• by Paul Gough , February 16, 2003

FX is taking a slower approach to the reality TV craze than other networks and cable channels.

President Peter Ligouri said the entire cable industry has to think about how to play the broadcast networks’ current fascination with reality.

“We’re going to have to find a way to counter it,” he told the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau’s annual conference last week in New York City. Ligouri said it remained to be seen whether reality had the genre staying power that was denied to previous initial broadcast successes like news magazines and game shows.

As for FX’s plunge into reality TV, the basic cable network has been deliberate in its attempts to air a reality show.

“It’d have to be done in an FX way. I don’t think we could outgross or outdate [the competition] but rather outdo,” Ligouri said.

One such example is American Candidate, which is scheduled to air on FX next January. It’s a kind of game show where average citizens compete – through debates and other rigors – to be left standing at the end of the 18 episodes and be declared the people’s candidate for president. It’s produced by R.J. Cutler, whose documentary The War Room chronicled Bill Clinton’s run for the White House in 1992.

Ligouri said it’s the “Survivor of the political system.”

Doug Herzog, president of another general-audience basic cable network, agrees that reality has changed TV. He likened the broadcast networks’ foray into unscripted programming like an adult contemporary station starting to play hip-hop.

“Reality created a giant shift in the landscape,” Herzog said.

He said cable was raising the bar for quality programming, “low cost but no longer low rent.”

Herzog said that USA was trying to avoid reality that’s not family- and advertiser-friendly. He said it’s planning more scripted programs.

“It’s becoming a great opportunity as the networks go on to reality,” Herzog said.

“It’s a little like heroin for them,” he quipped.

USA isn’t going to go down the road of being a fully niche channel, Herzog said.

“We don’t intend to be. We don’t want to be,” he said.

That doesn’t mean, however, that USA won’t continue some of the themed nights like crime night and comedy night.

“We can be ‘Niche at Night,’” Herzog said.