No Balloon? Point, Click, Get on TV THERE are better ways to be selected for a reality TV show than by crashing a White House state dinner or concocting a balloon hoax. CASTING CALL Mark Yawitz runs the Web's RealityWanted. A growing number of Web sites now play the role of middleman, connecting aspiring contestants with casting directors. And as the reality genre has thrived, so has the cottage industry of online talent scouts that serve it - sites like RealityWanted, Talent6 and GotCast, where people can find casting calls for TV shows and submit their résumés, often for a monthly fee. "The lengths that people will go to just to get on these shows is pretty ridiculous," said Roz Taylor-Jordan of Cast Iron Productions, who is casting season five of "America's Got Talent" on NBC. She looks favorably on the casting sites. "We can't be everywhere all the time, so the more people I have mining for me, the better," she said. From the perspective of an aspiring contestant, the sites make fame look just a few clicks away. "Jerry Seinfeld is hand-selecting couples for his brand new NBC comedy series about married life," says a notice posted prominently on RealityWanted. We need couples who bicker about NOTHING! The site lets people "apply now" to that show and others, like "The Bachelorette" on ABC. Richard Heene, who admitted to lying to authorities about his son being carried away in a helium balloon, was a member of RealityWanted, one of countless people looking for fame - or perhaps just employment - from the reality TV boom. In a down economy, some publicity seekers on these Web sites are really just job seekers, applying for weight-loss shows and dating competitions the way others apply for office jobs on Monster. "At the end of the day," said Lisa Berger, an executive vice president at E!, "these people want two things: they want fame and they want money." (It is unclear how Bravo, the NBC-owned cable channel behind "The Real Housewives of D.C.," met Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple who shook President Obama's hand after gaining entrance to the White House last month. The "Housewives" franchise did not hold public casting calls for this version of the show.) Casting directors say they lean on Craigslist, Facebook, sites like RealityWanted and InfoList, and their own databases of contestants. The matchmaking works in both directions: casting calls for reality shows in New York and Los Angeles are regularly advertised on Craigslist, and some talent agencies use Facebook to urge reality TV fans to apply. Reality TV is competitive, and contestants will go to great lengths for a leg up. Talent6 charges its members $35 a month. RealityWanted has a tiered pricing system: access is free, but for $4 or $8 a month, people can get extras like instant alerts about casting calls. Some big shows - like "America's Got Talent," which draws 100,000 applicants a year - don't need to recruit so aggressively, but for other shows, these sites play an important role. "They cater to what we're looking for," said Jodi Thomas, a casting director for "The Biggest Loser" and other shows. Broadly speaking, she said, this means people with outgoing personalities whom viewers can relate to. Ms. Thomas was in Detroit and Chicago last week to recruit families for "Losing It With Jillian," a weight loss show on NBC with the trainer Jillian Michaels of "The Biggest Loser." Beforehand, she posted an ad on RealityWanted asking - in all capital letters - "Are you ready to change you and your loved one's lives? NBC's Jillian Michaels is coming to your home! Dozens of people applied online. Potential contestants "think we're going to pay more attention if they're on these sites, and it's true," Ms. Thomas said. Indeed, in early October, just days before the Heene family's nationally televised balloon stunt, Ms. Thomas noticed the Heenes in an audition tape for a cable game show (for contractual reasons, she can't say which one). But she rejected them, she said, because "something seemed off." She recalled thinking: "Great story, great family, but something's not right." Eliminating people who are desperate or unhinged is one of the hardest parts of the job, Ms. Thomas said. The middleman sites do not conduct background checks, so it falls to the production company to ferret out people with problems. With hundreds of reality shows on television or in production, casting is always happening. Channels like Bravo, E! and VH1 ask casting directors for people who meet certain criteria, and the directors come back, ideally, with lists of candidates. "For me, it's good because my whole job is to get the word out to as many people as possible," Ms. Taylor-Jordan said. The sites do put up filters. If a show is looking, say, for women in their 40s, a man in his 30s would find it difficult to apply. "They come back with a tailor-made list of people, which we can then whittle down," said Damla Dogan, a vice president at the E! channel. For those who do not make the cut, there is still hope: producers from daytime talk shows like "Dr. Phil" and "The Tyra Banks Show" regularly book people who have posted their résumés on RealityWanted.