The scene is somewhere off to the right, but you’re behind it.

– There’s been a lot of debate on this blog lately as to whether it’s merely a gossip/rumor mill or if we’re accurately reporting on the impact of “The Real World” while they film in Denver for the summer.

– Ultimately that’s up to you to decide, but I’d say we’ve done a little of both. Talking about how “The Real World” cast and crew affects their surroundings certainly qualifies as looking at their impact on their environment. Then again, the fact that we’re an interactive blog, constantly investigating tips and photos from readers, leans toward the gossip/rumor side of the fence…

– The following, however, is more of an informed look at the behind-the-scenes dealings at reality TV shows in general. We’ve recently been in touch with a former reality TV star that lives in Denver (trust us, he’s for real), and he’s been very kind in helping us wrap our heads around the economics and hiring tactics of many reality TV programs. For various reasons we’re going to keep him anonymous.

– Our guy started out telling us about a Semester at Sea experience he had in which MTV’s “Road Rules” was coincidentally filming on the same cruise ship. He actually met “Real World” and “Road Rules” founding producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jon Murray (Bunim would later pass away). “Both came aboard the ship for a portion of the semester,” he said. “Both struck me as being completely polar opposites for being business partners.”

– The cast and crew, he said, were nice when he met them, “But a glaring difference (between this and ‘The Real World’) is the cast and crew lived on the ship with the rest of ‘us’ normal students. So it probably wouldn’t be a case where you would want to be a complete asshole to someone considering you’d see them every day for the next 3 months.”

– His observations on product placement echo what we’ve seen and heard so far with “The Real World” Denver:

“Product placement on ‘The Real World’/'Road Rules’ is huge business. For example, JanSport provided backpacks for every single student on the ship with a ‘Road Rules’ logo on the backpack. Furthermore all of the bags/backpacks the cast members used were JanSports. Not sure how much JanSport actually forked over in cash, but I’m sure quite a bit considering the amount of air time JanSport received.

“The backpack I received was filled with a facial company’s products, possibly Neutrogena. Meaningless stuff, but evidence of another product placement contract with MTV. A bottled water company which I can’t remember for sure, but I want to say it was Aquafina, supplied RR cast and crew with bottled water.

“For every second an Aquafina bottle was aired on RR, Aquafina would pay MTV $5,000. Yes, $5,000 for each second a bottle was captured on MTV! We would steal the water all the time, and it would piss the crew off. Squirt the soda company paid either the ship or RR, which I’m sure Semester at Sea and MTV had a strategic alliance with, $77,000 just to have a Squirt soda can vending machine in one of the dining areas. Just in hopes it might get seen in a couple of shots.

“I specifically remember that number because I found it odd they settled on such a number. Keep in mind this was back in the spring of 1999. So for Wild Oats to give free gift cards (to “The Real World” Denver) is a drop in the bucket compared to what has been set in place prior to filming.”

– Another reader recently responded with this: “While I was running the marketing for a home-products manufacturer I was constantly contacted by shows on TLC, Discovery, etc. to pay them money to showcase our products. They usually wanted about $3k in ‘fees’ plus about $10k in product…. the publicity is not worth it…Wild Oats will probably get about 30 seconds of publicity all season long after paying MTV money they could’ve run fifty 30-second spots with.”

– We’ll have more soon from our guy about his experiences actually starring in a reality TV show, and his insights into the way Bunim/Murray hires and pays its crew and generally runs its productions. Stay tuned…