Netflix to Spend Tons of Money Getting in on the Reality TV Game

Besides money, the piece notes, “the biggest allure is Netflix’s focus on straight-to-series orders, bypassing what has increasingly led to a challenging development process elsewhere.” In other words, the development process would be faster, with no green-lighting delays, which makes TV producers happy.

“The competition should be scared out of their minds,” David Lyle, described as a “reality TV vet,” tells THR. “These guys are monsters — they’re coming in to play and play hard.” (Lyle then retreated into his lair.) Still:

Of course, there are challenges, too. Rivals insist pilots are fruitful and making must-see reality is harder than it looks, pointing to cable networks like AMC that tried and failed to enter the space. And representatives worry about everything from the all-at-once rollout (will someone watch 10 episodes of a competition series if the finale is available right away?) to the uncertainty around backends, a frequent complaint on the scripted side as well.

Could a Netflix competition series roll out the first initial episodes and just save the finale for a later date? The new guy running the company’s unscripted initiative, Brandon Riegg, says Netflix is looking for a broad range of content. “It’s about the diversity. We’d love to get a couple shows in some key genres that are smaller cable-size swings, a few in the middle range and then a couple of really big swings,” he says, speaking in weird TV language.

Netflix clearly has a good chance of succeeding in this space. As a reality TV connoisseur, I’m curious how the competition could change things for Bravo and Vh1, who already have the reality market on lock.