BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. • Here’s a new economic indicator: the diminishing level of glamour on Paris Hilton’s reality-TV show.

Contestants in the second season of “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF” are living in a mansion that costs half as much as the home the show rented last season. Trips to New York and Tokyo are out this year, as the show’s production budget has been cut by 10 percent.

With the recession eating into advertising revenue at TV networks, a popular solution has emerged – even cheaper reality TV.

Reality shows already were TV’s low-budget alternative. Producing one on a broadcast network can cost about $950,000 per episode, versus $1.7 million for a scripted drama, largely because reality shows don’t use expensive actors and writers. And advertisers like how reality TV can give them inexpensive airtime if they give the production free stuff and services. Add it all up, and a network can eke out a profit – even if a reality show’s audience is fairly small.

So in this downturn, as Americans are clipping coupons, eating at home more and doing whatever it takes to cut their budgets, they can turn on their sets and find that TV is being frugal, too. There are more reality-TV shows, and less elegant ones at that.

For instance, unlike the cool $1 million available to the last contestant of CBS’s “Survivor,” the top queen of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which just finished on Viacom’s Logo network, received a magazine photo spread, a role in two ad campaigns and $20,000 – “courtesy of Absolut Vodka and MAC Cosmetics.”

“There’s just less money around,” said Michael Hirschorn, co-executive producer of the Paris Hilton show, as he sat outside its sun-drenched set in a modernistic building overlooking the San Fernando Valley. “The economy’s a mess, so all of us have to work more efficiently.”

MTV, which plans to air the new Hilton show this summer, is filling more airtime with new reality series rather than reruns. Even so, its programming costs are down 17 percent per half hour, said Tony DiSanto, head of programming at the Viacom-owned network.

One new show debuting next week on MTV, “College Life,” even cut out the director and camera operators by distributing $500 handheld video cameras to freshman and sophomore students in Madison, Wis.

“Safe to say, it’s probably 35 percent less expensive than a similar half hour of reality drama,” DiSanto said.

The economics of reality shows benefit from cost-saving “trade outs” from sponsors, such as free helicopter rides, air travel and dinners at fancy restaurants.

And the shows are more malleable to advertisers who are pushing harder to integrate their brands directly into shows, as a way to get in front of consumers who can skip commercials with digital video recorders.

Garnier Fructis sponsors a beauty makeover segment on “American Idol Extra,” and Charmin gives toilet paper to contestants in remote places on “Survivor.”

Working those promotions into reality shows takes as little as a few months. Meanwhile, product placements on scripted dramas often need a lead time of a year or longer.

On top of the lower production costs that reality shows enjoy, they also have tremendous long-term earning potential.

While a scripted series can be lucrative if it completes three seasons – so it can be resold for domestic reruns, in international markets and on DVD – reality shows don’t need to run as long before the rights to their underlying format, the basis of the show, can be sold overseas.

Some formats sell for millions of dollars.

It’s why versions of “American Idol,” whose format is owned by Bertelsmann AG’s FremantleMedia, are all over the world, and why Ish Entertainment, the creator of Hilton’s show, licensed the format to ITV to make “Paris Hilton’s Best British Friend,” which aired this year.

MORE REALITY TV

Reality programming is drawing more interest from around the industry, as executives look to pare costs. At broadcast networks such as ABC, NBC, CBS and The CW, 32 new reality shows have been ordered, are in production or are being developed, according to David Lyle, the president of Fox Reality Channel, who keeps a running count. At the same time last year, that number was 21.

At cable networks, there are 160 new shows in that state, compared with 109 last year.

The era of one-price-fits-all-songs on iTunes came to an end Tuesday, April 7, 2009 as Apple Inc., the Internet’s dominant digital music store, ended its practice of selling all songs for 99 cents each. Photo by (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file)

Paul Sakuma