Reality TV

Reality television is a genre of television programming which presents unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual (if sometimes contrived) 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 circa 2000 (particularly from Expedition Robinson).

Critics of the genre have claimed that the term is a misnomer and that what such shows portray is far removed from actual reality, with participants put in exotic locations and/or abnormal situations, participants sometimes coached to act in certain ways by off-screen handlers, and events on screen manipulated through editing and other post-production techniques.

According to Nielsen Media Research, reality shows currently account for about 56% of all American TV shows (both in cable and broadcast), and for about 69% of all worldwide TV shows

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 even in the 1950's. 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."

The first reality show in the modern sense was probably 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, tried 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 1980's and 1990's. COPS, which first aired in 1989, showed police officers on duty apprehending criminals; it introduced the professional video camera look and cinema verite 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. 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.

Types of reality TV

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

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 cinema verite. 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:

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, and Road Rules is another example. Most other shows in this category involve historical re-enactment, with cast members living and working as people of a specific time and place would have; The 1900 House is one example.

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.

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 (Flickerstick, Soulcracker, Josh Dodes Band, and Harlow) 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.

Game shows

Another type of reality TV is the so-called "reality game shows", in which participants are filmed on a nearly-constant basis in an enclosed environment while competing to win a prize. There remains a large gray area between these and traditional game shows, which also involve non-actors in unscripted situations. One aspect that makes these shows more like reality television than other game shows is that the viewing public can play an active role in deciding the outcome. Usually this is done by eliminating participants (disapproval voting) or voting for the most popular choice to win (with some other voting system).

Probably the purest example of a reality game show is Big Brother, a show which still has incarnations in many countries around the world. The series takes its name from the all-seeing authority figure in George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which two-way television screens are fitted in every room, so that people's actions are monitored at all times. (Another work of science-fiction that went even further in predicting reality TV was Nigel Kneale's Year of the Sex Olympics.) In the American version of Big Brother, the concept of cast members getting voted off by the public extended only through the first season; in subsequent seasons, the show went with the more "traditional" approach of having contestants vote each other off.

There remains controversy over whether shows like the UK's Pop Idol (spun off in various countries, including in the U.S. as American Idol) and the similarly-globalized The Weakest Link and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire are truly reality game shows or simply modern incarnations of traditional game show or talent show formats. There does not seem to be much to distinguish Pop Idol from Star Search or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire from The 64,000 Dollar Question. Nevertheless, their sudden rise in global popularity at the same time as the arrival of the reality craze leads many people to group such shows under the reality TV umbrella. Dog Eat Dog and Fear Factor are also included in this group.There are some subsets of the competition-based format.

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; Playing It Straight is another example.

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), and The Contender (boxing).

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, the more recent Pimp My Ride shows a car being overhauled. Such shows are generally not considered true reality television because there is no potential for human drama in the format.

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.

Talk shows

Though the tradional 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 T.V. programming.

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.

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.

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 by an individual calling himself "Famous on TV"; in it he claims to currently be starring in a reality program (he will not give specifics) and he details the extensive details of the process.

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 (2005) in its 18th season, defying all odds. By 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.

Costs

Reality TV is a cultural phenomenon that has allowed successful shows to be produced cheaply. However, these costs may increase. In June 2005, reality TV "writers"-who either write segments for shows or edit the hours of footage to create storylines-have come together through the Writers Guild of America to try to unionize. A union would require good working conditions, health benefits, and higher wages. These benefits are sometimes given to the workers, but they do not want to have to fight for them each time they work on a new show.