How Netflix Became the New King of Reality TV
Mia Horton It’s oddly appropriate that one of the biggest Netflix reality-show moments of 2023 revolved around an unplanned twist. On April 16, the streamer’s much-hyped plan to air a live reunion special for its hit show Love Is Blind went spectacularly awry when technical demons prevented the vast majority of subscribers from actually watching the event. Between Netflix’s legendary engineering prowess and the fact that a live Chris Rock special had gone off without a hitch just a month earlier, it was a stunning turn of events the company had not anticipated. Yet the fiasco was also something of a triumph for the streamer’s unscripted division. Netflix execs would later reveal that the reason most viewers couldn’t watch the reunion live was because of a software bug that only surfaced when too many subscribers tried to stream Love Is Blind at once. It was a sign of just how massive the show’s global audience had become — bigger than that of a Chris Rock comedy special — and how much passion those viewers had for it. And it was further proof that, just five years after Queer Eye and Nailed It became its first big unscripted hits, Netflix is now one of the dominant players in reality TV.
While the “live reunion that wasn’t” resulted in a few hours of snarky tweets and headlines, for the rest of the year, the onscreen drama kept Love Is Blind a regular part of the pop culture conversation and a frequent presence on Nielsen’s streaming ratings charts. Viewers dissected every messy TikTok angle on Micah Lussier and Paul Peden’s aborted wedding and every detail involving the surprise preshow connection between Uche Okoroha and Lydia Velez Gonzalez. Meanwhile, the Netflix reality-TV assembly line churned on, with new seasons of the tentpoles in its ever-expanding dating show universe (Too Hot to Handle, The Ultimatum, and newcomer Perfect Match) and its growing library of real estate–related titles (Selling Sunset, Selling the OC). It continued to build on the success of its long-running Formula 1: Drive to Survive with more docuseries set in the world of sports, including Full Swing (golf), Break Point (tennis), and Quarterback (American football). And to cap things off last month, the streamer returned to live events with the golf-themed Netflix Cup and debutedSquid Game: The Challenge, its mildly controversial competition series modeled after its scripted smash. That show has already been renewed for a second season.
Overseeing the increasingly crowded galaxy of Netflix unscripted shows is Brandon Riegg, a 20-year veteran of the reality business who worked at ABC and NBC before making the move to Netflix in 2016 to help build the division. He oversees a unit that cranks out dozens of titles every year across just about every imaginable genre of reality TV, coordinating that massive output with the efforts of his colleagues at Netflix’s other unscripted production factories in countries such as South Korea, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. Vulture recently caught up with Riegg for a wide-ranging, hourlong conversation about the year in Netflix unscripted.
Let’s start by talking about the Netflix dating-show universe you’ve built. Love Is Blind is huge, and you’ve expanded on its success with two other shows from producer Chris Coelen, Perfect Match and The Ultimatum. Too Hot to Handle has also been a major hit. Would you say these shows are collectively to you what The Voice is to NBC or Survivor to CBS — the central engine of your division?
Dating shows have been a true powerhouse genre for us. Love Is Blind is the most impactful unscripted format we have, and not just the U.S. version — it’s all the versions you see globally. I would argue that, to your point, Too Hot to Handle, Love Is Blind, Ultimatum, Perfect Match — those are the biggest dating shows in the world right now, particularly Love Is Blind. We’re incredibly proud of that. I wish there was sort of more recognition or even acknowledgement of how strong those formats and franchises are. We made a choice to get into that category years ago and it’s paid off really well.
The partners we’ve worked with have been terrific. Chris Coelen has an amazing knack for that genre of unscripted and we’re fortunate that he’s partnered with us so many times. Every one of them has been a home run. Even going back to Dating Around, which was our first real foray into the dating category and a really well-received, beloved show. We only had two seasons; it wasn’t as broadly commercial as we needed it to be. But it’s a potent category and I think it just took finding the producers with the innovating vision to get viewers to respond and come in droves.
You had to rub my face in the demise of Dating Around. I’m still mad you canceled it so quickly!
I know, I know. Trust me, it still comes up. People actually reference it a lot. It’s something that was a great show and, who knows, maybe now with all the momentum we have in dating, it would’ve found its niche and done better. But it’s tough to do the could-it, would-it sort of game because there are so many shows you can ponder.
With Perfect Match, you really moved into the idea of cast members from different shows colliding. It underscored that you’re building a Netflix unscripted universe similar to what Bravo has with its many shows, or what ABC does with Bachelor Nation. Are we going to see more of that world building from you?
You’re going to see more. But a few things have to happen first. You have to have a stable of shows that are beloved and franchises where the viewers love the characters and casting and are excited to follow some of them into other programs. We need to be consistent in terms of continuing to build that stable of shows we can pull from in terms of the contestants. We call them “cast ecosystem” shows. It’s The Flintstones and The Jetsons meeting, which I think people love.
Perfect Match was really the first cast ecosystem show, and it was a huge hit. I expect season two to be even bigger than season one. Similarly, on the docs and sports side, we just did the Netflix Cup and that was some of the most popular drivers from Drive to Survive and some of those popular golfers from Full Swing competing in this new live-sports golf tournament. That was a huge plus for the fans of both shows and golf fans in general. There are other formats that aren’t dating formats that will be cast ecosystem shows because not every contestant is necessarily interested in going on a dating show.
Do you think the dating-show genre is getting to a saturation point — not just in terms of Netflix but more broadly speaking? How much more room to innovate is there in the way Chris Coelen did with Love Is Blind?
Look, I think there’s always room for innovation and I think any of these categories are constantly evolving anyway. Creative execs and producers have to constantly be thinking, “What’s the fresh take on the familiar?” That’s just a good mind-set to have. In terms of saturation in any given category, dating or otherwise — the market will tell you. There will be signs. But we’re still open to an amazing idea coming that’s set in a dating world. We’re also really fortunate to have four tremendous dating formats already on the service.
I know that’s kind of a non-answer, but I don’t think it’s as binary as, “Oh, is there just a number?” Because it’s really not that. Before we had Love Is Blind and Too Hot, people said, “Oh, there’s no room. The Bachelor universe basically covers everything.” But I was at NBC when they said that about music shows. They’re like, “American Idol’s the only game in town.” Then The Voice came in and we were like, “Oh my gosh, we need to do this.” Then many years later, Fox did The Masked Singer when people could have said, “Oh, The Voice and Idol are really the only two games in town.” The bar is always raised when you have a lot of shows out there in a particular genre. But that doesn’t mean it precludes a great idea from coming in and being successful.
I have to ask about the Love Is Blind live reunion that wasn’t. What did you learn from that whole experience? Netflix Cup went off without a hitch, and you’ve had some other live specials on Netflix since. But are you going to try to go there again with your biggest hits?
In terms of Love Is Blind, it was talked about on one of the earnings calls. We had a bug that really only showed itself under the strain of so many millions of simultaneous livestreams. It’s obviously not an outcome that any of us had anticipated or hoped for. But the engineering team has been working really hard to fix that. Having the Netflix Cup and even the Love Is Blind Brazil reunion that was live showed that we have learned and improved on avoiding those types of occurrences. So I actually don’t worry about that. On the flip side, it was a great testament to, again, the power of Love Is Blind, that the demand was so huge that everybody was at the live-reunion front gate begging to be let in and we just weren’t as ready. It was an unfortunate oversight on the tech side.
But, yeah, we’ll do more of them. I don’t know which ones, or where it will happen. But having livestreaming capability was something I’ve lobbied for for many years. I think there’s a lot of applications for us in it. You can have these big one-off events like Netflix Cup. You can do these reunions like we did with Love Is Blind. There are a lot of examples of unscripted shows out there that utilize live in a really compelling way, be it The Voice or America’s Got Talent. When I was at ABC, we would do those David Blaine specials. Having live just unlocks a broader menu of options in terms of programming opportunities. We will continue to take our shots when the opportunity arises.
What about something like BravoCon, where you bring the casts and producers from your shows together in one place for a weekend. Is that something you can see happening at some point?
It comes down to do we think there’s a real demand and interest from fans of the shows? We’re always member-first. I guess I haven’t thought of it in terms of the Bravo reference because we’re still building out this docusoap universe, which is really what BravoCon is. They have a decade’s head start on us, though we’re getting there. I’m definitely not opposed to it. But it’s always in the service of our members: “Is this something we think they will embrace and want to see?” That was what the Netflix Cup was. We want them to feel justified and solid, not like a gimmick or something like, “Oh, let’s just try it.” We have to put thought and care into all of these attempts. Otherwise, you risk tarnishing the original shows if people don’t have as exciting or positive an experience with the new offering.
They don’t get quite the attention as the dating shows, but you’ve also taken the success of Selling Sunset and spun it off into other shows. What’s the state of your Selling ecosystem, and are we going to see more from it, or other workplace-adjacent shows? Are there more things you can show people selling other than real estate?
Yeah, we call them occupational docusoaps, or “occusoaps.” The answer to both questions is yes. We’re still very much looking for other docusoaps and occusoaps. We have some in production and development that we can hopefully share with you soon. Then, specifically on real estate stuff, we’re continuing to grow that category. We’re thinking in terms of, should it be Selling or something else that’s complementary to the Selling ecosystem? I used to wonder, How many real estate shows make sense? And then as I’ve seen some of these other projects come in, I realized I’m thinking about it too narrowly. There are a lot of Real Housewives. It happens that they’ve got a great filter for that franchise at Bravo. Similarly, if we can find great casts and companies and real estate, I don’t know if there’s a number or a quota that’s like, “Beyond that, it’s too many.” It just comes down to interesting people in interesting worlds. We’re going to continue growing out that category.
Let’s talk about your latest big show, Squid Game: The Challenge. Even before a minute of footage had been shot, there was social media pushback about the mere idea of it. Here you’ve got a show many saw as a scathing indictment of capitalism, and now Netflix is using its whole conceit to create real-life entertainment out of it. Did you anticipate this sort of backlash and try to have producers adapt the show to mitigate against negative reaction? Or did you tell them, basically, “Screw the haters,” and just make a good TV show?
Look, Squid Game, the scripted series, was a global phenomenon. I, like many others, absolutely loved it. It’s one of my favorite shows of all time. I totally respect there’s a subset of rabid fans who almost consider the scripted show sacrosanct and that any other extension or other show built around it is sacrilegious in some way. That’s, I think, a reflection of how passionately they love the show and what message they really took from it. But I think for the bulk of viewers, they enjoyed the entertainment. They loved the innovation and the originality of the show. We’re still trying to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible. I think the path of least resistance would’ve been to do nothing. That would’ve definitely been the safer route.
But we saw this opportunity, given not just the show’s popularity but the actual construct of that show. I mean, it’s essentially a reality show within the scripted show, right? And so we leaned into risk. We leaned into innovation and said, “Let’s have an extension of the show,” and hopefully the bulk of the fans who really enjoyed the scripted version will equally enjoy this unscripted approach to it.
It’s not that we weren’t aware that there would be some people who felt it was counter to the original. But I don’t think that’s a reason not to do something for many other fans who will equally love and embrace what we’re trying to pull off. And if we do a good job, I think a good show stands on its own. That’s what these producers have done with this version. I think they’ve made a really tremendous engaging and innovative show, period. It just happens to be based off an existing piece of IP that lives within the Netflix universe.
Given that the original series is so invested in examining how humans react in an extreme situation, and what sort of moral choices they might make, did you want to make sure Squid Game: The Challenge leaned into those same sort of themes?
The scripted show is a window into human psychology. There’s elements of it being a social experiment. We wanted to honor some of the main pillars and messages within the scripted show. I think what’s interesting when you get into the unscripted realm is you can also have a social experiment, but you aren’t scripting it. You’re leaning into, “What would really happen in this sort of setting?” The question is just as valid as in the scripted show. The difference is, you really can’t predict what may or may not come out of it. That’s people’s fascination.
If you go back to the origins of reality TV, that was really what drew people in. There was a voyeuristic quality to it: You were seeing real people in real situations and thinking, “How would I respond?” or judging how the people you saw on the screen responded. So when we walked into making the unscripted version, we tried to bring to life what you saw in a fictional world and see how real people respond to it in the real world. The producers did a fantastic job of that. They built on that with these tests that added an extra layer of provoking story and providing things for the players and the viewers at home to think about. That’s what makes it compelling. If the scripted show didn’t exist, this would stand on its own as a really grand competition and social experiment. We just have the benefit that there’s a reference point that people have readily available.
And that brings in a new element compared to other social experiments we’ve seen.
You should correct me if I’m wrong, but to my knowledge, there’s never been a direct translation of a scripted show into unscripted. There’ve been many shows inspired by other things, like Gilligan’s Island or The Love Boat, but never one that’s literally saying, “Let’s try to directly translate what was on the scripted screen to an unscripted version.” This was new territory for all of us who have worked in this genre and even in the business for a long time.
How much involvement did Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator and director of the original Squid Game, have in the development of the show? Did he have to sign off on it?
He was involved, and also the Korean content team that shepherded Squid Game was involved. The way we approached it every step along the way was, we said, “If we don’t feel great about this swing, we shouldn’t take it.” We first went out to a very small group of production companies and said, “Hey, we’re thinking about adapting the show. If you’re interested, we’d love for you to submit your creative vision proposal.” And we told the Korea team this was the process and they also told director Hwang. From a general perspective, he said, “I’m good with you guys exploring it.” We didn’t technically have to have his permission, but we wanted to respect and honor what he’d built. If he had said no, we would not have done it. And after we got the first round of pitches in, and there were some takes in there that we really liked, we went back to the Korea team and to Hwang and said, “Hey, we think this version and approach is really promising and we’d like to do this barring any huge reservations or objections.” They didn’t have any. Hwang was like, “I think this looks great.”
You put up a video on social media showing Hwang walking through the sets of The Challenge. He seemed pretty impressed with how they turned out.
He was like a kid in a candy store. I mean, he said to me, “It’s like I literally stepped into the world that I created.” He could not believe it when he walked into that dorm. Because he’s shooting on green screen. There are a lot of tricks and things they do with the scripted show. For “Red Light, Green Light,” two months of preproduction had gone by and the producing team were like, “We cannot find a soundstage big enough to shoot with the 456 players.” I called the Netflix Korea team and I said, “Where did you guys shoot that?” They go, “You’re shooting it with 456 players?” I go, “Yeah, that’s what you did.” And they said, “But we had like 200 people out there in front of a green screen. You’re crazy.”
Eventually the producers found this old Zeppelin hangar in the U.K. countryside, and that was the only thing they could find big enough to set up the exact specs of the perceived size of “Red Light, Green Light” in the scripted show.
Do you think, on a per-episode basis, it’s safe to say it’s one of the most expensive reality shows you’ve ever produced?
It’s definitely an expensive show. It’s up there. But when we decided to do this, there’s only one way to do it: You’re either going to be true to what the scripted show is and spend the money to be authentic or you’re not. I think fortunately we work in a place that, once we commit to something, we’re like, “Let’s spend the money to make the exact best version of it that we want and just go from there.” It definitely was not a cheap show, and you see that in the scale and re-creation of every little detail of what you saw in the scripted version.
Does the fact that you’ve spent so much already make it easier to order a second or third season? If this goes on for a while, the per-episode cost goes down because you’ll be able to amortize the expense of the sets over many years, the way Big Brother and Love Island have done.
We really don’t look in that way. When I talked to Bela about this, I said, “Look, we’re doing it. It’s not going to be cheap.” The only goal every time — legitimately — on all these shows is: one step at a time. Let’s just make an amazing season of this. I mean, sure, in the back of my head, I’m thinking it would be an awesome thing if we can have this franchise that continues to go on for many, many seasons in partnership with the scripted version. But it’s not like, “Let’s only do this because we think we’re going to get X number of seasons.” It was more, “Let’s make an amazing product and, if it works, hallelujah.” That’s the win.
You opened casting to players from around the world but the focus on the show has been with the U.S. and U.K. players. Was there ever any consideration given to doing separate cuts of the show where, say, people in different Netflix regions would get episodes more tailored to players from their area in earlier versions?
In terms of doing different cuts of it to serve other audiences like we had done with Beastmaster way back in the day, that wasn’t something that came up, partly because it just wasn’t feasible. I mean, the producers had their hands full just with the sheer number of contestants and the sort of storytelling challenge that was going to pose, in addition to what probably ended up being thousands of hours in total of footage to sort and comb through. Recutting was not ever an option any of us considered. But a local adaptation, a local version is always something we aspire to on all of our franchise shows like The Circle or Love Is Blind or whatever it might be. This one has a higher bar in a sense of it’s an expensive show. And, whether we can find a way to do it at market costs for local markets is still TBD.
Do you think you could program more than one season of Squid Game: The Challenge every year, as you’ve done with some of your reality shows, like The Circle?
No, I don’t think so. In all honesty, we started this at the end of January and ran into mid-February. It’ll get easier because we’ll be more efficient and effective producers. But it’s such a huge undertaking, I cannot see being able to do more than one version a year in terms of getting it up and running.
Squid Game the drama was developed and produced by Netflix’s Korea team; it famously didn’t come from Hollywood. That same division has also had success with unscripted formats that have traveled outside the region and become global successes on the platform, like Physical: 100 and Single’s Inferno. I’m curious how your team works with the unscripted divisions Netflix has around the globe, and vice versa? Are you interested in developing American versions of hits from other Netflix regions, the way your formats have been adapted elsewhere?
One hundred percent. We have a really close-knit relationship with all of the nonfiction execs worldwide. It’s a sort of fraternity within the bigger company, if you will. We have standing global nonfiction meetings every month, and beyond that we have a bunch of documents and distribution lists where we talk about projects we’re about to green-light or pitches we think are interesting in local markets to see if other nonfiction execs globally are interested as well. There’s a ton of communication and connection around that for us.
Historically the vast majority of the biggest unscripted shows globally have tended to go from the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands outwards. But more and more, you’re seeing original development improving in a lot of these other countries. Things like Physical: 100 are definitely formats you will see adapted into other language versions or English-language versions. It’s a two-way street.
It sounds like you’re hinting that we will see you guys launching American versions of some Korean reality hits.
Or you’ll see another country do it. It really just depends. I love Physical: 100 and I did American Ninja Warrior at NBC, so I’m familiar with really strong Asian IP being adapted to the U.S. Part of the brilliance and joy of that show is there was something uniquely Korean about it and I don’t know if we would be able to capture that same essence in the U.S. version. But never say never. There are a lot of other territories around the world that we’re like, “that’s such a great format” and we’re going to look into adapting it locally.
My analogy that I use a lot is, we have this nonfiction library within Netflix, and all of us in nonfiction keep putting books on the shelves that others can check out at any time. Be it Love Is Blind or Too Hot to Handle or Physical: 100, Terrace House, whatever it might be, it’s there for folks. I mean, Netflix Brazil just had this massive hit with Stranded With My Mother-in-Law. In other countries where the mother-in-law culture is really resonant, they’re going, “Hey, that looks like something that could be a good option for us to explore.”
You’ve been working in the unscripted space for more than two decades. There’s long been a dialogue in the industry about how producers treat the real people who appear on these shows, but it’s really heated up in the last year or two. We’re seeing some of the people who’ve become stars because of reality shows talk about the need for greater protections for cast and maybe even a union. We’ve also seen former players from some of your shows, including Love Is Blind and Squid Game: The Challenge,make claims about mistreatment on sets. What’s your sense of where the industry in general and Netflix in specific stands in terms of how you work with casts?
We always work with producers to create a safe environment. We take all precautions we can in terms of ensuring that the talent, the crew, whomever, is taken care of responsibly and thoughtfully on any show in production — that is sort of a set-in-stone approach. It’d be disingenuous of me to say I think different places have different standards. I can only speak for us. We believe that we hold ourselves to an incredibly high bar and we have a really incredible and thoughtful duty-of-care approach.
But has it been enough?
I think it’s fair in any workplace to say, “What are things we can do better?” Or, “What are things we should discuss?” We do that anyway. I’m proud of the standard we set for ourselves and I’m proud of the continuing push we make in terms of that topic. It’s something that’s being discussed right now in general. I understand that people are interested in discussing it more. But for me, we haven’t changed our approach and I really stand by what our approach has been from the day I started.
You’ve been playing in sports in a big way since at least 2019, when you premiered Formula 1: Drive to Survive. What does sports programming do for Netflix? And have you been looking at the audience data from the sports content you’ve done so far to decide whether Netflix should go from doing sports-adjacent shows to actually buying the rights to various leagues?
We formalized a sports division early in the year. Gabe Spitzer runs that for me. It was really more of a formalization of the direction we were already heading. We’ve steadily ramped up our sports narrative programming, or our shoulder content, as we’ve also called it. My belief in it has been more about the fact that people love great storytelling and narratives, and sports to me is the ultimate soap opera. There’s no shortage of great stories and characters in those worlds. We’re not in the business of doing live sports or live sports rights. Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters have been very clear and consistent on that, and I completely respect that.
But at the same time, there’s an audience of fans who love sports and then fans who just love great storytelling. We can have these series set in the world of sports that satisfy both of those needs in both of those audiences. What’s been validating is that we really have had success with all the different kinds of sports shows we’ve done. We’re not in the live sports rights business, and that’s fine. We can still serve that audience in a different way.
And the Netflix Cup was a really good example of this sort of hybrid, right? It was a sports drama based on “characters” from your past docusoaps, but it was also a live event. What can you say about how it did in terms of viewership? Have people been watching it on-demand in the weeks since it streamed live?
I can’t give you the specific numbers and also we’re still looking at — as we do with everything — how it does over that first 28-day period. But in terms of the live viewership, it hit our expectations. It might’ve exceeded it a little bit, to be honest. We’re continuing to see people watching it, which was a surprise to me given that I tend to think of sporting events as less evergreen. But in this instance, because we created an entertaining product, there’s actually been catch-up viewing. That’s been another great learning and a positive sign for us as we do more of these in the future.
What have you learned so far about who’s watching sports programming on Netflix?
Viewers who watch some of these shows, a lot of them didn’t even know they liked that sport to start with, or weren’t fans of it. The benefit of being on Netflix is you can reach the sports fan and the non-sports fan. The PGA was so thrilled with the partnership with us for Full Swing. They did research on their own, and it showed that 63 percent of Full Swing viewers watched live golf after watching the show. And the average time they spent watching golf on TV went up too. There’s a lot of validation in there. Or look at Quarterback, the show we did with Kirk Cousins. His social media following, the national commercials he got — it was mind-blowing. Same thing with David Beckham. We just saw him in Las Vegas and he told Bela, “I cannot believe how many people watched this show and how many people come up to me no matter where I am.” I think his social following in the first week after launch went up over a million for somebody who was already a massive global star. We’re going to keep doing it, and we’ll do more of it. And as a sports fan, selfishly, I’m very happy and excited because it allows me to scratch that itch too.
We’ve run out of time, but I still need to make my pitch for Netflix to do a daily game show. You need something that keeps people coming back like Wordle does for the New York Times.
I know! We’ve got a game show pitch in development that I’m pretty bullish on. I don’t know if it’ll be a daily thing. But I’m really trying to crack that area for sure.
