Reality television

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This article is about the genre of TV shows. For the channel, see Zone Reality.

Reality television is a genre of television programming which presents supposedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and features ordinary people instead of professional actors. Although the genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television, the current explosion of popularity dates from around 2000. Documentaries, and nonfictional programming such as the news and sports shows are usually not classified as reality shows.

Many of the older secret-based shows, which derived much of their entertainment value from debate over how real they were or what the trick was, have been demystified. For instance, numerous magic tricks have been exposed. Professional Wrestling has left the kayfabe era, and the majority of Harlem Globetrotter games are known fakes . Reality television serves as a replacement in many ways to those types of entertainment.

Reality television covers a wide range of television programming formats, from game or quiz shows which resemble the frantic, often demeaning shows produced in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (a modern example is Gaki no tsukai), to surveillance- or voyeurism-focused productions such as Big Brother.

Critics say that the term "reality television" is somewhat of a misnomer. Such shows frequently portray a modified and highly influenced form of reality, with participants put in exotic locations or abnormal situations, sometimes coached to act in certain ways by off-screen handlers, and with events on screen manipulated through editing and other post-production techniques.

Origins of reality television

the Colbert report is the only TV show to watch REALITY HAS BECOME A COMMODITY

Types of reality TV

There are a number of sub-categories of reality television.

REALITY HAS BECOME A COMMODITY

Self-improvement/makeover

Some reality television shows cover a person or group of people improving some part of their lives. The British show Changing Rooms, which began in 1996 (later remade in the U.S. as Trading Spaces) was the first such show. Sometimes the same group of people are covered over an entire season (as in The Swan and Celebrity Fit Club), but usually there is a new target for improvement in each episode. Despite differences in the content, the format is usually the same: first the show introduces the subject or subjects in their natural environment, and shows us the less-than-ideal conditions they are currently in. Then the subject(s) meet with a group of experts, who give the subject(s) instructions on how to improve things; they offer aid and encouragement along the way. Finally, the subject(s) are placed back in their environment and they, along with their friends and family and the experts, appraise the changes that have occurred. Examples of self-improvement or makeover shows include, besides the previously-mentioned ones, The Biggest Loser (which covers weight loss), Extreme Makeover (entire physical appearance), Queer Eye For The Straight Guy (style and grooming), Supernanny (child-rearing), and Made (attaining difficult goals), Beauty and the Geek (8 academically challenged beauties and 8 socially awkward geeks pair up to help each other overcome their weaknesses).

Similarly, Pimp My Ride and Overhaulin' show vehicles being overhauled.

As with game shows, a gray area exists between such reality TV shows and more conventional formats. The show This Old House, which began in 1979, for example, shows people renovating a house; media critic Jeff Jarvis has speculated that it is "the original reality TV show."

Dating shows

Some shows, such as Blind Date, show people going out on dates with no element of competition. Antecedents may be found in The Dating Game from the 1960s.

Talk shows

Though the traditional format of a "talk show" is that of a host interviewing a featured guest or discussing a chosen topic with a guest or panel of guests, the advent of Trash TV shows has often made people group the entire category in with reality television. Programs like Ricki Lake, The Jerry Springer Show and others generally recruit(ed) everyday guests by advertising a potential topic that producers were working on for a future program. Topics are frequently outrageous and are chosen in the interest of creating on screen drama, tension or outrageous behaviour. Though not explicitly reality television by traditional standards, this (allegedly) real depiction of someone's life, even if only in a brief interview format, is frequently considered akin to broader-scale reality TV programming.

Hidden cameras

Another type of reality programming features hidden cameras rolling when random passersby encounter a staged situation. Candid Camera, which first aired on television in 1948, pioneered the format. Modern variants of this type of production include Just Kidding!, Punk'd and Trigger Happy TV. The series Scare Tactics is another recent program in which the goal is to frighten contestants rather than just befuddle or amuse them.

Hoaxes

In hoax reality shows, the entire show is a prank played on one or more of the cast members, who think they are appearing in a legitimate reality show; the rest of the cast are actors who are in on the joke. Like hidden camera shows, these shows are about pulling pranks on people, although in these shows the hoax is more elaborate (lasting an entire season), and the cameras are out in the open. Also, the point of such shows often is to parody the conventions of the reality TV genre. The first such show was 2003's The Joe Schmo Show; other examples are My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss (modelled after The Apprentice), My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, Space Cadets (which convinced the hoax targets that they were being flown into space) and Invasion Iowa (in which a town was convinced William Shatner was filming a movie there). These shows are also suspected to be fake, as in all likelyhood the person who the prank is being played on is really an actor who is in on the con with the rest of the cast.

Other shows, though not entirely a hoax show, have offered some misleading information to some cast members in order to add a wrinkle to the competition. Examples include Boy Meets Boy and Joe Millionaire.

Analysis and criticism

Part of reality television's appeal is due to its ability to place ordinary people in extraordinary situations. For example, on the ABC show, The Bachelor, an eligible male dates a dozen women simultaneously, traveling on extraordinary dates to scenic locales. Reality television also has the potential to turn its participants into national celebrities, outwardly in talent and performance programs such as Pop Idol, though frequently Survivor and Big Brother participants also reach some degree of celebrity.

Is "reality" a misnomer?

Some commentators have said that the name "reality television" is an inaccurate description for several styles of program included in the genre. In competition-based programs such as Big Brother and Survivor, and other special-living-environment shows like The Real World, the producers design the format of the show and control the day-to-day activities and the environment, creating a completely fabricated world in which the competition plays out. Producers specifically select the participants, and use carefully designed scenarios, challenges, events, and settings to encourage particular behaviors and conflicts. Mark Burnett, creator of Survivor and other reality shows, has agreed with this assessment, and avoids the word "reality" to describe his shows; he has said, "I tell good stories. It really is not reality TV. It really is unscripted drama."

Even in docusoap series following people in their daily life, producers may be highly deliberate in their editing strategies, able to portray certain participants as heroes or villains, and may guide the drama through altered chronology and selective presentation of events. Some participants have stated afterwards that they altered their behavior to appear more crazy or emotional in order to get more camera time.

Several former reality show participants have spoken publicly about their experiences and the strategies used on reality shows. Irene McGee from The Real World Seattle has done public speaking tours about the negative and misleading aspects of reality TV. In 2004, VH1 aired a program called "Reality TV Secrets Revealed" that detailed various misleading tricks of reality TV producers. It was revealed that programs The Restaurant and Survivor had at times recreated incidents that had actually occurred but were not properly recorded by cameras to the required technical standard, or had not been recorded at all. In order to get the footage, the event was restaged for the cameras. Other shows (most notably Joe Millionaire) combined audio and video from different times, or different sets of footage, to make it look like participants were doing something they were not.

Some shows have faced speculation that the participants themselves are involved in fakery, acting out storylines that were planned in advance by producers. The show The Hills is one notable example; one TV critic wrote that the show's "situations and dialogue come straight from a page." On the show Hell's Kitchen, it has been speculated that the customers eating meals prepared by the contestants are in fact paid actors. Nevertheless, there has been no direct evidence presented yet that any such program has been scripted or "rigged," as with the 1950s television quiz show scandals.

Political impact

Reality television's global success has been, in the eyes of some analysts, an important political phenomenon. In some authoritarian countries, reality television voting represents the first time many citizens have voted in any free and fair wide-scale elections. In addition, the frankness of the settings on some reality shows present situations that were formerly taboo in certain orthodox cultures, like the pan-Arab version of Big Brother, which shows men and women living together. Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard, noting both of these issues, wrote that "the best hope of little Americas developing in the Middle East could be Arab-produced reality TV." Similarly, in China, after the finale of the 2005 season of Super Girl (the local version of Pop Idol) drew an audience of around 400 million people, and 8 million text message votes, the state-run English-language newspaper Beijing Today ran the front-page headline "Is Super Girl a Force for Democracy?" The government has threatened to censor the show, citing both its democratic nature and its excessive vulgarity, or "worldliness". .

Other

In Australia, following an alleged sexual assault shown live on the web streamed version of Big Brother Australia, there was a political and media backlash that prompted the Australian Government to commission a report on the incident.

Popularity and ratings

Network executives have expressed concern in the media that reality-television programming is limited in its appeal for DVD reissue and syndication, although it remains lucrative for short-term profits. This concern has been shown to be misguided as DVDs for reality shows have sold briskly. Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, The Amazing Race, Project Runway and America's Next Top Model have all ranked in the top DVDs sold on Amazon.com. DVDs of The Simple Life have outranked scripted shows like The O.C. and Desperate Housewives. Additionally, many reality shows have been successfully syndicated, including (among others) The Amazing Race, America's Next Top Model, The Real World and, beginning in September 2006, American Idol Rewind. Moreover, COPS has had huge success in syndication, direct response sales and DVD. A FOX staple since 1989, "COPS" is currently (2006) in its 19th season, having well outlasted scripted police shows like NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues.

In late 2004-early 2005, the genre's popularity seemed to be waning in America, with long-running reality shows such as The Apprentice scoring lower-than-expected ratings. The Will became one of a handful of series in television history to be cancelled after only one broadcast. However, this may have been only a temporary blip in the genre's popularity: the finale of VH1's Flavor of Love drew 6 million viewers in 2006, making it the highest-rated show in the history of that network. Similarly, UPN's number one-rated show in 2006 was the reality show America's Next Top Model. And in March 2006, a fifth-season episode of American Idol drew some of the show's best ratings yet, overshadowing even important events such as the 2006 Winter Olympics, NBA Playoffs, March Madness, and the 2006 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Currently there are at least two television channels devoted exclusively to reality television: Fox Reality in the United States, and Zone Reality in the UK.

Predictors in popular culture

A number of works beginning in the 1940s anticipated elements of reality television that would later appear. These harbingers tended to be set in a dystopian future, with subjects being recorded against their will, and they often involved violence.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a book by George Orwell, depicted a world in which two-way television screens are fitted in every room, so that people's actions are monitored at all times. (The all-seeing authority figure in the book, "Big Brother", inspired the name of the pioneering reality series Big Brother.)
Survivor (1965), a science fiction story by Walter F. Moudy, depicted the 2050 Olympic War Games between Russia and the United States. The games are fought to show the world the futility of war and thus deter further conflict. Each side has one hundred soldiers who fight with rifles, mortars and machine guns in a large natural arena. The goal is for one side to wipe out the other; the few who survive the battle become heroes and win 100 billion dollars in "reparations" for their country. The games are televised, complete with color commentary discussing the tactics, the soldiers' personal backgrounds, and slow-motion replays of their deaths.
"The Prize of Peril" (1958) was a short story by science-fiction author Robert Sheckley about a television show in which a contestant volunteers to be hunted for a week by trained killers, with a large cash prize if he survives. It was adapted in 1970 as the German TV movie Das Millionenspiel , and again in 1983 as the French movie Le Prix du Danger.

File:Empire TV.jpg

Spock and McCoy await their turn in the limelight in the Star Trek episode Bread and Circuses.

Bread and Circuses (1968) was an episode of the TV show Star Trek in which the crew visits a planet resembling the Roman Empire, but with 20th century technology. The planet's "Empire TV" features regular gladiatorial games, with the announcer urging viewers at home to vote for their favorites, stating, "This is your program. You pick the winner." The show included several jabs at real-world television, such as a praetorian threatening, "You bring this network's ratings down, Flavius, and we'll do a special on you!"
The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968) was a BBC television play in which a dissident in a dictatorship is forced onto a secluded island and taped for a reality show in order to keep the masses entertained.
The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (1974), a novel by D.G. Compton (also published as The Unsleeping Eye), was about a woman dying of cancer whose last days are recorded without her knowledge for a television show. It was later adapted as the 1980 French movie "La Mort en Direct" (released in the USA as "Deathwatch").
Network (1976) was a film predictive of a number of trends in broadcast television, including reality programming. One subplot featured network executives negotiating with an urban terrorist group for the production of a weekly series, each episode of which was to feature an act of terrorism.
Shock Treatment (1981), the sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, places the action in a town that has been entirely transformed into a TV studio.
The Running Man (1982) was a book by Stephen King depicting a game show in which a contestant flees around the world from "hunters" trying to chase him down and kill him; it has been speculated that the book was inspired by Robert Sheckley's The Prize of Peril. The book was loosely adapted as a 1987 movie of the same name (see entry for both). The movie removed most of the reality-TV element of the book: its competition now took place entirely within a large TV studio, and more closely resembled an athletic competition (though a deadly one).
Vengeance on Varos (1985) was an episode of the TV show Doctor Who in which the population of a planet watches the torture and executions of those who oppose the government on live television. The planet's political system is based on the leaders themselves facing disintegration if the population votes 'no' to their propositions. This episode is often credited as the origins of "voting someone off".

Pop culture references

Some scripted works have used reality television as a plot device:

Real Life (1979) is a comedic film about the creation of a show similar to An American Family gone horribly wrong.
Louis the 19th, King of the Airwaves (1994) is a Quebecois film about a man who signs up to star in a 24-hour-a-day reality TV show. It was later remade as Edtv (1999).
The Truman Show (1998) is a film about a man who discovers that his entire life is being staged and filmed for a 24-hour-a-day reality TV show.
Series 7: The Contenders (2001) is a film about a reality show in which contestants have to kill each other to win.
Tomb of the Werewolf (2004) is a film about a man searching for treasure while being followed by a reality show film crew, but he encounters a werewolf and a vampire instead.
Bad Wolf (2005) is an episode of the TV show Doctor Who in which the characters find themselves trapped in various real-life reality television shows.
The Comeback (2005) satirizes the indignity of reality TV by presenting itself as "raw footage" of a new reality show documenting the attempted comeback of has-been star Valerie Cherish.
American Dreamz (2006) is a film set partially on an American Idol-like show.

In addition, a number of scripted television shows have taken the form of documentary-type reality TV shows, in "mockumentary" style. The first such show was the BBC series Operation Good Guys, which premiered in 1997. Other examples include People Like Us, Trailer Park Boys, The Office, Drawn Together and Reno 911!.

Hypodermic Syringe Theory

The Hypodermic Syringe Theory is influences on a particular audience (mainly young children) and then go out and use those influences in real life. The media uses this through reality TV in the sense that children will watch a programme such as "power rangers" and go out into the real world and perform such actions (attempting martial arts, in this instance). There have been many debates over the years on this theory yet little has been done about it.

Reality films

Several reality-TV-style films have been produced; these films differ from conventional documentaries in that they create new, sometimes artificial, situations instead of simply trying to document life as it is. Allen Funt, a pioneer in conventional reality television with Candid Camera, was also a pioneer in the "reality film" genre with the hidden camera movie What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? in 1970. The TV show Jackass spawned two films: Jackass: The Movie in 2001 and Jackass: Number Two in 2006. A similar Finnish show, Extreme Duudsonit, was adapted for the film The Dudesons Movie in 2006. The producers of The Real World created The Real Cancun in 2003. Games People Play: New York was released in 2004; it was possibly the first reality-TV-style film without a basis in a television series.

External links

Pitch A Reality TV Show Idea To Producers
Reality TV Forum - Free friendly forum for members to discuss the shows.
Reality TV casting tips - an article with interviews from reality TV casting directors about how to audition for a reality TV show.
Unreality TV - UK reality TV site - news, gossip and community
Reality TV Magazine - Blog focusing exclusively on American reality TV shows and stars
Reality Blurred: the reality TV news digest - Daily summaries of American reality TV news and gossip
Television Without Pity - Recaps of many American reality TV shows
RealityBlogs.com - A blog about watching reality TV; perspective on what's real and what's "reality"

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