Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round they all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: They.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: All laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly they told Marconi wireless was a phony it's the same old cry.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome back to 100 Years of Television.
This is episode number 24, countdown number 83.
Smile. You're on Candid Camera for 100 weeks that started in October 2025.
This podcast is going to recall the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television and video.
The countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027, the 100th anniversary of the day television as we know it was invented.
I'm Paul Shatzkin, author of the Boy who Invented Television, the definitive biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the world's first all electronic television system.
In the last episode, we met Mr. Television, Milton Berle.
In this episode, we're going to explore the 1940s origins of what we now think of as reality TV.
Before Survivor, before the Real World, before all the Real Housewives and the Celebrity Apprentice, there was Alan Funt.
Alan Funt's concept for a television show was deceptively simple. What would people do if they didn't know they were being watched by a hidden camera?
From that simple premise, Alan Funt brought an entirely new kind of program to the ABC TV Network.
Beginning on August 10, 1948, Candid Camera was unscripted, unrehearsed and genuinely real.
Decades later, the genre Funt pioneered would morph into the everybody knows there are cameras format we now know as reality TV.
Like almost everything else on television in the 1940s, even Candid Camera had its origins in radio, a medium with no camera.
The original concept was called Candid Microphone and captured the spontaneity of ordinary people reacting to contrived situations.
Unsuspecting suspects were caught off guard by talking mailboxes, elevators speaking gibberish, or a stranger asking them to hold an invisible dog on a leash.
Despite the absence of a visual element, Candid Microphone was a popular program and Funt's timing was perfect.
He knew that to really sell the premise, people needed to see the reactions.
Television arrived just in time for Funt to share the double takes, baffled stares, and slow dawning recognition on a person's face.
When television came calling, Alan Funt was there to take the call.
For once, the transition to television was relatively easy.
Font's formula didn't require a lot of experimentation, trial runs, big budgets, or big Names. There would be no multi camera studio setup, no sets, no performers, no orchestra or announcers.
All Alan Funt needed was a small, easily concealed 16 millimeter film camera, a microphone and and preposterous situations to put people in.
Funt's crew hid their gear in stores, parks, offices, anywhere humans could be caught unsuspecting and staged harmless pranks. A car with no driver, a receptionist who failed to notice a man turning green, a water fountain that sprayed sideways, and a telephone booth that locked the caller in were among the predicaments that that Funt whipped up for the hidden camera.
Stealth, timing and the wacky, unpredictable aspect of human nature were his currency.
Confusion, disbelief and exasperation were the emotional payoff.
When the prank had run its course, Alan Funt would come out of the shadows with the punchline, smile. You're on Candid Camera.
Candid Camera's hook was its easy relatability.
In a landscape still mostly dominated by theatrical pretensions, Candid Camera was loose, immediate and genuine. The participants weren't professionals. They were unwary innocents caught in the act of being themselves.
Anybody watching knew it could just as easily have been themselves trying to follow a street sign that kept changing directions or walking past a statue that waved and winked at them.
Alan Funt himself was part of the show's appeal. Affable, deadpan and unassuming, he produced each segment with just enough mischief to let viewers in on the game.
He was neither a clown nor a showman.
His reassuring presence wrapped a compassionate atmosphere around the whole enterprise. The jokes were never cruel. The targets were never humiliated. Funt wasn't out to victimize anyone. He was just trying to bring a little bit of the authentic and absurd to the human experience of television.
After its debut on ABC in 1948, Candid Camera bounced around all three major networks from 1948 to 1951.
It was a fixture somewhere on the TV schedule well into the 1960s.
It served as a recurring segment on the Garry Moore show before returning to a standalone format. And Funt was often joined by co hosts Derwood Kirby and Bess Meyerson.
At its peak, Candid Camera drew millions of viewers, proving that you don't need scripts, stars or studio sets to make compelling television.
It is no stretch to suggest that Alan Funt's clandestine pranks set the stage for entire categories of television to come.
Candid Camera was a direct ancestor of shows like Real People, America's Funniest Home Videos and Punk'd, as well as the explosion of reality TV that swamped the medium in the 1990s and 2000s.
But unlike many of those later iterations, Funt's show maintained a tone of genteel fun. There was no prize, no competition, no humiliation, just the warm, quiet comedy the of being recognizably human.
Evolving technology was a factor in the show's ongoing appeal.
As equipment got smaller and more mobile, Funt's ability to go unnoticed improved.
Candid Camera liberated television from the confines of a soundstage. It could go out into the world, find stories on the street, and bring them back into people's homes.
In its singular way, Candid Camera tapped into something deeper than humor. It bridged the divide between public and private and poked holes in the discomfort of being watched.
Long before so called reality shows blurred the line between performer and audience, Candid Camera asked it a critical how do we change when the camera is on?
Candid Camera was always more than a novelty or a low brow bit of mischief. It invited the public onto the stage and it planted the seed for a whole genre of television that still thrives today.
Alan Funt remained involved with the show for decades, handing off hosting duties to his son Peter. In later years, the format was revived many times, including in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, proving that the core idea never really got old.
In the years before he died in 1999 at age 84, Alan Funt sometimes joked that the real reason some people dismissed the show was that they were always worried that they might be on it.
This brings us to the end of number 83 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television.
Stay tuned for the next episode when we ring in the new year of 1949 with the first telecast of the Illuminated Ball Drop from Times Square on New Year's Eve.
Thanks for listening to 100 Years of Television, a two year countdown to the centennial of television on September 7, 2027.
For more, aim the gizmo of your choice to 100yearstv.com this podcast was written, recorded, edited, engineered and uploaded by me, Paul Schatzkin and is a production of Farnov.
If television was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
[00:09:18] Speaker A: They all said we never would be happy. They laughed at us and how but ho ho ho. Who got the last.
