Reality TV in 1973

Imagine a Time Machine. It is the year 2002. You go into this machine, press a button, and you are transported back to 1973. You sit on a comfortable chair, a pan of Jiffy Pop popcorn on your lap, and you watch television. The channel, PBS. The show, An American Family, a show considered by many to be the first reality TV show ever made.

You are sitting in your Lay-Z-Boy recliner, feet up, enthralled about what you are seeing. Drama! This show is AWESOME! An American Family was filmed in 1971 and aired in early 1973. The producer was Craig Gilbert, and the show followed the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California. At the time it was aired, the show was called a “documentary.” But it was more than that. The show followed the marital troubles and subsequent divorce of Mr. and Mrs. Loud, as well as their five children. Craig Gilbert, the producer, and his team of cameramen and technicians spent seven months in 1971 with the Louds, recording over 300 hours of film which was edited down to 12 hours.

According to Reuters news service, the show became a national phenomenon, just like Survivor was in 2000. The Loud family even appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine that winter. The 12 one-hour episodes of this show drew record audiences for public television, as well as stirring many water cooler conversations and subsequent debates.

Among its famous episodes were the eighth and ninth episode detailing the breakup of the Loud’s marriage. In other episodes, (indeed the only one I can recall, but I was a young girl at the time this aired) the family discussed Vietnam, which escalated into an argument. But the episode that got the country buzzing, talking, and debating was the second episode. This was a television first, because something so amazing happened for the first time ever on any television show, anywhere in the world. Remember that during this time, married couples were still shown sleeping in separate beds on TV. The first married couple to be shown sleeping in the same bed was Fred and Wilma Flintstone. You also didn’t see pregnant women on television.

So it really is amazing the second episode of this show ever aired. Pat Loud, the mother, visited her son Lance in his Chelsea Hotel apartment in New York City. Nothing wrong with that, a mother visiting her adult son across the country. It is done all the time. What was amazing, is that Lance came out to his mother, and by so doing became the first person to announce his/her sexuality on television. And you thought it was Ellen for a sitcom, or Richard Hatch for reality TV.

And for another first, his homosexuality was completely accepted by his family. Many people thought at the time that this may have been the reason for his parents divorce. Not so, according to author David Ehrenstein, who has written studies of gays in the media. He told Reuters, “When the parents split up, there was an undertone of criticism from the media that what was wrong with the marriage was that they had a gay son. On the contrary, Lance held the family together.”

After the show ended, Lance became a journalist. During his career he wrote entertainment articles for Details, Interview, Buzz Weekly, and The Advocate magazines. He was a columnist for the later for several years, his final byline appearing in the current issue, in which he writes about his battle with Hepatitis C and AIDS; he was diagnosed with the latter in October 1987.

Lance Loud lost his battle in Los Angeles on December 21, 2001, dying from complications of AIDS and Hepatitis C. He was 50 years old. He is survived by his parents and his four brothers and sisters. And this article is dedicated to his memory, with thanks for being a reality TV pioneer who bravely went where no man had ever gone before in TV land.

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