This article is about the genre of TV shows. For the European channel once called "Reality TV", see
Zone Reality.
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded.[1] Reality television began in 1948 with Alan Funt's TV series Candid Camera.[2] The genre exploded as a phenomenon around 1999–2000 with the success of such television series as Big Brother and Survivor.[1] Programs in the reality television genre are commonly called reality shows and often are produced in a television series. Documentaries, television news and sports television are usually not classified as reality shows.
The genre covers a wide range of television programming formats, from game show or quiz shows which resemble the frantic, Japanese variety shows produced in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (such as Gaki no tsukai), to surveillance- or voyeurism-focused productions such as Big Brother.[1] The most popular reality TV show for 2010-11 was American Idol, and the least popular was Shedding for the Wedding.[3]
Reality television frequently portrays a modified and highly influenced form of reality, at times utilizing sensationalism to attract audience viewers and increase advertising revenue.[4][5][6] Participants are often placed in exotic locations or abnormal situations,[1] and are often persuaded to act in specific scripted ways by off-screen "story editors" or "segment television producers", with the portrayal of events and speech manipulated and contrived to create an illusion of reality through direction and post-production editing techniques.[4][5][6]
Precedents for television that portrayed people in unscripted situations began in the 1940s. Debuting in 1948, Allen Funt's hidden camera Candid Camera show (based on his previous 1947 radio show, Candid Microphone) broadcast unsuspecting ordinary people reacting to pranks."[7] In 1948, talent search shows Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts featured amateur competitors and audience voting. The Miss America Pageant, first broadcast in 1954, was a competition where the winner achieved status as a national celebrity.[8]
In the 1950s, game shows Beat the Clock and Truth or Consequences involved contestants in wacky competitions, stunts, and practical jokes. The Groucho Marx-hosted game show, You Bet Your Life, was primarily composed of Marx' prescripted comebacks to what was most often candid interviews of the contestants, although some 'contestants' were actors.
The radio series Nightwatch (1951–1955), which tape-recorded the daily activities of Culver City, California police officers, also helped pave the way for reality television. The series You Asked For It (1950–1959), in which viewer requests dictated content, was an antecedent of today's audience-participation reality TV elements, in which viewers cast votes to help determine the course of events.
First broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964, the Granada Television series Seven Up!, broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary seven-year-olds from a broad cross section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life. Every seven years, a film documented the life of the same individuals during the intervening period, titled 7 Plus Seven, 21 Up, etc. The series was structured as a series of interviews with no element of plot. However, it did have the then-new effect of turning ordinary people into celebrities.
In the 1966 Direct Cinema film Chelsea Girls, Andy Warhol filmed various acquaintances with no direction given; the Radio Times Guide to Film 2007 stated that the film was "to blame for reality television."[9]
The first reality show in the modern sense may have been the 12-part 1973 PBS series An American Family, which showed a nuclear family (filmed in 1971) going through a divorce; unlike many later reality shows, it was more or less documentary in purpose and style. In 1974 a counterpart program, The Family, was made in the UK, following the working class Wilkins family of Reading. Other forerunners of modern reality television were the 1970s productions of Chuck Barris: The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show, all of which featured participants who were eager to sacrifice some of their privacy and dignity in a televised competition.[10] One Man and His Dog was a British Television series which began in 1976 featuring the participants of sheepdog trials. In 1978, Living in the Past recreated life in an Iron Age English village.
Reality television as it is currently understood can be directly linked to several television shows that began in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Canadian TV ran Thrill of a Lifetime, a fantasies-fulfilled reality show from 1982-88 which was revived in 2001-03.
In 1985, underwater cinematographer Al Giddings teamed with former Miss America, Shawn Weatherly, on the "Oceanquest" television series. "Oceanquest" chronicled Shawn Weatherly's adventures in learning to scuba dive, scuba diving in various exotic locales, and diving with sharks. The series aired on NBC and Shawn Weatherly was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in informational programming.[11]
COPS, which first aired in the spring of 1989 and came about partly due to the need for new programming during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike,[12] showed police officers on duty apprehending criminals; it introduced the camcorder look and cinéma vérité feel of much of later reality television.
The series Nummer 28, which aired on Dutch television in 1991, originated the concept of putting strangers together in the same environment for an extended period of time and recording the drama that ensued. Nummer 28 also pioneered many of the stylistic conventions that have since become standard in reality television shows, including a heavy use of soundtrack music and the interspersing of events on screen with after-the-fact "confessionals" recorded by cast members, that serve as narration. One year later, the same concept was used by MTV in their new series The Real World and Nummer 28 creator Erik Latour has long claimed that The Real World was directly inspired by his show.[13] However, the producers of The Real World have stated that their direct inspiration was An American Family.[14]
According to television commentator Charlie Brooker, this type of reality television was enabled by the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems for video (such as those produced by Avid Technology) in 1989. These systems made it easy to quickly edit hours of video footage into a usable form, something that had been very difficult to do before. (Film, which was easy to edit, was too expensive to shoot enough hours of footage with on a regular basis).[15]
The TV show Expedition Robinson, created by TV producer Charlie Parsons, which first aired in 1997 in Sweden (and was later produced in a large number of other countries as Survivor), added to the Nummer 28/Real World template the idea of competition and elimination, in which cast members/contestants battled against each other and were removed from the show until only one winner remained. (These shows are now sometimes called elimination shows).
Changing Rooms, a TV show that began in 1996, showed couples redecorating each others' houses, and was the first reality show[citation needed] with a self-improvement or makeover theme.
The 1980s and 1990s were also a time when tabloid talk shows came to rise, many of which featured the same types of unusual or dysfunctional guests that would later become popular as cast members of reality shows.
Reality television saw an explosion of global popularity starting in the summer of 2000, with the successes of Big Brother and Survivor (in the US).
In particular, Survivor and American Idol have both topped the US season-average television ratings since 2000. Survivor led the ratings in 2001–02, and Idol topped the ratings six consecutive years, from 2004–05 to 2009–10). The shows Survivor, the Idol series, the America's Next Top Model series, the Dancing With The Stars series, The Apprentice, Fear Factor and Big Brother have all had a global effect, having each been successfully syndicated in dozens of countries.
Reality television had a decline in viewership in 2001. Reality shows with low ratings included The Amazing Race, Lost (unrelated to the better-known serial drama of the same name) and The Mole, leading some to speculate that reality television was a temporary fad that had run its course.[16]
There have been at least three television channels devoted exclusively to reality television: Fox Reality in the United States, launched in 2005, Global Reality Channel in Canada in 2010, and Zone Reality in the United Kingdom, launched in 2002. (The Canadian and British channels still exist; Fox Reality ended in mid-2010). In addition, several other cable channels, such as Bravo, A&E, E!, VH1 and MTV, devote large portions of their programming to reality programs.[17] Mike Darnell, head of reality TV for the US Fox network, was quoted as saying that the broadcast networks (NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox) "might as well plan three or four [reality shows] each season because we're going to have them, anyway."[17]
During the early part of the 2000s, network executives expressed concern that reality-television programming was limited in its appeal for DVD reissue and syndication. Despite these concerns, 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, and in the mid-2000s, DVDs of The Simple Life outranked scripted shows like The O.C. and Desperate Housewives. Syndication, however, has indeed proven problematic; shows such as Fear Factor, COPS and Wife Swap in which each episode is self-contained can indeed be rerun fairly easily, but usually only on cable television and/or during the daytime (COPS and America's Funniest Home Videos being exceptions). Season-long competitions such as The Amazing Race, Survivor, and America's Next Top Model generally perform more poorly and usually must be rerun in marathons to draw the necessary viewers to make it worthwhile. (Even in these cases, it is not always successful, Dancing with the Stars was picked up for a ten-season run on GSN in 2012, has run in marathon format, but has nonetheless experienced very poor ratings.) Another option is to create documentaries around series including extended interviews with the participants and outtakes not seen in the original airings; the syndicated series American Idol Rewind is an example of this strategy.
COPS has had huge success in syndication, direct response sales and DVD. A FOX staple since 1989, COPS is, as of 2010, in its 23rd season, having outlasted all competing scripted police shows. Another series that has seen wide success is "Cheaters", which has been running for 10 seasons in the US and is syndicated in over 100 countries worldwide. In 2007, according to the Learning and Skills Council, one in seven UK teenagers hopes to gain fame by appearing on reality television.[18]
In 2001, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences added the reality genre to the Emmy Awards with the category of Outstanding Reality Program. In 2003, to better differentiate between competition and informational reality programs, a second category Outstanding Reality-Competition Program was added. In 2008, a third category, Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program was added.
In 2010, the Tester became the first reality television show ever aired over a videogame console. The show entered its second season in the same year.[19]
By 2012, many of the long-running reality television show franchises had begun to age, setting up declines in ratings across the format. This, along with increasing audience fracture from competing programs on broadcast and cable television, has raised questions about the long-term viability of reality television on the broadcast networks.[20]
The genre of reality television consists of various subgenres.
In many reality TV programs, camera shooting and footage editing give the viewer the impression that they are passive observers following people going about their daily personal and professional activities; this style of filming is often referred to as fly on the wall or factual television. Story "plots" are often constructed via editing or planned situations, with the results resembling soap operas—hence the terms docusoap and docudrama. In other shows, a cinéma vérité style is adopted, where the filmmaker is more than a passive observer—their presence and influence is greatly manifest.
Within documentary-style reality television are several subcategories or variants:
- Special living environment
- Some documentary-style programs place cast members, who in most cases previously did not know each other, in artificial living environments; The Real World is the originator of this style. In almost every other such show, cast members are given a specific challenge or obstacle to overcome. Road Rules, which started in 1995 as a spin-off of The Real World, started this pattern: the cast traveled across the country guided by clues and performing tasks.
- Big Brother is probably the best known program of this type in the world with different versions produced in many countries around the globe. Another example of a show in this category The 1900 House, involves historical re-enactment with cast members hired to live and work as people of a specific time and place. 2001's Temptation Island achieved some notoriety by placing several couples on an island surrounded by single people in order to test the couples' commitment to each other. U8TV: The Lofters combined the "special living environment" format with the "professional activity" format noted below; in addition to living together in a loft, each member of the show's cast was hired to host a television program for a Canadian cable channel.
- Celebrities
- Another subset of fly-on-the-wall-style shows involves celebrities. Often these show a celebrity going about their everyday life: notable examples include The Anna Nicole Show, The Osbournes, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, and Hogan Knows Best. In other shows, celebrities are put on location and given a specific task or tasks; these include Celebrity Big Brother, The Simple Life, Tommy Lee Goes to College, The Surreal Life, and I'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here!. VH1 has created an entire block of shows dedicated to celebrity reality, known as "Celebreality".
- Professional activities
- Some documentary-style shows portray professionals either going about day-to-day business or performing an entire project over the course of a series. No outside experts are brought in (at least, none appear on screen) to either provide help or to judge results. The earliest example[dubious – discuss] (and the longest running reality show of any genre) is COPS which has been airing since 1989, preceding by many years the current reality show phenomenon.
- Other examples of this type of reality show include the American shows Miami Ink, The First 48, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Dog Whisperer, American Chopper and Deadliest Catch; the British shows Airport, Police Stop! and Traffic Cops; the Australian shows Border Security and Bondi Rescue, and the New Zealand show Motorway Patrol. The US cable networks TLC and A&E in particular show a number of this type of reality show.
- VH1's 2001 show Bands on the Run was a notable early hybrid, in that the show featured four unsigned bands touring and making music as a professional activity, but also pitted the bands against one another in game show fashion to see which band could make the most money.
Ethnic American
The most recent subset of documentary-style reality television programming is the Ethnic American subcategory. On November 13, 2011 "All-American Muslim" premiered on The Learning Channel (TLC). The show followed five Lebanese-American Shia Muslim families living in Dearborn, Michigan, the largest community of Muslim-Americans in the United States. It is believed that TLC cancelled the show after one season because advertisers had pulled advertising due to many Americans' resistance to a program that depicted Muslim-Americans in a positive light. TLC formally cited low ratings as the reason for cancelling the show.
On March 11, 2012 "Shahs of Sunset" debuted on Bravo. This Ethnic American program follows six affluent Persian-American friends who live in Beverly Hills, CA. The Los Angeles area has notoriously been referred to as "Tehrangeles" due to the large volume of Iranian-Americans who live in the LA area.
Both "All-American Muslim" and "Shahs of Sunset" have been considered controversial since these ethnic groups have been associated with terrorism. In addition, critics of Ethnic American reality shows frequently state that the portrayals of a particular ethnic group are inaccurate or fictionalized as opposed to "real".
Another sub-genre of reality TV is "reality competition" or so-called "reality game shows," which follow the format of non-tournament elimination contests. Typically, participants are filmed competing to win a prize, often while living together in a confined environment. In many cases, participants are removed until only one person or team remains, who/which is then declared the winner. Usually this is done by eliminating participants one at a time, in balloon debate style, through either disapproval voting or by voting for the most popular choice to win. Voting is done by the viewing audience, the show's own participants, a panel of judges, or some combination of the three.
A well-known example of a reality-competition show is the globally syndicated Big Brother, in which cast members live together in the same house, with participants removed at regular intervals by either the viewing audience or, in the case of the American version, by the participants themselves.
There remains some disagreement over whether talent-search shows such as the Idol series, America's Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, and Celebrity Duets are truly reality television, or just newer incarnations of shows such as Star Search. Although the shows involve a traditional talent search, the shows follow the reality-competition conventions of removing one or more contestants per episode and allowing the public to vote on who is removed; the Idol series also require the contestants to live together during the run of the show (though their daily life is never shown onscreen). Additionally, there is a good deal of interaction shown between contestants and judges. As a result, such shows are often considered reality television, and the American Primetime Emmy Awards have nominated both American Idol and Dancing with the Stars for the Outstanding Reality-Competition Program Emmy.
Modern game shows like Weakest Link, Greed, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, American Gladiators, Dog Eat Dog and Deal or No Deal also lie in a gray area: like traditional game shows (e.g., The Price Is Right, Jeopardy!), the action takes place in an enclosed TV studio over a short period of time; however, they have higher production values, more dramatic background music, and higher stakes than traditional shows (done either through putting contestants into physical danger or offering large cash prizes). In addition, there is more interaction between contestants and hosts, and in some cases they feature reality-style contestant competition and/or elimination as well. These factors, as well as these shows' rise in global popularity at the same time as the arrival of the reality craze, lead many people to group them under the reality TV umbrella as well as the traditional game show one.[21]
There are various hybrid reality-competition shows, like the worldwide-syndicated Star Academy, which combines the Big Brother and Idol formats, The Biggest Loser and The Pick-up Artist which combine competition with the self-improvement format, and American Inventor, which uses the Idol format for products instead of people. Some shows, such as Making the Band and Project Greenlight, devote the first part of the season to selecting a winner, and the second part to showing that person or group of people working on a project.
Popular variants of the competition-based format include the following:
- Dating-based competition
- Dating-based competition shows follow a contestant choosing one out of a group of suitors. Over the course of either a single episode or an entire season, suitors are eliminated until only the contestant and the final suitor remains. For a time, in 2001–2003, this type of reality show dominated the other genres on the major US networks. Shows that aired included The Bachelor, its spin-off The Bachelorette, as well as For Love or Money, Paradise Hotel, Temptation Island, Average Joe and Farmer Wants a Wife, among others. More recent such shows include Flavor of Love and its spin-offs I Love New York, Rock of Love, and The Cougar. This is one of the older variants of the format; shows such as The Dating Game that date to the 1960s had similar premises (though each episode was self-contained, and not the serial format of more modern shows).
- Job search
- In this category, the competition revolves around a skill that contestants were pre-screened for. Competitors perform a variety of tasks based on that skill, are judged, and are then kept or removed by a single expert or a panel of experts. The show is usually presented as a job search of some kind, in which the prize for the winner includes a contract to perform that kind of work. The show also features judges who act as counselors, mediators and sometimes mentors to help contestants develop their skills further or perhaps decide their future position in the competition. Most judges have a range of different personalities and are often hired by producers for their work experiences, achievements, popularity, charisma and entertainment purposes. Popstars, which debuted in 1999, may have been the first such show while Idol series has been longest and most popular franchise today with American Idol being the highest rating show in American history. It is also being showed around the world. The first job-search show which showed dramatic, unscripted situations may have been America's Next Top Model, which premiered in May 2003. Other examples include The Apprentice (which judges business skills), Hell's Kitchen and Top Chef (for chefs), Shear Genius (for hair styling), Project Runway (for clothing design), Top Design (for interior design), Stylista (for fashion editors), Last Comic Standing (for comedians), The Starlet and Scream Queens (for actresses), I Know My Kid's a Star (for child performers), On the Lot (for filmmakers), The Shot (for photographers), So You Think You Can Dance (for dancers), MuchMusic VJ Search (for television hosts), Dream Job (for sportscasters), Face Off (for make-up artists), and The Tester (for game testers). Some shows use the same format with celebrities: in this case, there is no expectation that the winner will continue this line of work, and prize winnings often go to charity. Examples of celebrity competition programs include Deadline, Celebracadabra, and The Celebrity Apprentice.
- Sports
- Most of these programs create a sporting competition among athletes attempting to establish their name in that sport. The Club, in 2002, was one of the first shows to immerse sport with reality TV, based on a fabricated club competing against real clubs in the sport of Australian rules football; the audience helped select which players played each week by voting for their favorites. Golf Channel's The Big Break is a reality show in which aspiring golfers compete against one another and are eliminated. The Contender, a boxing show, unfortunately became the first American reality show in which a contestant committed suicide after being eliminated from the show; the show's winner was promised a shot at a boxing world championship. Sergio Mora, who won, indeed got his title shot and became a world champion boxer. In The Ultimate Fighter participants have voluntarily withdrawn or expressed the desire to withdraw from the show due to competitive pressure.
- In sports shows, sometimes just appearing on the show, not necessarily winning, can get a contestant the job. The owner of UFC declared that the final match of the first season of Ultimate Fighter was so good, both contestants were offered a contract, and in addition, many non-winning "TUF Alumni" have prospered in the UFC. Many of the losers from World Wrestling Entertainment's Tough Enough and Diva Search shows have been picked up by the company.
- Not all sports programs, however, involve athletes trying to make a name in the sport. The 2006 US reality series Knight School focused on students at Texas Tech University vying for a walk-on (non-scholarship) roster position on the school's men's basketball team under legendary coach Bob Knight. In the Republic of Ireland, RTÉ One's Celebrity Bainisteoir involves eight non-sporting Irish celebrities becoming bainisteoiri (managers) of mid-level Gaelic football teams, leading their teams in an officially sanctioned tournament.
Some reality television shows cover a person or group of people improving their lives. 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 subjects in their current, less-than-ideal environment. Then the subjects meet with a group of experts, who give the subjects instructions on how to improve things; they offer aid and encouragement along the way. Finally, the subjects are placed back in their environment and they, along with their friends and family and the experts, appraise the changes that have occurred. Other self-improvement or makeover shows include "How Do I Look?" (fashion makeover). The Biggest Loser and Fat March, (which covers weight loss), Extreme Makeover (entire physical appearance), Queer Eye and What Not to Wear (style and grooming), Supernanny (child-rearing), Made (attaining difficult goals), Trinny & Susannah Undress (fashion makeover and marriage), Tool Academy (relationship building) and Charm School and From G's to Gents (self-improvement and manners).
Some shows make over part or all of a person's living space, work space, or vehicle. The American show This Old House was the first such show,[citation needed] debuting in 1979. The British show Changing Rooms, beginning in 1996 (later remade in the US as Trading Spaces) was the first such renovation show that added a game show feel with different weekly contestants.[citation needed] Other shows in this category include Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Debbie Travis' Facelift, Designed to Sell, While You Were Out, and Holmes on Homes. Pimp My Ride and Overhaulin' show vehicles being rebuilt. Some shows, such as Restaurant Makeover and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, show both the decor and the menu of a failing restaurant being remade. The issue of "making over" was taken to its social extreme with the British show Life Laundry, in which people who had become hoarders, even living in squalor, were given professional assistance.
As with game shows, a gray area exists between such reality TV shows and more conventional formats. Some argue the key difference is the emphasis of the human story and conflicts of reality shows, versus the emphasis on process and information in more traditional format shows.[citation needed] The show This Old House, which began in 1979, the start to finish renovation of different houses through a season; media critic Jeff Jarvis has speculated that it is "the original reality TV show."[22]
Another type of reality program is the social experiment that produces drama, conflict, and sometimes transformation. Wife Swap which began in 2003 on Channel 4 and has aired for four seasons on ABC is a notable example. People with different values agreed to live by each other's social rules for a brief period of time and sometimes learn from the experience. Other shows in this category include ITV's Holiday Showdown, Oxygen's The Bad Girls Club (lifestyles and actions), and Channel 4's Secret Millionaire. Faking It was a series where people had to learn a new skill and pass themselves off as experts in that skill. Shattered was a controversial 2004 UK series where contestants competed for how long they could go without sleep.
Another type of reality programming features hidden cameras rolling when random passers-by encounter a staged situation. Candid Camera, which first aired on television in 1948, pioneered the format. Modern variants of this type of production include Punk'd, Trigger Happy TV, Primetime: What Would You Do?,The Jamie Kennedy Experiment and Just For Laughs Gags. The series Scare Tactics and Room 401 are hidden-camera programs in which the goal is to frighten contestants rather than just befuddle or amuse them.
Not all hidden camera shows use strictly staged situations. For example, the syndicated show Cheaters, purports to use hidden cameras to record suspected cheating partners, although the authenticity of the show has been questioned.[23] Once the evidence has been gathered, the accuser confronts the cheating partner with the assistance of the host.
Supernatural and paranormal reality shows such as MTV's Fear, place participants into frightening situations which ostensibly involve the paranormal. In series such as Celebrity Paranormal Project, the stated aim is investigation, and some series like Scariest Places on Earth challenge participants to survive the investigation; whereas others such as Paranormal State and Ghost Hunters use a recurring crew of paranormal researchers. Shows such as Fear Factor and Scare Tactics dispense with supernatural overtones and aim solely at inciting fear or aversion in the cast. In general, the shows follow similar stylized patterns of night vision, surveillance, and hand held camera footage; odd angles; subtitles establishing place and time; desaturated imagery; rapid fire, MTV editing; and non-melodic soundtracks.
Noting the trend in reality shows that take the paranormal at face value, The New York Times culture editor Mike Hale[24] characterized ghost hunting shows as "pure theater" and compared the genre to professional wrestling or soft core pornography for its formulaic, teasing approach.[25]
In hoax reality shows, a false premise is presented to some of the series participants. In truth, the premise of the series is completely different. The rest of the cast are actors who are in on the joke. These shows often served to parody the conventions of the reality TV genre. Operation Repo is another show that uses this. They say it's reality but it really isn't because it is staged. The first such show was 2003's The Joe Schmo Show. Other examples are My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss (modeled after The Apprentice), My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, Hell Date (modeled after Blind Date), Superstar USA (modeled after American Idol), Space Cadets (which convinced the hoax targets that they were being flown into space), Punk'd (involving celebrities in staged crises), Invasion Iowa (in which a town was convinced that William Shatner was filming a movie there), and Reality Hell[26] (different target and premise every episode).
Other shows, though not hoax shows per se, have offered misleading information to some cast members in order to add a wrinkle to the competition. Examples include Boy Meets Boy and Joe Millionaire.
Reality television's global success has been, in the eyes of some analysts, an important political phenomenon. In some authoritarian countries, reality television voting has been 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 are often taboo in certain orthodox cultures, like Star Academy Arab World, which began airing in 2003, and which shows male and female contestants living together.[27] In 2004, journalist Matt Labash, noting both of these issues, wrote that "the best hope of little Americas developing in the Middle East could be Arab-produced reality TV."[28] 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?"[29] The Chinese government criticized the show, citing both its democratic nature and its excessive vulgarity, or "worldliness",[30] and in 2006 banned it outright.[31] Other attempts at introducing reality television have proved to be similarly controversial. A Pan-Arab version of Big Brother was cancelled in 2004 after less than two weeks on the air after a public outcry and street protests.[32]
In 2007, Abu Dhabi TV begain airing Million's Poet, a show featuring Pop Idol-style voting and elimination, but for the writing and oration of Arabic poetry. The show became popular in Arab countries, with around 18 million viewers,[33] partly because, according to analysts such as University of Pennsylvania professor Marwan Kraidy, it was able to combine the excitement of reality television with a traditional, culturally relevant topic.[34] In April 2010, however, the show also become a subject of political controversy, when Hissa Hilal, a 43-year-old female Saudi competitor, read out a poem criticizing her country's Muslim clerics.[35] Hilal received the highest scores from the judges throughout the competition, and came in third place overall.[33]
VH1 executive vice president Michael Hirschorn wrote that the plots and subject matters on reality television are more authentic and more engaging than in scripted dramas, writing that scripted network television "remains dominated by variants on the police procedural... in which a stock group of characters (ethnically, sexually, and generationally diverse) grapples with endless versions of the same dilemma. The episodes have all the ritual predictability of Japanese Noh theater," while reality TV is "the liveliest genre on the set right now. It has engaged hot-button cultural issues—class, sex, race—that respectable television... rarely touches."[36]
Television critic James Poniewozik wrote that reality shows like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers showcase working-class people of the kind that "used to be routine" on scripted network television, but that became a rarity in the 2000s: "The better to woo upscale viewers, TV has evicted its mechanics and dockworkers to collect higher rents from yuppies in coffeehouses."[37]
Lighting crews are typically present in the background of reality television shows.
Sound crews are typically present in the background of reality television shows.
Writers for reality television do not receive union pay-scale compensation and union representation, which significantly decreases expenditures for producers and broadcasters.[4] Many of the actors in reality television are compensated for their appearances.[23][38][39][40]
Product placement, whereby companies and corporations pay to have their products included in television programming for marketing purposes is highly prevalent in reality television.[41][42][43][44]
The following is a list of television shows with the most instances of product placement (11/07–11/08; Nielsen Media Research). Eight out of the ten are reality television shows.
- The Biggest Loser 1,026,248
- American Idol, 504,636
- Extreme Makeover: Home Edition', 13,371
- America's Toughest Jobs, 12,807
- Deal or No Deal, 2,292
- America's Next Top Model, 12,241
- Last Comic Standing, 1,993
- Kitchen Nightmares 1,853
- Hell's Kitchen, 1,807
Reality television shows like The Real World have received criticism for being staged.[45][46] Television writers such as Daniel Petrie Jr., president of the Writers Guild of America-West, complain that reality shows, which are described as unscripted, are in fact scripted.[4] Irene McGee, a castmember on the 1998 The Real World: Seattle, has done public speaking tours about the negative and misleading aspects of reality TV.
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."[47] Since social cognitive theory suggests that meaningful sources of identity can be discovered by teens who feel connected to what they’re viewing, reality T.V. can be considered quite influential. Therefore, when attempting to understand media’s role in the development of teens, it is crucial to be aware of the time teens devote to their shows like reality television due to this strong influence[48]
In 2004, VH1 aired a program called Reality TV Secrets Revealed, which detailed various misleading tricks of reality TV producers. According to the show, various reality shows (notably Joe Millionaire) combined audio and video from different times, or from different sets of footage, to create an artificial illusion of time chronology that did not occur, and a misportrayal of participant behaviors and actions.[49] An episode of the NBC drama Harry's Law used the industry jargon "Franken-bytes" and gave an example of the audio-splicing trick, which is used to force dialogue that is needed for the drama/story/script, but not actually said by the reality characters.
In docusoap programming, which follows 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. A Season 3 episode of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe included a segment on the ways in which selective editing can be used to this end.[15]
According to VH1's Reality TV Secrets Revealed, the shows 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 capture the drama, the event was restaged for the cameras.
Reality television shows have faced speculation that the participants themselves are involved in fakery, acting out storylines that have been planned in advance by producers.[4] The Hills is one notable example; the show has long faced allegations that its plots are scripted ahead of time. During the second season of Hell's Kitchen, it was speculated that the customers eating meals prepared by the contestants were in fact paid actors.[50] Some participants of reality shows have also stated afterwards that they altered their behavior to appear more crazy or emotional in order to get more camera time.
Daniel Petrie Jr. stated in 2004, "We look at reality TV, which is billed as unscripted, and we know it is scripted. We understand that shows don't want to call the writers writers because they want to maintain the illusion that it is reality, that stuff just happens."[4]
Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose family starred in the reality series Hogan Knows Best and Brooke Knows Best, explains in his 2009 autobiography My Life Outside the Ring, that paying unionized camera crews to film subjects continuously until something telegenic or dramatic occurs would prohibitively be expensive, and that as a result, such shows are "soft-scripted", and follow a tightly regimented shooting schedule that allows for typical work-related considerations such as lunch breaks. When filming soft-scripted shows, the subjects are given a scenario by the producers to act out, perhaps an exaggerated version of something likely to be encountered in their real lives, are informed of the outcome, and possible "beats" in between, and instructed to improvise, which Hogan says is a version of what he did as a professional wrestler. According to Hogan, this would result in behavior that members of his family would never exhibit in real life, as when his son, Nick tossed water balloons at neighbors from a window, or when his wife would wake up early to apply makeup and do her hair before camera crews arrived to film shots of the couple sleeping.[51]
Some shows, such as Survivor, do not allow the participants to wear clothing of their own choosing while on camera, to promote the participants' wearing of "camera-friendly colors" and to prevent the participants from wearing the same style and/or color of clothing. Additionally, some prohibited clothing includes that which features corporate logos.[52]
The premise of reality shows has been called into question. The winner of the first season, in 2003, of America's Next Top Model, Adrianne Curry, claimed that part of the grand prize she received, a modeling contract with Revlon, was for a much smaller amount of work than what was promised throughout the show.[53] During the airing of the first season of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, in which a group of both men and women vied for the heart of Tila Tequila, there were rumors that its star was not only heterosexual, but also had a boyfriend already.[54] The show's winner, Bobby Banhart, claimed that he never saw Ms. Tequila again after the show finished taping, and that he was not given her telephone number.[55]
Reality television has the potential to turn its participants into national celebrities, at least for a short period. This is most notable in talent-search programs such as the Idol and X Factor series, which have spawned music stars in many of the countries in which they have aired. Many other shows, however, have made at least temporary celebrities out of their participants; some participants have then been able to parlay this fame into media careers. For example, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a contestant on Survivor: The Australian Outback, later became a host on morning talk show The View; and Kristin Cavallari, who appeared on Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, has gone on to become a television host and actress. Michael "The Situation" Sorrentino, who appeared on MTV's Jersey Shore, was able to parlay his fame into lucrative endorsement deals. Jamie Chung, a former contestant on The Real World, went on to pursue an acting career, starring in films such as Sucker Punch. Tiffany Pollard, originally a contestant on Flavor of Love, was eventually given four additional reality series of her own on VH1: I Love New York, I Love New York 2, New York Goes to Hollywood and New York Goes to Work. In Britain, Jade Goody became famous after appearing on Big Brother 3 in 2002; she later appeared on other reality programs, wrote a bestselling autobiography and launched a top-selling perfume line. She later received extensive media coverage during her battle with cervical cancer, from which she died of in 2009. Two castmembers of non-athletic reality shows, Mike "The Miz" Mizanin (from The Real World and its spin-off, The Challenge) and David Otunga (from I Love New York), became professional wrestlers for World Wrestling Entertainment. Some reality-television alumni have parlayed their fame into paid public appearances.[56][57]
Several socialites, or children of famous parents, who were somewhat well-known before they appeared on reality television shows have become much more famous as a result, including Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Kelly Osbourne, Kim Kardashian, and many of the rest of the Kardashian family.
Reality TV contestants are sometimes derided as "Z-list celebrities", "Bravolebrities", and/or "nonebrities" who have done nothing to warrant their newfound fame.[58] Some have been lampooned for exploiting an undeserved "15 minutes of fame".[59] The Kardashian family is one such group of reality television personalities who were subject to this criticism in the 2010s.[59][60]
Some have claimed that the success of reality television is due to its ability to provide schadenfreude, by satisfying the desire of viewers to see others humiliated. American magazine Entertainment Weekly wrote, "Do we watch reality television for precious insight into the human condition? Please. We watch for those awkward scenes that make us feel a smidge better about our own little unfilmed lives."[61] Media analyst Tom Alderman wrote, "There is a sub-set of Reality TV that can only be described as Shame TV because it uses humiliation as its core appeal."[62]
Television critic James Poniewozik has disagreed with this assessment, writing, "for all the talk about 'humiliation TV,' what's striking about most reality shows is how good humored and resilient most of the participants are: the American Idol rejectees stubbornly convinced of their own talent, the Fear Factor players walking away from vats of insects like Olympic champions. What finally bothers their detractors is, perhaps, not that these people are humiliated but that they are not."[63]
[edit] Jon & Kate Plus 8
TLC has announced that Jon & Kate Plus 8 will continue under the new title Kate Plus Eight.[64] Criticism has been raised regarding Kate's intentions of continuing with the show, as well as whether or not the children are being exploited or may be under emotional distress.[65] According to lawyer Gloria Allred:
In the case of the show, the children's workplace is their home. Currently there are no clear laws in Pennsylvania (where the Gosselins reside) regarding a child's appearance on a reality show.[66] However, Pennsylvania law permits kids who are at least seven years old to work in the entertainment industry, as long as certain guidelines are followed and a permit is obtained. For example, children may not work after 11:30 pm under most circumstances, or perform in any location that serves alcohol.[66]
Kate defended her position that the children are happy and healthy, and not in any danger. In addition, Jon has stated that they are "in talks" regarding ensuring the children's happiness,[65] and that there is no truth to any reports that the children have been hurt by the series.[67] TLC released a statement saying that the network "fully complies with all applicable laws and regulations" to produce the show. The statement also said that "for an extended period of time, we have been engaged in cooperative discussions and supplied all requested information to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry".[66]
In another much-publicized case, issues have been raised about the underlying motives that led to the balloon boy hoax, in which six-year-old Falcon Heene was reportedly coerced by his father to stage for a frantic, live-on-TV chase for an out-of-control helium balloon in which he was suspected to be in. The police said that the father engineered the hoax with the hope of generating enough publicity in order to get the family back into the reality-show business, after two appearances on ABC's Wife Swap. In an interview with the Denver Post,[68] child psychologist Alan Zimmerman said:
| “ |
Using your family or children to please the masses, or producers of mass entertainment who want ratings and a good bottom line, is inherently risky [...] They are by definition a commodity in a profit-oriented business. |
” |
The same article quoted psychologist Jamie Huysman as saying, "It is exploitation [...] Nobody wants to watch normal behavior. Kids have to be co-conspirators to get the camera to stay on."
Despite arguments that realism cannot be achieved in reality shows because the outcomes may or may not have been scripted, Geoff King argues in his book, Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond that even though the contestants are in a fabricated setting and the situation has been set up for a certain outcome, as in real love shows such as The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, these contestants still harbor feelings that make their participation in the show real to them. King says:
| “ |
I would argue, rather, that the simulated setting stimulates feeling, in part because the removal of the participants from their normal surroundings strips them to nothing but the space and affect of social interaction. The intimacy that arises out of this amplified situation is real – both for the participants and for the viewers.[69] |
” |
| “ |
Love, like television, must be performed to be real. The performance of love will generate the effects of love, just as the performance of reality will generate reality effects.[69] |
” |
A number of fictional works since the 1940s have contained elements similar to elements of reality television. They tended to be set in a dystopian future, with subjects being recorded against their will, and 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.) Another is the impact on pop culture bearing a similarity (at least in the eyes of critics) to the concept of prolefeed, feeding the masses what critics deem as trash television.
- Fahrenheit 451 (1953), a novel by Ray Bradbury, portrays a bookless future society, with omnipresent electronic media and wall-sized two-way home televisions. The protagonist's wife is immersed in a live audience participation program.
- "The Seventh Victim" (1953) was a short story by science fiction author Robert Sheckley that depicted a futuristic game in which one player gets to hunt down another player and kill him. The first player who can score ten kills wins the grand prize. This story was the basis for the film The 10th Victim (1965), also known by its Italian title, La decima vittima.
- You're Another, a 1955 short story by Damon Knight, is about a man who discovers that he is an actor in a "livie", a live-action show that is viewed by billions of people in the future.
- "The Prize of Peril"[70] (1958), another Robert Sheckley story, was 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 TV movie Das Millionenspiel, and again in 1983 as the movie Le Prix du Danger.
- "It Could Be You" (1964), a short story by Australian Frank Roberts, features a day-in-day-out televised blood sport.
- 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. The games are televised, complete with color commentary discussing tactics, soldiers' personal backgrounds, and slow-motion replays of their deaths.
- "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 Unsleeping Eye (1973), a novel by D.G. Compton (also published as The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe), 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 movie Death Watch.
- "Ladies And Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis" (1976) was a short story by science fiction author Kate Wilhelm about a television show in which contestants (including a B-list actress who is hoping to revitalize her career) attempt to make their way to a checkpoint after being dropped off in the Alaskan wilderness, while being filmed and broadcast around the clock through an entire weekend. The story focuses primarily on the show's effect on a couple whose domestic tensions and eventual reconciliation parallel the dangers faced by the contestants.
- 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.
- Real Life (1979) where a pushy, narcissistic filmmaker persuades a Phoenix family to let him and his crew film their everyday lives. A parody of the ground-breaking PBS series An American Family.
- 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. 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).
- The film 20 Minutes into the Future (1985), and the spin-off TV show Max Headroom, revolved around television mainly based on live, often candid, broadcasts. In one episode of Max Headroom, "Academy", the character Blank Reg fights for his life on a courtroom game show, with the audience deciding his fate.
- Vengeance on Varos (1985) was an episode of the TV show Doctor Who in which the population of a planet watches live TV broadcasts of the torture and executions of those who oppose the government. 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".
- The Hunger Games (2008–2010) is a young-adult book trilogy by Suzanne Collins, depicting an unidentified future time period after the destruction of the current nations of North America, in a nation known as "Panem". As punishment for a previous rebellion against the Capitol (the corrupt government of Panem), every year one boy and one girl from each of the twelve districts of Panem, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, are selected by lottery to participate in the "Hunger Games". The Games are a live TV show where the participants must fight in an outdoor arena until only one remains.
Some scripted and written works have used reality television as a plot device:
- "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.
- "Helter Shelter" (2002) is an episode of The Simpsons in which the family become contestants in "The 1895 Challenge," living for several weeks in a Victorian style house with antique furniture and no electricity. To boost the ratings, they soon find themselves being abused and humiliated by the show's director, who states that he created the show "by watching Dutch television and tweaking the title." The Simpsons has also repeatedly spoofed reality TV and made reference to fictitious reality shows, with such titles as "Tied To A Bear," "Sucker Punch," "Mystery Injection," "Animal Survivor,", "No-Pants Island" and "Fart Date."
- Rock Rivals (2008) is a British television show about two judges on a televised singing contest whose marriage is falling apart.
- "Special Service" (1989) was an episode of the remade TV series The Twilight Zone, in which a man discovers that his life has secretly been videotaped and is a huge hit on a network television show.
- Total Drama Island (2007) is a Canadian animated series about teenagers on a Survivor-like show. It was subsequently followed by Total Drama Action (2009) and Total Drama World Tour (2010).
- Good Vibes (2011) The Character Milan Stone has been on three reality TV shows, "Tween Implants", "100 Reasons Not To Have Kids", and "16 and Bitchy", she is a spoof reality TV stars such as Paris Hilton and Heidi Montag.
- "Realistically Speaking 1&2" (2007) is a two-part web-episode of Hero Envy in which one of the main characters allows a reality-TV film crew to document his and his friends' lives in an elimination-style game in exchange for money.
- Bowling for Soup's song "1985" asks, "When did reality, become TV"?
- "Celebrity," a 2003 song by Brad Paisley from the album Mud on the Tires, makes fun of both reality television contestants and their ability to become famous without any real talent, as well as celebrity antics in general. The song reached #31 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #3 on the Hot Country Singles chart.
- "Reality Show" is a song by T-Pain, from the 2008 album Thr33 Ringz, in which he sings to his lover, "Let's make a reality show", to "show 'em how much we in love".
- "Real" is a song by James Wesley from his 2010 album Real. The song mocks various reality shows popular in the United States as unreal (he specifically mentions The Bachelor, Survivor, The Amazing Race and The Real Housewives), comparing them unfavorably with real-life hardships. The song peaked at #22 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles charts.
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, Modern Family, Drawn Together, Summer Heights High, Total Drama Island, Parks and Recreation, Reno 911! and Come Fly With Me.
Some feature films have been produced that use some of the conventions of reality television; such films are sometimes referred to as reality films, and sometimes simply as documentaries.[74] Allen Funt's 1970 hidden camera movie What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? was based on his reality-television show Candid Camera. The TV show Jackass spawned four films: Jackass: The Movie in 2001, Jackass: Number Two in 2006, Jackass 2.5 in late 2007, and Jackass 3D in 2010. A similar 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.
The mumblecore film genre, which began in the mid-2000s, and uses video cameras and relies heavily on improvisation and non-professional actors, has been described as influenced in part by what one critic called "the spring-break psychodrama of MTV's The Real World". Mumblecore director Joe Swanberg has said, "As annoying as reality TV is, it's been really good for filmmakers because it got mainstream audiences used to watching shaky camerawork and different kinds of situations."[75]
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- Big Brother - Why Bother? - Graham Barnfield's Spiked commentary
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- Lord of the fly-on-the-walls - Observer article: Paul Watson's UK & Australian docusoaps
- Sparks, Colin. "Reality TV: the Big Brother phenomenon". International Socialism (114). http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=314&issue=114.
- Zeven werklozen samen op zoek naar een baan by Raymond van den Boogaard, NRC Handelsblad, September 28, 1996 (Dutch) - about Nummer 28 being the inspiration for The Real World
- [1] Reality TV continues its downward spiral of morality[dead link]
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