Great history of reality television. Nussbaum did a great job telling the stories of creators, stars, and crew, all of which bring a full circle perspective on this subject.

I'll be honest, I was expecting the scope of this title to be much larger. I thought the coverage of Survivor and Big Brother was fascinating, I grew up watching those shows with my family and had so much fun noticing more and more production manipulation as I got older. I found the cut off of 2010s to be a let-down - the era of streaming services creating their own reality shows is such a cultural shift it already makes this title feel somewhat outdated (I don't even remember a mention of the Real Housewives franchise, but I could be wrong?). As a reality tv connoisseur, I loved it! If I had just gotten into the genre via Love is Blind in 2020, I think I would be disappointed by this.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this advanced reader's edition. Unfortunately, I will not be able to give it the time required to write a thorough review and will be unable to read it for this purpose.

I always enjoy Emily’s work and as someone who has watched Survivor from the beginning and grew up on reality TV, this was right up my alley.

This was a super interesting history of reality tv from a writer I really admire, Emily Nussbaum! I’m not a fan of reality tv and I don’t watch much, but I still found this fascinating.

A history of reality TV from its start through around 2010. I really enjoyed the chapters about Survivor, Big Brother, and around that time. The period before that with the start was ok. I honestly feel like that could have been condensed into one shorter chapter. I also was surprised that there was not more modern ones - like just a mention of Real Housewives and Keeping up with the Kardashians. In my mind, especially Real Housewives with its many franchises, should have had its own chapter instead of just a brief mention in the "Bravo" chapter. Each new TV show chapter also spent a lot of time in the backstory of the creator(s), which did not really add anything for me. I am not as much a biography person, so perhaps that is just a personal preference.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Interesting deep dive into reality tv. The survivor, big brother and apprentice chapters were my favorites.

This non-fiction book is a deep dive into the history of reality tv by long time television journalist Emily Nussbaum, starting in the early days of television with candid camera, through the 2000s.

I have been a pretty avid fan of reality tv all the way back to the very first season of The Real World more than 30 years ago, but I still found this book to be a bit of a mixed bag. Some parts were super-interesting, especially those about shows I watched like The Real World, Survivor, and Big Brother, while other parts were way too detailed and boring for me. But nonetheless I can tell an incredible amount of research (original interviews, reading, and watching many hours of tv) went into this book! But would recommend only to super-duper fans of reality tv.

This was an excellent non-fiction read about the history of relaity telecision. Well-researched but engaging, I learned a lot but it was a brisk and dishy read.

4 very real stars
Emily Nussbaum writes a well-organized, extensively researched (more than 300 interviews) history of reality TV. She starts from the origins of reality radio.) Some of the shows covered are The Gong, An American Family, America’s Funniest Home Videos, Survivor, Big Brother, The Bachelor and the Apprentice. Detailed sources for each chapter are listed in the extensive bibliography.

The author uses strong imagery when writing. “As reality shows bubbled up like lava, the genre’s undercurrent of exploitation intensified…” “The Bachelor was a more immersive experience, like being trapped inside an erotic terrarium, lulled by floating rose petals. In a world of tacky, The Bachelor was a fancy show.” I hadn’t realized that the producers of The Bachelor encouraged excessive drinking with little food for the contestants. Nussbaum notes that because there were no porta-potties, a few contestants hiked up their ballgowns and peed on the side of the road.

Reality show editors made “Frankenbites,” using bits of dialog to fabricate entirely new sentences. Because ‘industry standards’ prohibited anyone from writing dialogue, crew members used “manipulation, getting people to say and do things without letting them know you were doing it.” No wonder I am not a big fan of reality TV. I don’t appreciate mean and humiliating.

I learned a lot about the tacky and raunchy genre. “”Casting a reality show had become a science, down to the thick contracts contestants signed, granting editors total control. There were dedicated hotels near the airport where new casts stayed, so they could go through the gauntlet of interviews and psych tests. …Swishy gay men got cast for comedy, or sometimes to ignite a clash with a homophobe. Producers would pick one or two Black players, but not more.”

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I learned a lot from this book. I think some of its attempts at sociology came across heavy-handed, but I still appreciated the context and trajectory and depth of research. Most of my "where are they know" questions were answered. I don't know if it was just because this was an ARC, but there were a lot of editing errors.

This is such a perfectly researched history of the reality television genre. My only gripe is that it isn’t longer. I hope Nussbaum will give us a part 2 in the years to come! If she does, I will be ready for it!

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC.

"Cue the Sun!" is a fascinating deep dive into the rise of reality television, exploring its origins and how it transformed media. Nussbaum’s research is impressively thorough, offering intriguing behind-the-scenes details on iconic shows like Survivor, The Real World, and The Apprentice. I found myself hooked, learning new things about familiar programs and even discovering how some lesser-known shows helped shape the genre. While the first half is packed with groundbreaking insights, the second half does get bogged down by repetitive details, but overall, it’s an eye-opening chronicle of how reality TV became the cultural force it is today. A must-read for any media enthusiast!

Cue the Sun! is an exhaustive and mostly fun ride through the history of reality TV. My favorite parts of the book were the beginning, especially the sections about reality on the radio and the transition to early TV. I did learn some new tidbits about contemporary reality TV (like why Big Brother is such a hit in Europe and an afterthought in the US), and I liked the few deep dives that Nussbaum did on Survivor and similarly huge shows. But the "exhaustive" adjective really does apply here: Nussbaum goes so into detail on all of the people involved in each show that it's easy to get overwhelmed as she jumps from topic to topic. For that reason, the latter half of the book suffers, and it doesn't feel like the book really has a thesis by the time you get to the end. Does it have to have a thesis? No, but ending with The Apprentice would suggest that you need one.

Despite all of this, the subject matter is so fascinating that this is a fun read. I'd recommend it for your next vacation, maybe to put you to sleep on the plane and then to give you conversation topics at the pool.

As someone who adores any form of reality television, I was so excited for Emily Nussbaum's Cue the Sun! to help tell me the history of the genre. While I really enjoy how in-depth Nussbaum's research takes the reader into how and why the genre was created, the first few chapters are a slog to get through. I didn't care as much about the history of reality television game shows or hidden camera shows or the stories of the lives of the founders of those shows.

It starts to become better closer to the new age of reality television starting with The Real World and going into Survivor and other reality competition shows, but the first quarter of the book is hard to get into.

Emily Nussbaum knows how to write TV. I don't watch many reality tv shows but I was endlessly invest in this book.

TL;DR: Nussbaum continues to deliver as one of my favorite authors writing about television today. And fans of reality tv will LOVE this book. As someone who grew up on a diet of THE REAL WORLD and SURVIVOR, this was an excellent behind-the-scenes look at some of my favorite tv shows.

Nussbaum is a genius and I always love hearing her takes. This book is no different! I forgot about so many of the early reality shows and it was fascinating to think about them in relation to the current state of media and online culture. This is a must read!

I loved this one so much! I actually ended up listening to the audiobook version, as it was the perfect choice for a long road trip. I am a reality TV fan, and I was in my early-mid 20s when the real current boom began. I'm still a Bachelor/Survivor viewer, so it was extremely fascinating to see the true origins of both of those shows. And that these shows didn't just pop up out of nowhere, fully formed. It is informative, interesting, and it doesn't make me feel old or stupid as a reality TV viewer :)

Many thanks to Random House and NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A non-fiction book recounting the history and evolvement of reality TV? Sign me up!

Emily Nussbaum wove a very interesting and informative tale of all of the ins and outs of reality television. From the inception of reality programming on the radio to the powerhouse that reality TV became, Nussbaum takes a great approach to filling the reader in on all the details. I thought it was a great strategy to tell the story by time periods and/or decades so that the book naturally evolved and kept building up from decade to decade. I learned so much that I didn't know about from the "early days" of reality programming and how they contributed and shaped what would become modern reality TV. I also truly loved reading about all of the behind the scenes details that I never knew about of early reality shows like "The Real World" and "Survivor" that I watched during their very first seasons when I was a teenager. The nostalgia combined with the informative nature of the book combined for a compelling, educational and fascinating read about the rise of reality TV!