For Mike Hurst, a New York-based sound supervisor and sound mixer on several reality series, the pandemic was the beginning of the end of production work as he knew it.
After getting through a five-week shutdown on the TLC series “Darcey and Stacey,” a spinoff of “90 Day Fiancé,” he noticed a steep decline in the number of jobs available. In three years, 86% of his client roster vanished, including shows like “Man vs. Food” from the Cooking Channel, HGTV’s “Life Under Renovation” and DIY’s (Now Magnolia Network) “First Time Flippers.”
Reality programming, once considered a cheap and plentiful way to fill the pipeline of cable and streaming companies, is in a nosedive.