Take off your clothes to make it in TV

Rita Ora runs around naked

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To truly succeed, however, a show needs more going for it to keep viewers once the novelty of watching naked bodies with blurred body parts wears off.

"The secret sauce of our show is not the fact that they're naked," says Denise Contis, West Coast head of production and development at Discovery. "I think it's the storytelling, the cast and a survival experience that's authentic."

Memorable characters make successful shows, "and it takes a big character to take off their clothes in front of a reality TV camera", Montgomery says.

Standards are the same at each show: male and female genitalia are blurred out, along with female breasts. Backsides are fair game. A graphic artist takes about a week to cleanse each episode of Naked and Afraid. A strategically placed flowerpot or sofa obscures the nude home shoppers in Buying Naked.

Discovery wasn't searching for a "naked" show when developing Naked and Afraid, Contis says. It wanted a new twist in the survival genre and, ultimately, the most elemental shelter is clothing.

Yet, let's face it: One hook is the question of whether a romance develops between two naked strangers left alone in the woods (except for the producers and camera crew, of course). It hasn't happened yet. The opposite is more likely: In one upcoming episode the two survivalists detest each other so much they agreed to separate until they were picked up at the end.

Romance is the point of Dating Naked. Susan Levison, head of programming at VH1, gave the series a green light her first day on the job last September and hurried to beat competitors to the air. Fox has its own naked dating show in the works but put it on hold during a management change.