The Joys of Frankenbiting

Posted on January 31, 2006

Time magazine explores the world of Frankenbiting: the splicing and editing of dialogue and action in reality TV shows to create interesting and completely false stories. Time talked with freelance reality-TV show editor Jeff Bartsch to find out how much reality there really is in these shows.

Bartsch worked on Blind Date, a syndicated dating show that features hookups gone right--and comically wrong. If a date was dull or lukewarm, the editors would juice the footage by running scenes out of order or out of context. To make it seem like a man was bored, they would cut from his date talking to a shot of him looking around and unresponsive--even though it was taken while she was in the restroom and he was alone. "You can really take something black and make it white," Bartsch says. (NBC Universal Television, the studio that makes Blind Date, had no comment.)
Those devices, producers emphasize, can be used not just to deceive but also to tell a story clearly, entertainingly and quickly. News producers, documentarians--and, yes, magazine writers--selectively edit raw material and get accused of cherry-picking facts and quotes. But on an entertainment show the pressure to deliver drama is high, and the standards of acceptable fudging are shadier. The first season of Laguna Beach, MTV's reality series about rich teens in Orange County, Calif., centered on a love triangle among two girls (LC and Kristin) and a boy (Stephen). The problem, says a story editor who asked not to be named, was that the triangle didn't exist. LC and Stephen, he says, were platonic friends, so the producers played Cupid through montage. LC "would say things about [Stephen] as a friend," says the editor. "[LC] said, 'I just love this guy.' All you have to do is cut to a shot of the girl, and suddenly she's jealous and grimacing."

Laguna Beach executive editor Tony DiSanto says the story remains genuine despite being enhanced. DiSanto says, "Stephen and LC were friends, but in the raw footage, you could see an attraction. Anytime you take anything into the editing room, you are enhancing it and editorializing. But we never make up something that hasn't happened."

Frankenbiting is well-known in Hollywood, although the Time piece goes a little soft on the scripting aspects. Now that the revelations have hit Time magazine, will the masses realize that "reality television" is a scripted as your favorite sitcom? It could be -- there are fewer reality TV shows in the production pipeline than there were two years ago. And all we can say is good riddance.