Geoff Steven

Ordinary people, extraordinary situations.

Geoff Steven can reasonably claim to be one of the godfathers of reality TV in New Zealand as an early commissioner at TV3 during the genre's emergence.

A documentary supposedly used to be sort of so-called objective.

It had to look at both sides of the story, but reality was, you know, short-run series, six ep, seven eps, half hours.

Due to its popularity, the, the nature of the program suddenly changed.

The original was conceived as an observational documentary, which of course didn't actually start with the intention of it being either a format or reality show.

It really wasn't until the show was really coming together, you know, we're a couple of episodes in, that Geoff Stevens said, "This is a format."

Stephen Smith was TV2's general manager in the late '90s when Popstars landed on screens, and he's just hit on one of the other key aspects of what defines reality shows, the format.