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Embracing ‘Reality’ with ‘Below Deck’ Creator Mark Cronin

Reality television producer and writer Mark Cronin has spent his career in Hollywood entertaining the masses with witty and authentic stories. Best known for creating the Emmy nominated Bravo TV series Below Deck, Mark offers audiences an exclusive look into the lives and careers of real people and real situations.

Developed by Mark Cronin, Rebecca Taylor Henning, and Doug Henning, Below Deck follows the lives of crew members, also called yachties, who work and live on a superyacht during a charter season. The series began its 9th season on October 25, 2021.

I had the chance to speak with Mark Cronin about the world of reality television and his experience as a showrunner for Below Deck.

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Who is Mark Cronin?

Mark Cronin had no inkling he would become one of Hollywood’s most successful reality tv creators. When he attended college at the University of Pennsylvania, the idea of reality TV didn’t even exist. As Mark pursued a chemical engineering degree in school, he would spend his free time putting on comedy shows with his college’s all-male comedy troupe, The Mask and Wig Club.

After 5 years of actually working in chemical engineering, Mark Cronin decided to follow his creative dreams to Hollywood. The Howard Stern show hired Mark as a staff writer soon after. He immediately fell in love with the possibility of combining comedy and reality. “He (Howard Stern) was putting really wacky regular people together in game show situations, or he’d have a celebrity on, and he’d make this crazy scenario that the celebrity wasn’t even prepared for,” Mark says. “It was an innovative way to deal with real people on television.”

Since then, Mark has produced over 50 reality shows ranging from Singled Out, Charm School, The Surreal Life, Flavor of Love, and currently Below Deck.

During my time with Mark Cronin, I gained a new appreciation for the fascinating and methodic elements of reality television.

To Mark Cronin, reality TV is a “problem solver’s world”

While Hollywood is categorized as a creative and artistic space, Mark Cronin argues that reality television is a largely technical medium. There’s equipment, electronics, scheduling, estimating and real problem solving involved.

“You’ve got to be very clever in how you physically produce the show, how much time it takes to shoot it, how cost-effective you are in getting it shot, and how efficient you are in editing it,” Mark explains. “You have to find less expensive ways to get the same things done.”

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In reality television, a big idea means very little if there’s no physical plan. Every question that arises from a show idea must have a practical answer: Is the filming location possible? Are there people willing to be filmed? How will the content of the show be interesting for audiences? Mark knows Imagination and creativity will only take a project so far. “You have to be able to execute your concept,” he says.

For Below Deck, Mark Cronin intertwined his experience with field-based shows and his love of boating

Mark Cronin spent his life around boats while growing up on the east coast. Calling himself a “boatie” and “sailor,” Mark proves he’s no stranger to the maritime industry. As his love for boating grew, he also became interested in the people who worked on boats.

Throughout Mark Cronin’s career, his most popular shows have often been house-based reality series like The Surreal Life and Flavor of Love. On these shows, a group of people live in a mansion and compete with one another.

When different big personalities live and interact in a single small area, there’s bound to be a little bit of chaos. For Mark, it was his hidden goldmine. “A big part of what made them so tense and so great is because the people were crushed together,” he says.

Like the characters on Mark Cronin’s shows, yachties live and work in the same space. “They’re stuck,” he explains. “There’s nowhere to go. You’re in a tin can on the water.” In Mark Cronin’s mind, Below Deck gives viewers a similar experience to his former house-based shows with an added advantage of a real industry set on the floating waters.

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Mark Cronin on filming Below Deck: “The job of a reality producer is to tamp down the effect of the camera.”

From crazy drunk yacht guests, forbidden romances, and dramatic arguments, there’s never a dull moment on Below Deck. Sometimes, moments can be so shocking that it raises questions about whether everything the camera captures is real. “We are not creating a fake world,” Mark stresses. “If we weren’t shooting Below Deck, there would still be yachties on yachts doing all their crazy stuff without us there.”

While the yacht guests aren’t afraid to show their true colors, the addition of a camera can affect how yacht crew members react and respond. Unlike some other reality shows where people go to extremes to gain Instagram followers, these yachties work for their livelihoods on boats. If they act out of line, they can be fired and therefore jeopardize the rest of their career.

Mark Cronin uses the example of when a male yachtie might feel anger towards another co-worker. Since he doesn’t want to look like a jerk on camera, the yachtie will express his anger by snapping pencils in his bunk. That’s not too interesting for audiences to watch.

So, Mark and his team use a different approach to prevent the cameras from changing the yachties’ behavior. They might instead convince the yachtie to share his frustrations with his roommate. With this method, the crew member will verbally vent his irritation instead of un-naturally bottling it up, and audiences will see the situation play out on camera. For Mark and his team, that’s a win.

Mark believes encouraging more transparency helps bring out more genuine responses from yachties. “The idea is to try and actually make the show more real than it would otherwise be because the cameras have gotten in the way,” he says.

Mark Cronin shares what makes a reality TV show successful

With several long-lasting reality tv shows under his belt, Mark Cronin knows precisely what works and what doesn’t. While there have been many popular reality series focusing on more intense, serious matters, Mark has earned his success by keeping his shows lighthearted, funny, and a tad absurd. “You’re making reality television, but it’s an escape from everybody else’s reality,” he says.

When producing a reality television show, getting big ratings is always a large priority. How can a series attract a big following so there’s no fear of cancellation? In Mark’s opinion, clarity is necessary to gain a mass audience. “You can’t be esoterically complicated and difficult in the way you’re telling the story,” he explains. “It has to be a clear, well-told story that’s well understood by many.”

Mark Cronin on the good in Hollywood: “You’re exposed to different people, cultures, and ways of thinking.”

Mark Cronin proudly calls Hollywood and entertainment in general “one of the most important pillars of life on the planet.” Mark believes everyone in the entertainment business is responsible for making people laugh and cry from the art they create. “We make these wonderful stories, moments, characters, and circumstances for people,” he explains. “We take you all over the world and into the past and future.”

In a time like COVID, many audiences rely on entertainment to escape the current reality. When the news was full of pain and suffering, we turned to music, movies, and TV for comfort and exposure to different universes as well as new ways of thinking. “Hollywood was here for the world while we were all stuck,” Mark says.

As Hollywood keeps producing shows, films, and music, entertainment will be a solace for many.

Mark Cronin and the future of Below Deck

Below Deck has grown into a full-fledged franchise with 2 spinoffs: Below Deck Mediterranean and Below Deck Sailing Yacht. Mark Cronin shares that there are even more spin-offs to come, with one in Australia called Below Deck Down Under, one in Norway called Below Deck Adventure, and other working Below Deck concepts. “We definitely have things in the pipeline that are explorations of the Below Deck world,” he says.

Mark Cronin never fails to deliver genuine and light-hearted stories with series like Below Deck, and we can’t wait to see what he accomplishes next! Watch season 9 of Below Deck, airing Monday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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