Incredible? Or Abominable?

By Martha Smilgis

For now, at least, those "reality shows "are also really hot

Las Vegas, Sept. 15. The sign outside one of the more celebrated spas on the strip proudly trumpets TODAY! GARY WELLS JUMPS CAESARS PALACE FOUNTAINS. So he does, and the result fully lives up to the name of the stunt's sponsor, ABC's thrill-pandering series That's Incredible! While gawkers gawked and cameras whirred, Wells, a professional stunt man, gunned a motorcycle up a ramp, sailed over the water fountains outside the showplace, but crashed on his descent. Result: a ruptured aorta and fractures of the pelvis, thigh and lower leg.

For That's Incredible!, which is considering if and when it should air its footage of Wells' jump, the stunt was just one of many heart stoppers that have helped the show pull almost a third of the viewing audience in its Monday night prime-time slot. It was also the third injury to have occurred in filming for the show. Another stunt man, attempting to jump in the air while two cars sped under him, nearly ripped off his foot when it caught in a windshield; he had to have reconstructive surgery and is still in serious condition. Still another daredevil suffered severe burns and lost his hands in the course of running through a 50-yd. tunnel of fire. For this, he was paid $8,000, from which he cleared only $2,000 after expenses.

That's Incredible! is only the most sensation-mongering of half a dozen shows in a new TV genre known as reality programming. These shows offer viewers, by means of minicams, glimpses of real events and people. The cameras of That's Incredible! have dwelt on a man tied by his heels and hanging over a pool of sharks, a woman covered with bees, a miracle-working priest, a one-legged football star and a professor who pours acid over his hands. An NBC version of That's Incredible!, called Games People Play, has sent crews around the country to film folks engaged in such competitions as women's arm wrestling and belly bucking, in which a pair of beefy brawlers try to butt each other out of a ring. Like That's Incredible!, Games invariably winds up with a harrowing stunt designed to stir even the most hardened disaster freaks.

On one Games show, a stunt driver named Spunky piloted a car off a 45-ft.-high ramp into a lake. The camera focused on the clenched face of his wife as rescue divers made their way to the sunken auto. Would Spunky survive his dive? (Answer: yes.) In another segment, Motorcyclist Rex Black well roared off a ramp and over two parked helicopters as their blades whirled at 350 r.p.m. "He barely cleared the last blade!" exulted the commentator as a slow-motion replay showed just how close Blackwell had come to being converted to steak tartare.

Another variation on the reality theme is ABC's Those Amazing Animals, a sort of Games People Play for wildlife. Host Burgess Meredith runs footage of such wonders as two-headed snakes, spiders that square-dance and cannibalism among rats in overcrowded cages. While some of the reality shows are going strong, others are suffering from TV's penchant for overexploiting a popular idea. After four weeks, CBS last month dropped No Holds Barred, billed as a comedy series highlighting the "crackpot side of modern life" through the "oddball characters that make America unique." That's My Line, a remake of the game-show classic What's My Line?, also fizzled.

Broadcasters trace the development of such shows back to the appearance of NBC's persistently popular Real People, an hour of sometimes amusing interviews in the heartland. A recent show followed A. J. Weberman, a "celebrity garbageologist" who among other feats has retrieved memos from Richard Nixon's trash can and empty Valium bottles from Gloria Vanderbilt's. ("The best thing I ever found," he says, "was Jackie Kennedy's pantyhose.") While Real People, which gets more than a third of the audience in its Wednesday prime-time slot, spawned a series of other "entertainment news" shows like NBC's Speak Up America, it also turned TV executives on to the fact that low-budget programs produced without costly sets and high-priced talent could be hugely successful. While the tab for producing a half-hour sitcom might come to $300,000. the bill for an hour of reality programming may be $250,000 or less. Another spur to such shows has been the 2 1/2-month actors' strike, which made the filming of dramas and sitcoms for the new season impossible at any price.

Reality-show producers admit that their aim is to be sensational. "The goal is a spectacular piece of film," says That's Incredible! Creator Alan Landsburg, 47, a veteran TV producer whose credits include the series In Search of . . . and the Jacques Cousteau specials. Landsburg will schedule any story "as long as we decide that the audience reaction will be 'Wow! That's incredible!' We opt for subject matter that is startling."

Or downright appalling, many critics would say. The thrill shows appeal and cater to the viewers' infantile instincts. Film Professor Richard Sklar of New York University compares these programs to a circus sideshow. "The grotesque aspects of popular culture--burlesque, vaudeville variety and pulp magazines--are finding expression on TV today. Television does not go out on a limb; it trails what is happening in society." Some of the toughest condemnations of the shows come from broadcasters. Morley Safer of 60 Minutes blasts such programming as "the worst brew of bad taste yet concocted by the network witches."

Fortunately, the staying power of the programs is doubtful, as the recent casualties show. Still, gore springs eternal at the networks. This month, ABC plans' to air the second installment of Catastrophe! No Safe Place, a three-part disaster roundup in which Charles Bronson narrates horrors like the Hindenburg explosion; and The World's Most Spectacular Stunt Man, a special featuring four feats by a Hollywood pro. It could be, cracks PBS Producer Tony Geiss, that public TV may be forced to counter with its own entry in the reality competition: That's Intelligent. --By Martha Smilgis. Reported by Joe Pilcher/Los Angeles and Mary Cronin/New York

With reporting by Joe Pilcher/Los Angeles, Mary Cronin/New York

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