In reality tv, every word spoken by any person is transcribed, for easy logging and reference.  This includes every minute in “the house”, all confessionals, all interviews, and any time they spend talking to themselves.

This is done by getting dailies dubbed to DVD as quickly as possible, and sent to a transcription house.  Once each day of shooting is transcribed, a staff of people comb the day’s events and continue building the story left off from the previous day.  These logs also come in handy if editors need a quick bite of somebody saying a line that they need to push the story along.

This photo is the transcription log from one episode of one of our shows.