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How Remote Production Is Changing for Unscripted TV — and Where It’s Going

May 24, 2020

MAY 18, 2020 by Michael O’Connell for The Hollywood Reporter

FOX

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On May 16, a pretaped LeBron James emceed the multi-network event Graduate Together from a tricked-out (and sterile) studio. The hourlong special, a celebration of the 2020 graduates forced to go without in-person ceremonies during the COVID-19 pandemic, included a similarly glossy studio performance from Alicia Keys and a high-res keynote from former President Barack Obama.

Though a far cry from the TV events that viewers were accustomed to seeing before nearly all traditional production shut down in March, the event better resembled pre-COVID TV than the remote specials cobbled together in the early weeks of lockdown. Production value is on the rise, and unscripted producers are prepping for even bigger improvements in the months ahead.

“We were able to get LeBron in a sanitized studio, all by himself, with everyone else behind glass,” says Ian Stewart of Graduate Together producers Done+Dusted. “With the virtual studios that we’re starting to use, it does actually look like you are moving through the space,” adds Done+Dusted’s Katy Mullan, who also produced both iterations of The Disney Family Singalong on ABC. “These things are developing exponentially in a matter of weeks. You’re seeing a peppering of production values.”

Audience appetite for self-filmed content, as it initially rolled out, is starting to drop off. There is evidence of Zoom fatigue in both ratings and commissions. In a nationally representative Hollywood Reporter/Morning Consult poll conducted from May 7 to May 9, some 36 percent of respondents expressed interest in viewing a remote-filmed TV show, while 48 percent of those surveyed had little interest in such a project.

So the unscripted community is now focused on how to move the chains so that each new effort looks more elevated than the ones that came before it. That includes not just sanitized studios for solo tapings and nicer equipment for remote filming but, further down the line, sealed environments for filming multiple parties.

How Remote Production Is Changing for Unscripted TV — and Where It’s Going

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