Spotlight on TV Recappers

Watching TV for work should be the best job ever, right?

Except when it comes to recapping Reality TV shows.

TV Tonight turns the spotlight onto three journalists whose job it is to sit through hours of Reality TV and write it all out like bad homework for your reading pleasure.

James Weir (news.com.au), Aja Styles (Fairfax Media) and Clare Stephens (Mamamia.com.au) are amongst the best in the biz at recapping TV episodes with blow by blow descriptions, humour and a knack for fashioning it into a news angle.

Here’s what they had to say….

Which shows do you regularly recap? Is this a daily task?
JW: The regulars I focus on throughout the year are Married At First Sight, Seven Year Switch and The Bachelor. Sometimes I try out new ones as they pop up – sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t and other times it’s just a one-off if a weird moment happens in an ep.

AS: Married At First Sight (MAFS), occasionally My Kitchen Rules (MKR) and I was covering I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here (IAC) when it was airing. It is a daily task but varies in frequency.

CS: At the moment we’re (my twin sister Jessie Stephens and I) recapping Married at First Sight and Real Housewives of Sydney, but also recap the Bachelor/Bachelorette. For MAFS, it’s varied from Sunday – Thursday to Sunday – Tuesday.

How do you decide which shows to cover and do you spread the love?
JW: I usually stick to relationship shows – it’s cruel but raw feelings and personal struggle is always funny because it’s so relatable. Everyone knows what it’s like to be single, to get dumped and to like someone who’s clearly not into you. Watching other people go through it, you can apply your own feelings and experiences on top of it to flesh things out.

AS: Recaps have changed over the years and now require a newsy angle, so if we can get access early to gauge if there is anything worthwhile in the episode that helps hugely. It is also based on audience interest. Ratings form a part of that but we found even with shows that haven’t been widely watched, if there was a news angle that interested our readers it didn’t matter if they have or haven’t watched the show.

CS: We cover shows where there’s a lighthearted element we can make fun of, especially shows that can be pulled apart for how they represent women and/or relationships. Married at First Sight, Real Housewives of Sydney and the Bachelor/Bachelorette both fit this criteria. We’ve been weighing up doing the Seven Year Switch but it falls into a slightly different category given that it can have a highly emotional component to it which doesn’t lend itself so easily to humour.

Do you make notes as you go along? Describe your work methodology and how you juggle deadlines and social life.

JW: I treat it with a ridiculous and totally unnecessary amount of seriousness and turn it into a two-screen operation – the episode rolling on one computer screen and notepad opened on the other. I write down half-thought lines and observations as it plays out and transcribe big and stupid moments in case I need the quotes. I screenshot way too many facial expressions. There’s also a bit of a Post-it situation … I write down possible headlines and angles on a hundred different bits of paper – mainly to look productive in front of my editor. In terms of deadlines, I tend to watch the episode on the afternoon it goes to air. A lot of the time that’s usually the earliest the network’s have the final cut ready but I’m also extremely lazy and if I were given several days lead in, I still wouldn’t have it ready until that night.

AS: If the recap is more of a comment piece, I’ll watch and make notes with time stamps and return to those places to add quotes as part of the overall piece. Whereas IAC recaps focused solely on what was newsworthy coming from celebrities’ discussions in camp, so quotes were taken directly from the live feed and knocked into a story as quickly as possible. We try and publish recaps as soon as the show has aired, so to answer the last part of that question: What social life?

CS: Yep – we watch the show and take notes and screenshots as we go. We then sit and chronologically recap the show from our notes, create some funny images and include gifs. We’re very aware of deadlines (the moment the show ends) so we’re mindful of watching the show in advance and working on the recap hours before the show ends (we get the episodes early). There have, however, been occasions where we’ve had to live recap a show because we haven’t had access to an early release. In this case, one of us tends to take screenshots while the other writes, and in the ad breaks we edit and include pictures. Sunday – Tuesday at the moment we don’t have a social life – it’s incredibly time consuming! Especially while balancing other work tasks.

Which shows do you enjoy recapping and which are a chore?
JW: If my weekly pay didn’t rely on it, I wouldn’t watch any reality shows. But it does, so I prefer Married At First Sight or Seven Year Switch. The Bachelor is a bit too polished … it sounds mean but it’s funnier to write about real people who are (for the most part) genuinely putting themselves out there and who aren’t completely aware of themselves. I still think the first series of MAFS in 2015 was the best – once a week, fly-on-the-wall doco-style and no one really knew what they were in for.

AS: I find the shows you get invested in because of the “characters” (yes they are real people, but seen through a TV producers lens and highly edited and scripted) are the easiest to recap. Having said that, you can grow tired of your own voice on a particular show (even when you like watching) so it is safe to assume that readers are also tried of your voice, so it is good to shake it up with other reporters. Any show that serves little purpose or relies a little too heavily on novelty, or artificially making people look bad are quickly scorned by viewers and we try to avoid falling for such traps.

CS: We enjoy recapping every show, but certain episodes can be difficult. In a lot of reality TV, the story jumps all over the place, so you’re often seeing multiple story lines play out over an entire hour. In that case, it’s a matter of constructing the recap as simply as you possibly can. It can also be a chore when an episode is really, really boring, and you feel like there’s nothing funny / interesting that can be pulled out of it. However, we often find that these are some of our favourite recaps, because you end up having more room to play around, be creative and develop jokes.

What are your editors looking for, and what do readers respond to?
JW: Most editors are looking for something that a) covers off the big moment of the episode that would be considered the “news” angle. And b) hits the odd, funny little moments that everyone will be talking about online. When it comes to readers, it’s good to try and write for both the viewers and the non-viewers. The viewers and fans of the show really just want to know that what they were thinking on their couch was also being thought by someone else. And non-viewers appreciate someone else looking at the whole situation with a raised eyebrow.

AS: As an editor who loves watching reality TV, I know it’s all about “the water cooler moment”. It’s all about identifying that moment in the show which everyone will be discussing at their work’s water cooler the next day.

CS: Editors are definitely looking for the recap to be safe – to ensure it doesn’t upset the network the show is on or any of the contestants. They don’t want to have to deal with complaints. They also don’t want anything critical of the individuals on the show, because we all know this isn’t actually real. So we have to be careful not to become too invested and make judgments about the personalities. The readers want humour and they also want to see a manifestation of what they’re thinking. After watching a show, they want to be able to read something that in part reflects their own commentary, and in part surprises them – with elements they might not have noticed.

Biggest complaint about Reality TV shows?
JW: It sounds stupid to complain about a reality show being overproduced, but there is a line. These days, a lot of the shows are being produced and edited to play into the social media conversation – confecting moments, lines and GIF-able facial expressions to get the conversation going on Twitter. If a contestant is totally unaware of themselves and they naturally make themselves look like a wank, then it’s fun for an audience to jump on board. But if a moment or storyline just seems totally fake or produced, you don’t even want to acknowledge it because you just look like a fool playing into it. Also, stunt casting. It’s good to spike the cast with a nutbag, but too many is just exhausting and it doesn’t really provide substantial talking points.

AS: It’s car crash television. You know it isn’t always good but you can’t look away. I think it has come at the cost of good Australian drama and serious acting, which is detrimental long-term.

CS: They’re. Not. Real. After watching them so often, you realise the entire thing is artificial. You can’t really make any sound judgments about the people on them or the situations they’re in because everything has been edited in such a way that we don’t know the truth.

What has watching all this Reality TV taught you?
JW: Never go on a reality show.

AS: Not much at all really. The best reality shows are the ones that try broadening your own views, like the ABC’s You Can’t Ask That, SBS’s Is Australia Racist? or Family Rules for example, but most are just something that you watch at the end of a tiring day that doesn’t require much brain work. It is clear that the more commercial shows aren’t reality as such, more a constructed reality in which people become players, or pawns, and despite the desire to judge participants harshly, you do feel sorry for them sometimes.

CS: That people love escapism. People just want to watch something they don’t have to think about, and laugh about how silly it is.