Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Whats a good season of90 Day Fiancefor a beginner who has no idea what this show is?
Im guessing 1?, the TV host and chef asked early that Monday morning.
And its showing no signs of slowing down.
Theres a show that follows couples after they get hitched (Happily Ever After?
and last yearsThe Family Chantel(itscomplicated.)
Various90 Dayshows have made TLC televisions No.
Tell me the origin story of90 Day Fiance.
I was at a conference where all nonfiction producers gather annually.
It was in January, freezing temperatures in Washington, D.C., and we were at a hotel.
I remember being in this massive lounge with a lot of producers.
Its called a sizzle tape.
Sometimes we pay for those or sometimes they make them on their own.
In this scenario, the producer [Matt Sharp] had his own tape.
He told me he had been shopping it around everywhere and nobody had wanted it.
He gave me a lot of caveats.
He said, Youre not really doing this area for TLC right now.
We didnt have something specifically geared to trying to find the love of your life.
So he told me about this law in the USA, the K-1 visa.
I found that intriguing.
I [told] Matt, like dont show this tape to anybody else.
I think I want to go to series on this, contingent on if we find a great cast.
And I guess you did, because you ordered it to series pretty quickly after that.We ordered six episodes.
I was a little bit concerned because at that time, Sharp Entertainment this was not their forte … Ratings were good for the show from the start, but the growth after season two is pretty amazing.
What do you think was key to the franchise breaking out?We did not go for run-of-the-mill casting.
[Couples] had to be brutally honest and transparent, able to express their feelings.
A lot of couples were a study in contrast.
There were just so many different contrasts going on between two people who wanted to [find] love.
it’s possible for you to see that in the online discussion of the show.
People have strong opinions.
[When90 Daylaunched], social media was starting to really go through the stratosphere, especially with Twitter.
Everybody was chiming in while it was on, live.
They were all comparing notes online, live.
Thats what you see now, every Sunday and Monday night.
TLC doesnt spend $50 million on marketing programs.
I think its a combination of a lot of factors.
I think its social water cooler, everybody trying to find out, What is this all about?
Its a soap opera.Thats a technique thats been going on forever.
You have to end every episode on a cliffhanger.
Were fortunate because theyre just naturally organic, all these cliffhangers …
I think that thats what the viewer really wants.
This is what has created this engagement.
They want to know.
They have burning desires to know about everything, every week.
How do the producers get those cliffhanger moments?We just have to gamble and go.
Shoot and see what happens.
Get as much footage as you’re free to.
We cant map this out.
Shooting happens about a year to nine months before something even hits air.
Thats how far in advance we go now.
Was that brand identity part of building the audience?I do think that played a role.
If you look at TLC, we are not one mode.
Different nights have different offerings.
We do, too.
Weddings are on one night.
On another night, youre going to get medical programming likeDr.
On another night, Im going to get programming thats about a large family or different families.
They do things a different way, many of them.
Or even something likeDr.
That especially holds true with90 Day Fiance.
How has the storytelling on90 Dayevolved since it launched in 2014?
I watched some of the early episodes and the drama wasnt quite so amplified.
I think in some ways, what it has become is our version of a Marvel Comics Universe.
And so the storytelling began to change with [the introduction of] some of the other franchises.
Not everybody had even met yet.
I might even get rid of my home here, my mortgage.
Im going to drop everything.
I am completely moving over to that foreign country now.
So the stakes became bigger.
You mentioned some of the spinoffs.
You keep adding them!
So we invented90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After?…
We saw all this piling up and we said, Okay.
Thats got to be another series there.
Oddly,Before the 90 Dayshas now become our highest-rated series of them all.
We would only do this if the audience is saying they are interested and they are saying they are.
We have done the research on it because, I agree you want to be careful.
The demand definitely seems high.
You havent just done spinoffs.
Its almost like watching other peoples diary entries and confessionals.
I was once nervous about two-hour episodes.
Im not any longer.
They are accustomed now to binging and thats what we are essentially doing, too.
Were not just giving them dribs and drabs.
Were giving them as much as we can to satiate them.
Also, I think a lot of the younger audience was coming in during the quarantine time.
We noticed a big uptick with the younger set.
They discovered the show and they went back and started to watch all the old episodes.
The pandemic pushed it even further.
What do we do?
How quickly can we all move?
The good news is that [reality-show cast members] have become incredibly intimate with the camera.
Theyre very used to confessing, talking about their lives.
In some ways, they use the cameras as therapy.
They use it to understand themselves, where their head is at, where they are in their life.
What we found fascinating was how quickly they adapted.
We were quite stunned.
I was flabbergasted that we could make so much content out of people just in their homes.
We have to look at what states are [giving] permission to shoot, which ones are not.
