(FORTUNE Magazine) – Who's to blame for all this reality-based TV? It would be easy to single out the network heads. But as much as we would like to vote them off our island nation, the real culprit is Mary-Ellis Bunim. In 1992, Bunim and her partner, Jon Murray, created Real World for MTV, a show in which real hipsters emote in front of a cameraman (and millions of viewers). Since then the pair has created Road Rules (hipsters traveling and emoting) and Making the Band (hipsters forming a boy band and emoting). We caught up with Bunim to discuss the monster she's created.

Q. When you started Real World, did you realize that you were planting the seeds for a complete takeover of TV?

A. We knew from the first 15 minutes of shooting the pilot that voyeuristic TV was in our future. Who knew it would spawn a growth industry years later? And what took so long?

Q. What did take so long?

A. I don't know.

Q. Do you think [CBS CEO] Les Moonves has been quietly watching from the sidelines of your shoots?

A. Undoubtedly. [CBS] has often come to us with ideas for an older audience.

Q. Real World meets The Golden Girls?

A. We actually tried to sell that in Europe. I think a senior-citizen version of Real World would be hilarious. But it's not going to fly in this country.

Q. How did you come up with the idea for reality TV?

A. My background was soap operas. Jon came out of news and documentaries. We were both intrigued by An American Family, the old PBS series. I was a consultant to MTV on a scripted soap opera, which is an expensive format. We pitched Real World as a means to give them their own soap opera.

Q. Have you thought about ripping off PBS's Masterpiece Theatre for MTV?

A. We didn't rip off anything. We created a brand-new genre.

Q. Do you ever look back and think, I could have saved the lives of so many rats if I had just stuck to soap operas?

A. On Road Rules, we put more than one group on a desert island. They didn't have to eat rats, but live side by side with them. A lot of the missions on Survivor were generated first on Road Rules by the same staffers. Road Rules and Real World spawned all of this. Bunim/Murray has trained countless people in the industry, and a lot of these other companies are going after our people. We'd love to see residuals.

Q. Big Brother is painful to watch. What part of the Bunim/Murray formula did CBS ignore?

A. Let's start with the casting. Art direction. Shooting. Storytelling. Yes, it's a poor representation.