Decades before it saturated the airwaves, Dan Jenkins and Bud Shrake actually invented reality TV, and skewered it into a comic novel that was way ahead of its time. Frank Mallory is a big gun at one of the four major networks. After Frank struggles to fill all his number-four network's prime-time slots he is forced him to create a show called "Just Up The Street", which is meant to entertain ordinary Americans with the "real" lives of other ordinary Americans.