Bill Loud

An American Family is an American television documentary filmed from May 30 through December 31, 1971, and first aired in the United States on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) from January 11, 1973, to March 29, 1973. After being edited down from about 300 hours of raw footage, the series ran one season of 12 episodes on Thursday nights at 9:00 p.m.The groundbreaking documentary is considered the first reality series on American television. It was originally intended as a chronicle of the daily life of the Louds, an upper middle class family in Santa Barbara, California but ended up documenting the break-up of the family via the separation and subsequent divorce of parents Bill and Pat Loud.A year after this program was broadcast, the BBC in 1974 filmed its own similar 12-episode program, called The Family, focusing on the working-class Wilkins family, of Reading, Berkshire, England.

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