On April 26, 2001, more than 5 million people turned on their televisions to watch the eleven candidates from the show “Loft Story” settle into the 225 m2 “loft” created by the M6 channel. For ten weeks, these single people will live cut off from the world, under the watchful eye of 26 cameras filming their every move.
“You thought you’d seen it all? »question, more than twenty years later, the posters of the new series Worshipbroadcast on the Amazon Prime streaming platform from this Friday, October 18. This “fiction inspired by real events” offers to discover behind the scenes of this program. The opportunity to look back on the eventful history of reality TV in France.
Contrary to popular belief, “Loft story” is not the first program of its kind in France. A few months before its launch, in January 2001, the TF6 channel broadcast “Les Aventuriers du net” on cable. For three weeks, three teams are locked in separate apartments which they must furnish. Their goal? Win the hearts and votes of the public, to win 100,000 francs (around €22,000).
Loft story, first success… and first scandals
But it was with “Loft Story”, the first reality TV broadcast unencrypted, on M6, that the genre established itself in French homes. The show is inspired by “Big Brother »a similar program that has enjoyed great success in the Netherlands.
It mixes several ingredients that will inspire other reality shows: having young people live together in an unusual place, filming them 24 hours a day to see how they react, having them comment on this experience in a “confessional” and allowing the public to help their candidate win. or his favorite candidate. This SMS voting system makes these programs very profitable for television channels.
Loft story also inaugurates the first scandal of French reality TV: the famous “swimming pool scene”, assimilated by some to “pornography” since it shows in detail the antics of Loana and Jean-Édouard.
Beyond this controversy, commented on extensively on TV and radio, the show has attracted numerous criticisms. On May 14, 2001, around a hundred demonstrators placed trash cans in front of the M6 headquarters, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, to denounce the system created by “the little stinky chain”. Other activists, from the left this time, gathered in front of the show’s recording location to “free the M6 hostages”they cry that “humans are not commodities”.
These criticisms, however, did not prevent reality TV from spreading: in 2001, TF1 broadcast the first seasons of “Koh Lanta” and “Star Academy”. “Temptation Island” would follow the following year. M6 responded in 2003 with the creation of “Bachelor, the single gentleman”.
Reality TV goes beyond the borders of the small screen
Even if these shows are not watched by the majority of French people, their influence extends beyond the small screen. The candidates’ “clashes” are taken up by the tabloid press, and commented on endlessly on the Internet. For media sociologist Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini, it is reality TV that gives rise to the figure of the “influencer”.
“In 2001, it was shocking that people became famous after being exposed on a show where they were just being idle. We saw an embarrassing tautology in the fact that their celebrity was not indexed on merit. Today, people become famous because they tell their stories on social networks, it has become a profession in its own right”she explained to Monde in April 2021.
This phenomenon is amplified with the creation of “Angels of Reality TV”, in 2010. This show, in which only former reality TV candidates can participate, pushes for their professionalization and encourages them to take part in “clashes” for continue to exist in the media.
A revival of the genre
But the system ran out of steam in the mid-2010s, a period marked by audience declines for several shows of the genre. In 2015, Secret Story disappeared from the TF1 schedule and switched to a TNT channel, before disappearing two years later. The death of a participant in “Koh Lanta” also forces the sector to introspect.
For journalist Constance Villanova, author of the essay Living for the cameras (JC Lattès, 224 p., €20), the reappearance of “Secret story” and “Star academy” over the last two years is not a sign of a return to the past. If these shows capitalize on the “comfortable effect” that they provoke among their historical fans, their operation has changed significantly.
“It would be unacceptable to reproduce the sexist behavior or mistreatment of candidates that took place in the 2000s,” thus analyzed the semiologist François Jost, interviewed by The Cross last May. The candidates of “Secret Story” now undergo a psychological interview before participating in the show, while in the new seasons of “Star Ac’”, goodwill between the candidates is essential.
