Reality television

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Reality television is a genre of television programming which presents unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and features "ordinary" people over 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. Critics of the genre have claimed that the term is a misnomer and what such shows portray is far from actual reality, with participants put in exotic locations or abnormal situations, sometimes coached to act in certain ways by off-screen handlers, and events on screen manipulated through editing and other post-production techniques.


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Origins of reality television

Since reality television is a somewhat nebulous concept, basically encompassing any portrayal of people in unscripted situations, there are a number of precedents for it, starting as far back as the 1950s. Allen Funt's television show Candid Camera, which debuted in 1953 (and itself was based on his previous 1947 radio show, Candid Microphone), pulled pranks on unsuspecting ordinary people and showed their reactions. It has been called the "granddaddy of the reality TV genre." [1]

Another predecessor was the BBC series Seven Up!, which was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964. The series deals with a dozen ordinary seven-year olds from a broad cross of society, and their responses to questions on everyday life (every seven years, a film is made documenting the life of the same individuals in the intervening years, titled Seven Plus Seven, 21 Up, etc.). The series cannot truly be classified as "reality television" because it is structured simply as a series of interviews, with no element of plot; still, it pioneered the concept of making television celebrities out of ordinary individuals.

The first reality show in the modern sense was the PBS series An American Family. Twelve parts were broadcast in the United States in 1973. The series dealt with a nuclear family going through a divorce. In 1974 a counterpart program, The Family, was made in the UK, following the working class Wilkins family of Reading. In 1992, Australia saw Sylvania Waters, about the nouveau riche Baker-Donaher family of Sydney. All three shows attracted their share of controversy.

Some talk shows, most notably The Jerry Springer Show, which debuted in 1991, try to present real-life drama within the talk show format by putting on guests likely to get into fights with one another on the set.

Reality television as it is currently understood, though, can be traced directly to several television shows that began in the late 1980s and 1990s. COPS, which first aired in 1989, showed police officers on duty apprehending criminals; it introduced the camcorder look and cinéma vérité feel of much of later reality television. MTV's The Real World, which began in 1992, originated the concept of putting strangers together in the same environment for an extended period of time and recording the drama that ensued. It 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. Changing Rooms, a British TV show that began in 1996, showed couples redecorating each others' houses, and was the first reality show with a self-improvement or makeover theme. The Swedish TV show Expedition Robinson, which first aired in 1997 (and was later produced in a large number of other countries as Survivor), added to the "Real World" template the idea of competition, in which cast members/contestants battled against each other and were removed from the show until only one winner remained. Australian series The House from Hell (1998) hosted by Andrew Denton and Amanda Keller on Network Ten was possibly the first example of the Big Brother genre.

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Types of reality TV

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

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Documentary-style

In many reality television shows, the viewer and the camera 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 cinéma vérité. MTV's Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County may be the epitome of this style of show, with unscripted situations, real-life locations, and no tasks given to the cast (at least, no known ones). Often "plots" are constructed via editing or planned situations, with the results resembling soap operas — hence the term, docusoap.

Within documentary-style reality television are several subcategories or variants:

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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 spinoff of The Real World, started this pattern: the cast travelled across the country guided by clues and performing tasks. Many other shows in this category involve historical re-enactment, with cast members forced to live and work as people of a specific time and place would have; The 1900 House is one example. 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.

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Celebrity reality

Another subset of fly-on-the-wall-style shows involves celebrities. Often these show a celebrity going about their everyday life: examples include The Anna Nicole Show, The Osbournes, and Newlyweds (featuring Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey). In other shows, celebrities are put on location and given a specific task or tasks to do. These include The Simple Life and The Surreal Life. VH1 has created an entire block of shows dedicated to celebrity reality called celebreality.

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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 of them show up on screen) to either provide help or to judge results. The earliest, and best known of these, is COPS. Another example is The Restaurant, which covered the creation and running of a restaurant.

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.

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Game shows

Another type of reality TV is so-called "reality game shows", in which participants are filmed competing to win a prize, usually while living together in an enclosed environment. 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 (through disapproval voting) or voting for the most popular choice to win, using some other voting system; voting is done by either the viewing audience or by the show's own participants.

Probably the purest example of a reality game show is the globally-syndicated Big Brother, in which cast members live together in the same house, with participant removed at regular intervals: no skills are involved in winning the show other than being appealing to others and handling the dynamics of a group well.

There remains controversy over whether talent-search shows such as the Idol series and Dancing with the Stars are truly reality television, or just newer incarnations of shows such as Star Search. There is no element of plot on these shows; on the other hand, there is a good deal of interaction shown between contestants and judges, and the shows follow the traditional reality-game-show conventions of removing one contestant per episode and having the public vote on who gets removed.

Modern game shows like The Weakest Link, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Dog Eat Dog and Fear Factor are in an even grayer area: they closely resemble traditional game shows, though with higher production values, more dramatic background music, and higher stakes (done either through putting contestants into physical danger or high cash prizes). These factors, as well as these shows' rise in global popularity at the same time as the arrival of the reality craze, leads many people to group them under the reality TV umbrella.

There are various hybrids, like the worldwide-syndicated Star Academy, which combines the Big Brother and Pop Idol formats, and The Biggest Loser, which combines competition with the self-improvement format. 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 at what it was they were selected to do.

There are some popular subsets of the competition-based format:

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Dating-based competition

Dating-based competition shows follow a contestant choosing the hand of a group of suitors. Over the course of the season, the suitors are eliminated one by one until the end, when only the contestant and the final suitor remains. The Bachelor is the best-known member of this category.

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Job search

In this category, the competition revolves around a skill that contestants were pre-screened for. Competitors perform a variety of tasks based around that skill, and are judged, and then kept or removed, by a single expert or a panel of experts. The show is invariably presented as a job search of some kind, in which the prize for the winner includes a contract to perform that kind of work. Examples include The Apprentice (which judges business skills), America's Next Top Model (for modelling), Project Runway (for clothing design), The Law Firm (for law practice) and The Contender (for boxing).

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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).

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. Similarly, more recently Pimp My Ride and Overhaulin' show vehicles being overhauled. Such shows are generally not considered true reality television because there is no potential for human drama in the format.

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Dating shows

Some shows, such as Blind Date, show people going out on dates. Sometimes a competition element is included, with more than one suitor for each potential match. Antecedents may be found in The Dating Game from the 1960s.

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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 talk" 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.

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Hidden cameras

Another type of reality programming features hidden cameras rolling when random passersby encounter a staged situation. The reactions of the passersby can be funny to watch, but also reveal truths about the human condition. Allen Funt, an American pioneer in reality entertainment, led the way in the development of this type of show. He created Candid Microphone, which debuted on the ABC Radio Network in 1947, and the internationally successful Candid Camera, which first aired on television in 1953. Modern variants of this type of production include Punk'd and the British Trigger Happy TV, which stages humorous and/or bizarre situations such as actors in animal costumes pretending to copulate on a crowded sidewalk. The Sci-Fi series Scare Tactics is a horror-based hidden-camera show where people can sign up their friends to be scared horrifically.

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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), and Space Cadets (which convinced the hoax targets that they were being flown into space).

Other shows, though they have not gone to the length of hiring actors, 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.

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Analysis and criticism

Scholars have suggested that reality television's success 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 Napa Valley, California and Vail, Colorado.

Given that producers design the format of the show, as well as control the outcome of some of them, it is questionable how "real" reality television actually is. There is no doubt that producers are highly deliberate in their editing strategies, able to portray certain participants as heroes or villains, and guide the drama through altered chronology and selective presentation of events. Likewise, shows use carefully designed scenarios, challenges, events, and settings to encourage particular behaviors and conflicts. And some participants have stated afterwards that they altered their behavior to appear more crazy or emotional in order to get more camera time. Yet there has been no clear indication that these programs are fully scripted or "rigged," as with the 1950s television quiz show scandals. One category that might be more authentic than most is reality shows which revolve around sports: due to the participants being athletes who are attempting to establish their own name in the same sport in real life, the setting of such shows tends to be realistic and confrontational. The Contender became the first American reality show in which a contestant committed suicide after being eliminated from the show. In each season of The Ultimate Fighter, at least one participant has voluntarily withdrawn or expressed the desire to withdraw from the show due to competitive pressure.

Generally very specific contractual agreements signed by reality show participants/actors prevent them from commenting on the process in detail, which would publicly shed light on just how real the programs are. There are a few exceptions: 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" [2] that detailed various misleading tricks of reality TV producers: among them, that the shows The Restaurant and Survivor recreated scenes that hadn't originally shown up on camera, and that some 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 weren't. Additionally a weblog surfaced in October of 2005 called "Famous on TV"; [3] the author claims to be featured in an upcoming reality program and details the extensive details of the process; he eventually revealed himself to be James Bradford, of the currently airing VH1 show Can't Get a Date (originally called "Crushed Out".)

Reality television has attracted criticism from those who feel that the pervasiveness of the genre on network television has come at the cost of scripted programming. There has also been concern expressed in the media by network executives that such programming is limited in its appeal for DVD reissue and syndication, although it remains lucrative for short-term profits. One series in particular defies this analysis: COPS has had huge success in syndication and direct response sales, as well as DVD in retail. Moreover, it has been a FOX staple since 1989, and is currently (2006) in its 19th season, defying all odds. 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, and many new shows such as FOX's Who's Your Daddy? (a controversial program in which a female contestant who had been adopted as a child had to guess the identity of her biological father) and CBS's The Will (about a real-life family squabbling over an inheritance) failing. 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 the 2006 Winter Olympics.

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Predictors in popular culture

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

Image:Empire TV.jpg

  • 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 using slaves and barbarians, 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!"
  • 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" [6] (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.
  • 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 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), though it did have the heightened drama and gimmickry now associated with reality game shows.
  • 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".
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Pop culture references

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

  • Real Life (1979) is a film about the creation of a show similar to An American Family.
  • Louis 19, le roi des ondes (1994) is a Quebecois film about a man who signs up to star in a 24-hour-a-day reality TV show. Later remade as Edtv (1999).
  • The Truman Show (1998) is a film about a man who discovers that his entire life is being filmed for a 24-hour-a-day reality TV show.
  • Trailer Park Boys (2001) is a Canadian show based around the lives of two ex-convicts living in a trailer park.
  • The Office (2001), and its later American remake, is a comedy series in the form of a documentary-style reality TV show set in a workplace.
  • Series 7: The Contenders (2001) is a film about a reality show in which contestants have to kill each other to win.
  • Reno 911! (2003), about a group of incompetent police officers, its fly-on-the-wall look at police operations parodies COPS.
  • Drawn Together (2004) purports to be an "animated reality show" about cartoon characters living together.
  • 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.
  • American Dreamz (2006) is a film set partially in an American Idol-like show.
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See also

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Further reading

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External links

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