Veteran unscripted producer Wendy Miller was attending a gathering for women over 40 who were unemployed on unscripted TV when she had the idea. Though the gathering could’ve easily turned tearful, one woman brought fu to the proceedings by sharing a story about working on a past show that made the entire room laugh. Miller envisioned a storytelling event similar to “The Moth,” where reality TV workers could share funny career stories with a paying audience, thus raising money for peers in need.

Miller pitched to the group, “All of us are unemployed and have no money, but there are people who are way worse. What if we use this as an opportunity to raise money for someone who’s really in dire straits?”  The ensuing “Hollywood Horror Happy Hour,” which took place May 21, was just one sign of the times in the nonfiction TV business. Jobs are scarce, budgets are crunched, workers are considering jumping ship, and executives seem terrified to take creative risks on untested concepts. This has come as a surprise to some insiders in the space.

There was an initial expectation that the 2023 actors and writers strikes would accelerate activity in reality TV, which boomed during the 2007-08 writers strike, but many say the opposite occurred — even though nonfiction, being relatively cheap to produce and largely nonunion, is a natural stopgap for entertainment companies during work shutdowns. For the waiting workforce, development and production haven’t picked up much since then. “I’ve worked in this industry for 20 years, and all of a sudden, the faucet just turned off,” says producer Patrick Caligiuri (“Naked and Afraid,” “American Idol”), who has posted multiple times to his TikTok since March about the struggles of entertainment workers. His first post, emblazoned “Reality TV is dead,” took off on LinkedIn, racking up over 2,000 likes and nearly 300 comments.

One veteran reality TV producer added, “It’s not just people who just moved to L.A. to get into the business that can’t find jobs. It’s somebody who’s been working for 25 years and has a résumé that I would kill for who’s saying they haven’t worked in a year.” Many veteran unscripted producers and sellers, who asked to remain anonymous in a bid to protect future sales, say the downturn is mirroring what’s happening in the scripted TV space as budgets there, too, are being squeezed across the board, and especially on broadcast. Unscripted shows, which historically have been cheaper to make and faster to produce, are feeling the same fiscal pinch as their scripted counterparts as media companies right-size their slates and spending. “It’s the same problem as scripted, and it’s really depressing,” says one veteran reality executive.

The overall contraction and M&A have also meant fewer buyers for unscripted fare. Max, for example, no longer has its unscripted department after incorporating Discovery’s vast portfolio of programming into the streamer. “At the legacy companies, you have massive fiscal pressure going on — just look at the stock prices. Those are the traditional buyers. It’s the same reasons you’ve seen in scripted, just leading to unscripted as well,” says one longtime seller.

Budgets for the shows that are being greenlit, meanwhile, are getting slashed, which is trickling down to affect the salaries that are being offered, according to sources. Some particularly noteworthy examples have made the rounds in online reality communities: One longtime reality producer, who says seasoned story producers used to be able to make $2,800 a week, shares a job posting and offering $350 to $450 a day, which amounts to $1,750 to $2,250 a week; a story producer sends a screenshot of a job that offered $1,800 to $2,200 a week for the same role. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot more supply than demand right now” when it comes to available workers, adds the veteran reality TV producer. As a result, “Everybody’s Scrooge McDucking it.”