you think there's some plan other than to sell video games or to get people to go to a movie and pay the price or whatever?
Some overriding social plan, right?
It's either a negative or a positive thing.
Fight Club could either be a good thing afterwards or a bad thing afterwards.
I'm interested in your take on that and the media's Influence on encouraging people to do outlandish things.
Well, the media often takes its lumps and takes its hits when it does do that and when it gets caught doing that, whether inadvertently or not.
The media is a tremendous influence.
And you take a movie like Fight Club, which was a parody, a satire of our culture and where we've gone.
And yes, along the way in that movie, They show how to simply make a bomb.
And in the name of entertainment, Fight Club was criticized highly, and Fox took a lot of lumps of that.
Rupert Murdoch personally took a lot of lumps for the many messages that were in the movie Fight Club.
Your book, Tabloid Baby, is what, 490 pages, something like that?
490 pages.
That's a big book.
You had a lot to talk about, didn't you?
I had a lot to say.
It's a lot of bite-sized stories that you can pick up and pick up the book at any point and it will just drop you into another year in the last decade.
And I did have a lot to say about my life and where it took me and how I wound up in tabloid television and what it did to me and what it did to America.
Because my story is just a microcosm of a much larger one of how tabloid television influenced Our country.
It's a great book, Bert, and people can get it, of course, by going to my website and then going to Amazon.com, but I assume it's available in bookstores across the country?
It's available in bookstores, and it's available through the website tabloidbaby.com, where you can get a great discount on it.
And I'm told it's a good read.
Oh, it's a great read.
I've done exactly as you suggested, just at several places.
You know, there's no way I could read the whole thing before we got on the air here.
So I've, you know, been into it.
And no matter where you turn, it's interesting.
All right, listen, Bert.
It's been a real pleasure having you on.
I really wanted to do a show on reality TV, and you did it for me.
Thank you so much for having me on.
Good night, Bert.
Good night now.
Good night, everyone.
That's it for tonight.
This is Johnny Fever signing out.
Tomorrow night, as I told you, Sean David Morton will be here, the guy with one of the greatest hit rates, prediction-wise, of anybody on the planet.
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