Surreal Life is “a blueprint for VH1’s game plan next year: ‘celebrity reality.’”

The Surreal Life 3 »
by Andy Dehnart / December 6, 2004, 6:00 AM

Surreal Life is “a blueprint for VH1’s game plan next year: ‘celebrity reality.’”
The Surreal Life’s move to VH1 has proved beneficial for both the series and the network. Because of its success, the series “is providing a blueprint for VH1’s game plan next year: ‘celebrity reality,’” Scripps Howard reports. Paraphrasing MTV Networks’ Brian Graden, Scripps says the series “embodies the identity that VH1 has carved out for itself in recent years of being a channel about nostalgia, whether it is 20 years ago or last week.” Graden says, “That’s the core we have struck, sort of modern nostalgia.” That works better as a core for VH1 than its previous identity: music videos for old, wrinkling people.