SHOCKUMENTARY TAKE STORM!

Subgenre of reality-based television programming that features "greatest hit" compilations of the nation's most violent and gory video footage. Fox pioneered the low-cost, high-ratings format in 1996 with repeat installments of When Animals Attack; featured segments included a pit bull tearing at a mailman's hand and a circus elephant stomping its trainer to death. The shows built on the cult success of the '80s gore-compendium video Faces of Death (actually made for Japanese theatrical distribution in 1978), repackaging violence in a new, more efficient form for prime-time audiences. Promoted during football broadcasts, the second Animals edition was so popular that Fox ran it twice during the November '96 ratings period. When an NBC executive denounced the shows as "one step short of a snuff film," Fox officials pointed to NBC's own Dateline broadcast of footage that showed a bull goring a man. The following summer Fox promised not to air the "attack-genre" specials but then returned during the fall '97 sweeps with shows such as World's Deadliest Swarms, When Stunts Go Bad, Cheating Death: Catastrophes Caught on Tape, and World's Scariest Police Shootouts (all produced under Fox executive Mike Darnell. After reaching its fourth installment, Animals Attack was terminated by Fox in 1998, but its influence was already apparent in shows such as ABC's World's Deadliest Volcanoes and parodies by Chris Rock (When Animals Attack in High-Speed Chases) and former Cops/Studs producer Stephen Chao (When Cars Attack).

Report by TeleViolenceReport
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