While the big news in reality TV casting for May is the start of casting for Amazing Race 14 and Survivor 18, another issue may be showing itself for the first time: are we seeing the first signs of contestant saturation? With nearly 400 network TV shows now soliciting viewer participation, is the herd of people willing to turn their lives upside down to meet the time commitment reality TV demands finally thinning?
Probably not, if you're casting twenty-somethings looking at reality TV as a career move. But a spate of deadline extensions in the past few days has to make one think that when it comes to casting for ordinary people in the Southern California area, pickings are getting thin.
Season 1 of the TLC documentary reality series The Secret Lives of Soccer Moms premiered in February and did well enough to get renewed for a second season. The series documents the lives of women who have given up their careers to be stay-at-home wives and mothers. Season 2 applications opened March 23/08 and were supposed to close a month later, but had to be extended over two weeks.
ABC and Magical Elves held an open call for the pilot of Wipeout, billed as "Fear Factor without the grossness," back in mid-December/07 and has had a casting notice up on the ABC casting page ever since. The pilot was shot in January and tested well enough to warranted a full season. Applications were supposed to close April 30th but that deadline also had to be extended.
And finally there is 13. This is a CW horror-themed reality series slated to air this fall. The heavyweight executive producers, Sam Rami (Spiderman) and Jay Bienstock (Survivor, Apprentice), wanted to cast this one like a film, with the usual stock of Scary Movie stereotypes. Casting closed in late April, but they evidently haven't been able to fill their quota of "white collar students/professionals" and have extended their application process for applicants able to drop everything for a 3-week shoot starting May 22nd.
Three deadline extension in a single week; all of them following casting periods of over a month, all of them specifically seeking applicants living in So Cal, and 2 of the 3 looking for upper middle-class professionals with no show biz aspirations. Is this the start of a trend? If it is, we may see more casting outside of the usual So Cal and even the NYC tri-state areas. And that is good news for the vast majority of people who would like to be involved in their favorite show.