It's Real TV

In the competitive world of reality TV, producer Sallyann Salsano just might be queen of the hill.

Salsano, founder and president of 495 Productions, is behind some of the biggest "yes they really did that" hits on television, from MTV's Jersey Shore to Spike's Tattoo Nightmares.

Prior to the launch of 495 in 2006, she served as as producer for Sally Jessy Raphael and as a show runner for shows including Fox's hit The Bachelor. It's safe to say she's had her finger on the pop-culture pulse for some time.

What's Salsano's secret? Market research? Audience testing? She claims it's much simpler than that.

With an infectious laugh, Salsano says, "Nine out of 10 shows I work on are ones that I literally love and would watch even if they weren't mine. Even though I've seen them in the editing bay, I'll tune when it airs on TV! I genuinely love pop culture. Yesterday I probably watched 14 hours of reality TV."

She adds, "I think doing reality TV if you don't like it is probably the worst thing in the world. It's not the kind of job where you go home at the end of the day and push stuff aside on your desk."

Salsano is a famously hands-on producer, and those work days can stretch out endlessly thanks to the very nature of reality TV.

For instance, her new project ExIsle, which debuted this month on WE tv, shot on location in the Dominican Republic. Salsano was on site in the un-air-conditioned guest house that served as a control room.

"You can put me in the nicest place or put me a in a garage, it's the same to us," she shrugs. "It's easier in post if you're there 24 hours. If you're watching tapes after the fact it's impossible for me to watch the feed from all 11 cameras, running 20 hours a day – but if you're in the control room you see everything at once."

Time in the control room also gives producers a preview of just how compelling a show will be. "You know the shows are good when your staff's shift ends and they don't leave because they want to see what happens! When the lighting guys show up in the morning and ask what happened last night, you know you've got something."

She's particularly proud of ExIsle, which unites five couples who have broken up without letting go of their emotional ties.

"Most shows are like 'how can we can keep people together,' and this one is 'maybe you should break up'!" The show uses boot camp techniques to encourage the cast to self-reflect and move on. "We were sitting in the control room with tears in our eyes because we've all been that person who hangs on too long, and we've all been that person who tortures someone else."

This is a persistent theme for Salsano – not only does she make the shows she'd like to watch, she makes the shows she feels we've all lived.

"Watch ExIsle you say, 'Oh, I've done all of this. If it's not you, it's your sister or your friend. I think people on the best reality shows do things we've all done. We just didn't do them in front of a camera!" she laughs.

"There's an MTV show I did that I loved, literally loved, called Friend Zone. It's another one of those shows that captures something inside everyone. We've all had a friend that we're afraid to tell them how you feel, we've all had a crush and didn't know whether to tell the friend."

This is especially true for Jersey Shore, perhaps her biggest hit so far and a show that reflects her own experience as a 20-something Jersey native.

Up next on 495 Productions' slate is a new partnership with MTV's long-running docu-follow series True Life. As Salsano puts it, "they've made us part of the True Life family!"

Rather than taking a cast and placing them in a house or other situation together, each episode of True Life follows a different person who has an unusual facet in his or her life – past episodes have covered everything from heroin addiction to a sideline career in mixed martial arts.

"It was really interesting and fun and it took me back to my Sally Jessy Raphael roots," Salsano explains. "You're dealing with people in their own homes instead of a beach house or a resort – people who have problems or interests that maybe their own families don't know about."

As new projects come down the pike, Salsano plans to stay right where she is: in the control room, breathless to see what happens next.

"This is what I want to do. I'm not hoping to one day be a big screenwriter," she says firmly. "I love what I do, and I'm grateful to have the chance. You can't have a hit without a swing, and you're grateful for every swing that you get."