define reality tv essay

Find anything you save across the site in your account

The Reality Principle

On January 6, 1973, the anthropologist Margaret Mead published a startling little essay in TV Guide . Her contribution, which wasn’t mentioned on the cover, appeared in the back of the magazine, after the listings, tucked between an advertisement for Virginia Slims and a profile of Shelley Winters. Mead’s subject was a new Public Broadcasting System series called “An American Family,” about the Louds, a middle-class California household. “Bill and Pat Loud and their five children are neither actors nor public figures,” Mead wrote; rather, they were the people they portrayed on television, “members of a real family.” Producers compressed seven months of tedium and turmoil (including the corrosion of Bill and Pat’s marriage) into twelve one-hour episodes, which constituted, in Mead’s view, “a new kind of art form”—an innovation “as significant as the invention of drama or the novel.”

“An American Family” was a hit, and Lance Loud, the oldest son, became a celebrity, perhaps the world’s first openly gay TV star. But for decades “An American Family” looked like an anomaly; by 1983, when HBO broadcast a follow-up documentary on the Louds, Mead’s “new kind of art form” seemed more like an artifact of an older America. Worthy heirs to the Louds arrived in 1992, with the début of the MTV series “The Real World,” which updated the formula by adding a dash of artifice: each season, a handful of young adults were thrown together in a house, and viewers got to know them as they got to know one another. It wasn’t until 2000, though, that Mead’s grand claim started to look prescient. That year, a pair of high-profile, high-concept summer series nudged the format into American prime time: “Big Brother,” a Dutch import, was built around surveillance-style footage of competitors locked in a house; “Survivor,” a Swedish import, isolated its stars by shipping them somewhere warm and distant, where they participated in faux tribal competitions. Both of these were essentially game shows, but they doubled as earthy anthropological experiments, and they convinced viewers and executives alike that television could provide action without actors.

We are now more than a decade into the era that Mead, who died in 1978, saw coming. “I think we need a new name for it,” she wrote, and in the past decade we have mainly settled on “reality television,” although not without trepidation. “Reality” is, if not quite a misnomer, a provocation—a reminder of the various constraints and compromises that define the form. Certainly, “reality television” is an amorphous category; Mark Andrejevic, a cultural theorist, notes that “there isn’t any one definition that would both capture all the existing genres and exclude other forms of programming such as the nightly news or daytime game shows.” If Mead were alive today, she might be surprised at the diversity of the form, which has proved equally hospitable to glamorous competitions, like “American Idol,” and to homely documentaries, like “Pawn Stars,” which depicts the staff and clientele of a Las Vegas pawnshop. But she might also be surprised to see how many programs hew to the “American Family” formula: one of MTV’s biggest current hits is the riveting “Teen Mom” franchise, which follows a handful of young mothers as they negotiate shifting cultural realities and stubborn biological ones, building American families of their own. This season, one of the stars, Chelsea, unloaded the dishwasher in her new house, watched closely by her father, who had agreed to pay the rent.

“I’m just standing here, watching you pretend like you’re a little housewife,” he said, fondly.

“I am ,” she said, and then she drew a fine distinction that any scholar of kinship structures would appreciate. “A house_mom_.”

One of the biggest differences between today’s reality television and its 1973 antecedent is the genre’s status. Having outgrown PBS, it has inherited the rotten reputation that once attached to the medium itself. In an era of televised precocity—ambitious HBO dramas, cunningly self-aware sitcoms—reality shows still provide a fat target for anyone seeking symptoms or causes of American idiocy; the popularity of unscripted programming has had the unexpected effect of ennobling its scripted counterpart. The same people who brag about having seen every episode of “Friday Night Lights” will brag, too, that they have never laid eyes on “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.” Reality television is the television of television.

No surprise, then, that a counter-movement has arisen, in the form of books that urge us to take these shows more seriously. Jennifer L. Pozner is a journalist and activist, and in the past decade she has watched, by her count, “more than a thousand hours of unscripted programming,” which is a lot if you think of it as work, but not much—two hours per week, which may be less than the average American watches—if you don’t. For Pozner, it certainly was work. The book she wrote about her experiment is “Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV” (Seal; $16.95), and, halfway through, she sums up her verdict: “I’ve found most of it painful (‘Dr. 90210’), aggravating (‘The Bachelor’), or mind-numbingly boring (‘The Hills’).” Still, her target audience is her fellow-viewers, not her fellow-activists, which lends the book a pleasingly unpretentious attitude: readers unfamiliar with Schadenfreude can find a definition in the footnotes, but readers unfamiliar with “Paradise Hotel” are on their own. (For the record, it was a complicated 2003 show, on Fox, in which the evolving cohabitational arrangements of dozens of bronzed young people helped determine which one would be expelled next.)

Having logged those thousand hours, Pozner can attest that reality shows have a tendency to blur together into a single orgy of joy and disappointment and recrimination. In her view, this is no coincidence: the shows are constructed to reinforce particular social norms, she argues, and she finds examples from across the reality spectrum. There is an expectedly acerbic analysis of “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire,” one of the first shots fired in the current reality revolution (it aired on Fox, as a one-time special, in February, 2000), in which the winner of a televised beauty pageant agreed to marry, sight unseen, a “multimillionaire”—who, it later emerged, was possibly a thousandaire, and definitely the target of a restraining order filed by a former girlfriend. That show was a gleeful train wreck, powered by its female contestants’ desperation to be picked, which is to say, married. Pozner detects a similar anxiety in a more venerable show, “The Bachelor,” which recently ended its fifteenth season on ABC. Although the producers pile on signifiers of romance—ball gowns, candles, roses, breathy declarations—the weekly eliminations are what give the show its cruel but satisfying rhythm. Pozner zeroes in on a contestant who, despite having been a vegetarian for twelve years, accepted a piece of lamb from the man she was trying to impress:

“My stomach will probably never be the same, but at least I touched his hand,” she said, grateful for crumbs. After she got the heave-ho, she batted her big brown eyes at the camera and moaned: “You wanna see a girl that’s crushed, you got her.”

For Pozner, this figure—the woman “crushed” for our amusement—is the driving force behind much reality television. She charts the various programs that punish women for their alleged greed, like “Joe Millionaire,” in which the titular millionaire finally reveals himself to be more or less broke, and “Charm School,” which promised to “tear down and rebuild” its female participants. She is aghast at the cosmetic-surgery makeover show “The Swan,” which she calls “the most sadistic reality series of the decade.” (The second and final season was broadcast in 2004, so Pozner’s superlative arrives too late to be of any use to the show’s publicists.) And she is scarcely kinder to “What Not to Wear,” a nonsurgical makeover show in which, she writes, “an ethnically and economically diverse string of women are ridiculed for failing to conform to a single upper-middle-class, mainstream-to-conservative, traditionally feminine standard of fashion and beauty.” For Pozner, the ridicule is more vivid, and therefore more effective, than whatever rote transformation comes next.

This idea—that pernicious images and ideas are more powerful than benign ones—shapes Pozner’s analysis in every case, and explains how she manages to extract clear messages from messy exchanges. To demonstrate that reality television promotes the idea of female incompetence, she mentions a particularly stubborn and notably unsympathetic man from “Wife Swap,” who informed his temporary wife, a police detective, that gender-integrated police departments “put people’s lives at risk.” But she doesn’t mention that the man recanted a few scenes later, after a vigorous training session with some female officers.

In the same vein, Pozner tells the story of Toccara Jones, a curvilinear model—she describes herself as “vivacious and voluptuous”—who was the sixth runner-up on the third season of “America’s Next Top Model.” In a pitch-perfect impression of a “Top Model” partisan, Pozner derides the verdict of Tyra Banks, the show’s materfamilias (who declared Jones to have “lost her drive” and “checked out”), and lists various post-show successes: “To the rest of the mainstream media, Toccara is recognized as one of the most successful African-American plus-size models working today. To reality TV producers, she’s just a fat Black girl who needs to lose weight.” But isn’t she pointing to one of the form’s greatest strengths? Reality stars, unlike their scripted counterparts, outlive their shows, and sometimes find ways to defy them. For millions of viewers, the story of Lance Loud began in 1973, but it didn’t really end until his death, from hepatitis C and H.I.V., in 2001, at the dawn of the reality-television era that he helped inspire.

There is a taboo that left-leaning critics of popular culture are obliged to observe: never criticize the populace. Pozner tries her best to honor this proscription, following the trail blazed, half a century ago, by the theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who lamented that “the deceived masses” were easy marks for a cynical and self-perpetuating “culture industry.” Because she writes about reality television, Pozner must observe this taboo twice over—the deceived masses are represented by the people onscreen, too. Starting in 2004, Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, an African-American contestant on Donald Trump’s business competition show, “The Apprentice,” became reality television’s preëminent villain, possessed of an impressive ability to enrage the people around her; Pozner scrambles to explain this phenomenon without casting aspersions on either the antiheroine or her legions of detractors. First, she assures us that, whatever inspired Manigault-Stallworth’s “Black villainess diva” reputation, “it wasn’t her behavior.” Then, two pages later, she allows that “Omarosa has capitalized on a virulent stereotype about Black women, a path ‘Apprentice’ producers laid out for her.” She is eager to let audiences off the hook: in her account, “American Idol” (which she finds mean-spirited) was a success because energetic cross-promotion “guaranteed ratings gold,” and “Survivor” was a success “largely because the endless, from-all-corners buzz made viewership seem almost like a cultural imperative.”

Because Pozner isn’t really interested in viewers, she doesn’t have much to say about why they reject some reality shows while embracing others. And she doesn’t distinguish among passing fads, like “Joe Millionaire” (which lost eighty per cent of its audience between its first season finale and its second—also its last); hardy perennials, like “The Bachelor”; and obscurities, like “When Women Rule the World” (which was scrapped by Fox months in advance of its scheduled première, though the series was eventually broadcast in the U.K.). She isn’t really interested in the shows’ participants, either, and, despite her attempts to shield them, sometimes they become collateral damage in her assaults on greedy executives. “Producers build on our derision by carefully casting women who are, let’s just say, in no danger of being recruited to join Mensa,” she writes. This judgment, at least, has the virtue of clarity: producers are bad, though probably smart; participants are dumb, though possibly good.

Link copied

Viewers wanting a subtler verdict should seek out “Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity” (Duke; $23.95), Brenda R. Weber’s strange and thoughtful survey of makeover shows. Defined loosely, this category, built around twinned narratives of physical and spiritual transformation, includes a wide range of reality programming: not only “The Swan” and “What Not to Wear” but also “Dog Whisperer,” which tames rowdy pets; “The Biggest Loser,” a weight-loss competition; and “American Idol,” which is, after all, about the transformation of amateurs into pop stars. (Even “The Real World” is, in some sense, a makeover show, precisely because of its artificiality: having been thrown together in a strange house with strange people, the participants generally assume that the experience will be educational, or even therapeutic.) Weber, a professor of gender studies at Indiana University, takes care to avoid snap judgments. Her approach is informed by the work of the feminist scholar Kathy Davis, who has rejected the idea that cosmetic surgery and other aesthetic interventions are inherently or purely oppressive. Weber quotes one of Davis’s insights with approval: “Women are not merely the victims of the terrors visited upon them by the beauty system. On the contrary, they partake in its delights as well.” The thought of women renovating their wardrobes or their faces inspires in Weber not horror but a tantalizing question: “Why shouldn’t the painful vestiges of class and circumstance that write themselves on the body be not only overwritten but erased altogether?”

Weber sees in these makeover programs a strange new world—or, more accurately, a strange new nation, one where citizenship is available only to those who have made the transition “from Before to After.” Weber notices that, on scripted television, makeovers are usually revealed to be temporary or unnecessary: “characters often learn that though a makeover is nice, they were really just fine in their Before states.” On reality television, by contrast, makeovers are urgent and permanent; “the After-body, narratively speaking, stands as the moment of greatest authenticity.” We have moved from the regressive logic of the sitcom, in which nothing really happens, to the recursive logic of the police procedural, in which the same thing keeps happening—the same detectives, solving and re-solving the same crimes. In fact, Weber points out that a number of makeover shows present their subjects as crimes to be solved: in the British version of “What Not to Wear,” makeover candidates line up in front of a one-way mirror, like perpetrators awaiting identification; “Style by Jury,” a Canadian show, begins and ends with the target facing a jury of her peers.

Makeover shows inevitably build to a spectacular moment when “reveal” becomes a noun, and yet the final product is often unremarkable: a woman with an up-to-date generic haircut, wearing a jacket that fits well; a man who is chubby but not obese; a dog with no overwhelming urge to bare its fangs. The new subject is worth looking at only because we know where it came from, which means that, despite the seeming decisiveness of the transformation, the old subject never truly disappears. “The After highlights the dreadfulness of the Before,” Weber writes. “In makeover logic, no post-made-over body can ever be considered separate from its pre-made-over form.” She might have added that no makeover is ever really finished; there is no After who is not, in other respects, a Before—maybe your dog no longer strains at the leash, but are you sure that sweater doesn’t make you look old and tired? Are you sure your thighs wouldn’t benefit from some blunt cannulation? Weber’s makeover nation is an eerie place, because no one fully belongs there, and, deep down, everyone knows it.

The transformation, however partial, of a Before into an After usually requires accomplices, who may go through their own transformation during the show, “from cranky witches to good friends to benevolent fairy godmothers (or superheroes),” as Weber puts it. Often, these accomplices, like their fairy-tale counterparts, live outside the social worlds of the people they help. “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” which began its run in 2003, epitomized this tendency: the title implied (and the show seemed to confirm) that the makeover targets needed a kind of help that no member of their tribe—the “straight guy” tribe—could provide. Weber argues that the “Queer Eye” experts, like other gay makeover agents, “function as a foil against which to read the emerging hegemonic masculinity of the made-over man.” But, surely, their marked difference is often related to the authority they project. (Think of Simon Cowell, for years the toughest “American Idol” judge: his British accent and his status as a lifelong non-singer made his judgments seem all the more definitive.) “Mostly male doctors on plastic surgery shows are relentless about the horrors of looking masculine,” Weber writes, and yet some of the same doctors who upbraid “masculine” women playfully defy gender norms: Robert Rey, the celebrity-obsessed star of “Dr. 90210,” is known for his smooth skin, and for the sleeveless scrub shirts he prefers, many of which are equipped with plunging V-necks, the better to display his pectoral cleavage.

Sometimes these agents of change seem purposely to sabotage their own messages. In her book, Pozner reserves special condemnation for “Charm School,” the VH1 program that purported to offer social rehabilitation to ill-mannered dating-show veterans; she protests that the “smug, white, wealthy ‘dean,’ Keith Lewis”—a modelling agent and pageant judge—“offered only condescension.” Weber, more astutely, argues that arbiters like Lewis function effectively as parodies of authority: “the lessons are so shallow, the uptight behavior of the experts so much less engaging than the ebullience of the subjects, that these ‘learn to be proper’ shows in many ways rebuke the very transformations they portray.” A show like “Charm School” is, at heart, an expression of the audience’s strong but mixed feelings about makeovers in general: we like the idea of melioration, but how much change do we really want? Weber returns to this question at the end of her book, when, in an autobiographical turn, she describes a visit to an orthodontist, who offers to straighten her teeth for five thousand dollars. She declines, but finds herself tempted—and she can’t help but notice that the orthodontist might benefit from otoplasty to pin back his ears. And so she returns, implicitly, to the question of whether the body’s “painful vestiges of class and circumstance” can be overwritten or erased. The answer is yes—but not for free and not for good.

In Weber’s estimation, the most successful makeover show of all time has been off the air for almost half a century. It was called “Queen for a Day,” and during its long run—from 1945 to 1957, on the radio, and from 1956 to 1964, on television—it gave hundreds of women the chance to testify to the arduousness of their lives; the woman whose tale of perseverance earned the most applause was awarded a ceremonial enthronement and an assortment of prizes. Weber renders this plot in economic terms, writing that the show “established a mediated affective economy where miserable subjects trade stories of abjection for the bounty promised through televisual benevolence.” The terms have barely changed in fifty years: this kind of exchange still forms the basis of the reality-television economy. In the view of Mark Andrejevic, the cultural theorist, basic models of economic exchange can help explain not only how the form works but why it emerged with such force when it did.

Andrejevic’s contribution to the field, “Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched,” arrived in 2004, relatively early in the reality boom, by the slow-motion standards of academe. For Andrejevic, reality television is a logical outgrowth of the rise, in the nineteen-nineties, of “interactive media,” which made it easier for consumers to provide instant and constant feedback to corporations. In this way, commercial advertising was joined with its obverse, commercial surveillance: in one, companies pay to have you watch; in the other, companies pay to have you watched. The reality era began in earnest just as the dot-com boom peaked, and if the shows felt uncannily “real,” Andrejevic says, it was not because they depicted behavior that was somehow authentic but because they were structured in a way that mirrored viewers’ lives:

The Illinois housewife who agrees to move into a house where her every move can be watched by millions of strangers to compete for a cash prize exhibits more than an incidental similarity (albeit on a different scale) to the computer user who allows Yahoo to monitor her web-browsing habits in exchange for access to a free e-mail account.

Although reality television is often mocked for its frivolity, Andrejevic argues that its success is symptomatic of an age in which labor and leisure are growing ever harder to separate. He tells the tale of DotComGuy, a briefly popular Internet celebrity, who planned to live his life online, funded by corporate sponsors. “To the extent that his life is the show, he is working all the time,” Andrejevic writes, and the same could be said of anyone who appears on any reality show. Pozner asserts that “on series from the ‘Real Housewives’ franchise to MTV’s ‘Paris Hilton’s My New BFF,’ ‘real life’ is all about leisure.” In fact, Hilton’s show, in which she claimed to be searching for a B.F.F. (best friend forever), was an example of how reality television turns social activities into professional ones. Similarly, the “Real Housewives” shows, despite the name, feature very few actual housewives and lots of working women (not all wives or mothers), every one of them eager to sacrifice time, not to mention privacy, for a small payment and a less small portion of notoriety. This is the opposite of leisure, and it may also be a sign of the end of leisure—the end, that is, of our ability to spend long stretches happily engaged in non-work. If this possibility makes us anxious, we’re not alone: judging from their frequent and intricate disagreements, the various “real housewives” are feeling a little anxious, too.

Andrejevic quotes Walter Benjamin, who, in 1935, distilled from his wanderings in the Paris arcades an axiom: “The utopian images that accompany the emergence of the new always concurrently reach back to the ur-past.” For Andrejevic, this is key to an understanding of the strong sense of nostalgia that pervades reality television, which often promises to give us glimpses of the way things might once have been. Hence the pseudo-tribal imagery of “Survivor,” which transports participants to an ersatz village, far from home, where the logic of the surveillance economy becomes harder to distinguish from the law of the jungle. In “Big Brother,” the contestants share a house that is modern except for the general absence of digital screens; it is, as Andrejevic says, “a mass media experiment in watching people deprived of the mass media.” Shows like “The Bachelor” revive old-fashioned ideas of courtship and marriage, just as “American Idol” validates an earlier generation’s idea of pop stardom.

In 2004, when Andrejevic’s book was published, the conventions of reality television were still being codified. Some early scholars emphasized the form’s debt to “Cops,” the longest-running reality show of all. It is now in its twenty-third season, on Fox, and the format has barely budged: viewers ride with police officers as they drive around, in search of perpetrators. “Cops” makes it easy to think of a video camera as a weapon, there to keep the peace and to discipline violators. “Big Brother,” with its winking title, also emphasized the regulatory power of surveillance: there were low-resolution cameras hidden in the walls and tucked behind the plants, offering nearly total scrutiny of the house and its residents; fans could watch footage online, in real time. It’s now clear, though, that the surveillance model was overblown; the future of reality television didn’t belong to hidden cameras and fugitive subjects. “Big Brother,” though it lumbers on, has never been very popular in America, and its grainy video and relaxed pace—the housemates, like inmates, are always searching for ways to kill time—seem more dated with every year. “Cops” has been succeeded by shows like “Police Women of Cincinnati,” on TLC, which shunts aside the shadowy perpetrators to zoom in on the telegenic women who pursue them.

There is no longer any need for surveillance. The nightly schedules are full of brightly lit reality dramas and comedies, driven by participants eager for screen time, and increasingly good at justifying their share. Andrejevic was amused by our eagerness to “hand over airtime to the real people,” even though putting them on the air makes them celebrities, which is to say, unreal. The various “Real Housewives” shows have gradually revealed themselves to be makeover shows, too, transforming the most popular cast members into self-sufficient celebrities. (Bethenny Frankel, from the New York cast, has branched out with a series of books, a low-calorie margarita drink, and a couple of spinoffs.) The celebrification of the genre has weakened the participants’ link to the viewers, while underscoring their similarity to other famous people. The celebrity magazine In Touch Weekly recently ran a cover depicting three of the young women from “Teen Mom,” accompanied by a headline in caution-sign yellow: “ DESTROYED BY FAME. ” The article quotes an unnamed “insider,” who offers a barbed opinion of one of the moms: “Jenelle acts like she’s a star.” Even the Loud family eventually received a glamorous makeover: HBO has just broadcast “Cinema Verite,” a feature film based on “An American Family,” starring Diane Lane, Tim Robbins, and James Gandolfini. Margaret Mead was right, in the end: reality television was—is—a new kind of art form. What she couldn’t have predicted was that, as it aged, it would come to look more and more like the old ones. ♦

Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Effects of Watching too much TV — Reality Shows: Advantages and Disadvantages

Reality Shows: Advantages and Disadvantages

• Categories: Effects of Watching too much TV

About this sample

Words: 765 |

Published: Aug 24, 2023

Words: 765 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Advantages of reality shows, disadvantages of reality shows, the impact on society.

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Information Science and Technology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 418 words

1 pages / 679 words

1 pages / 471 words

1 pages / 651 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Effects of Watching too much TV

Chaudhary, N. (2014). The TV binge: a sickness. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention, 3(5), 57-62.Digital Democracy Survey. (n.d.). Retrieved from Nielsen. (2013). The Digital Consumer: Binge! Binge! [...]

Auverset, L., Billings, A. C., & Conlin, L. (2016). Is Binge Watching a Public Health Concern? Examining the Association between Binge Watching Television and Mental Health in Young Adults. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic [...]

Technology has made significant advancements in recent years, bringing various forms of screens into our daily lives. Children, in particular, are reported to spend an alarming amount of time watching TV, playing video games, [...]

While reality TV shows offer a form of entertainment that appeals to a wide audience, it is important to critically examine their potential drawbacks. The perpetuation of stereotypes, impact on participants' well-being, [...]

The CSI Effect is when the line between reality and fiction becomes a blur. The name CSI Effect is based on a well-known drama series of the same name (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation), where the characters are forensic [...]

Should police be held accountable for their actions? Would you want police to wear body cameras? In the world today, the police without body cameras behave differently than the ones with them. The cameras are small, but they [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction

Types of shows

Early reality tv shows, survivor and the reality tv boom, critical assessment, social impacts and criticism.

• How did Kim Kardashian become famous?
• Who are Kim Kardashian’s siblings?

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Academia - Reality TV The Work of Being Watched Critical Media Studies
• The Washington Post - The surprising origins of reality TV
• Table Of Contents

Recent News

reality TV , television genre encompassing a wide variety of purportedly unscripted programming. Because the genre is so heterogeneous , it can be difficult to fully define. In her book True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us (2022), American sociologist Danielle J. Lindemann defines reality TV as “a set of programs that feature non-actors (though they may also feature actors in reenactments) and make a claim to reality (whether or not there is any sort of “scripting” actually taking place) but are intended mainly to entertain rather than inform.” Although reality TV originated in the United States , it has broad-based appeal throughout the world, attracting younger viewers in particular.

“There are reality TV programmes about everything and anything, from healthcare to hairdressing, from people to pets,” writes British media scholar Annette Hill in her analysis of the genre, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television (2005). Subgenres of reality TV include competition shows, dating shows, self-help or makeover shows, shows that purport to illuminate a particular subculture, those that focus on crime and punishment , shows that document celebrities’ daily lives, and versions of any of the preceding premises featuring celebrities instead of ordinary people.

Although reality TV’s popularity exploded in the 21st century, the genre is nearly as old as television itself. The hidden-camera show Candid Camera , often identified as the first reality TV show, premiered on the ABC network in 1948 with the title Candid Microphone , reflecting the show’s roots as a radio program (various versions of the TV show aired from 1948 to 2014). Candid Camera surreptitiously filmed unsuspecting people reacting to elaborate practical jokes, such as a telephone booth that levitates during a call and a two-way mirror at a barbershop that surprises customers with startling images.

Other important mid-20th-century reality TV shows include Queen for a Day (1956–64), in which women compete for prizes by trying to tell the most compelling hard-luck stories about their lives; The Dating Game (1965–86), in which a contestant asks questions of three prospective dating partners (who are hidden from the contestant’s view) before selecting one to meet and go on a chaperoned date with; An American Family (1973), a TV documentary about the everyday life of the Louds, an upper middle-class family in Santa Barbara , California , that follows the family as the parents separate and later divorce; and Cops (1989–2023), which follows law enforcement officers as they work.

It was not until the 1990s that the characteristics that would come to be associated with 21st-century reality TV emerged—a house full of video cameras, a serial structure, “talking head” testimonial interviews, and casting intended to maximize conflict and dramatic potential—in MTV ’s The Real World (1992– ), a show following a group of young adults selected to live together in a house where cameras document their behavior and interpersonal relationships. The Real World premiered to mostly unfavorable reviews but quickly transformed into a ratings powerhouse with a novel premise and relatively low production costs. Early seasons of the show are credited with frankly addressing some of the pressing social issues of the 1990s, including HIV/AIDS , abortion , and racism . A deluge of reality TV shows that remixed the core elements of The Real World followed.

Although The Real World surfaced a winning formula to attract viewers, the premiere of Survivor (2000– ) is widely acknowledged as a turning point in the history of reality TV, a moment that catalyzed a marked increase in the genre’s production and consumption . In Survivor , contestants travel to a remote warm-weather location where they fend for themselves and compete in various team-based challenges. Every three days the contestants vote to send one of the losing team’s members home. The last person standing wins $1 million.

Survivor was an immediate success. In 2000 it was the top-rated prime-time network television series in the U.S., attracting an average of more than 28 million viewers per episode, with a record average of 52 million viewers tuning in for the first season’s finale. Only that year’s Super Bowl commanded a larger audience than the Survivor finale. The show’s relatively low production costs compared with standard prime-time fare meant that the cost of the show had already been recouped from advertising revenue before Survivor even aired. Beyond offering the example of a runaway hit series, Survivor is thought to have upped the expectations for reality programming, bringing a sense of intrigue and danger to the genre and raising the bar regarding what a show could do to shock an audience. Between the massive financial gains and the more permissive cultural landscape in which to make them, reality TV boomed in the 2000s, becoming a ubiquitous entertainment industry institution. A 2017 study found that reality TV shows made up 18 percent of that year’s 250 most popular shows. Some demographic research indicates that a majority of American households watch reality TV, which has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry.

Other catalysts for the proliferation of reality TV programming in the 2000s include the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike , changing economic conditions in the entertainment industry that made reality TV a cheaper alternative to scripted television (including the fact that the workers who make reality TV are less likely to be unionized than their scripted-TV peers), and the demise of financial interest and syndication rules in the 1990s, which had blocked networks from owning the shows they aired.

Although many deride the genre as noxious, lacking in substance, exploitative, and undignified, others argue that reality TV offers insight into social values and norms. Lindemann argues that careful viewers can learn from reality TV how apt Westerners are to interpret the world “in narrow and unyielding ways,” adding:

For all of its carnivalesque aspects, the genre reflects how steadfastly we cling to simplistic, collective notions about who and what is legitimate and “real.” It spotlights the categories and meanings that we take for granted as essential, biological, and unshakable. But in doing so, it allows us to poke at these assumptions, revealing the socially constructed natures of what we consider to be “true,” “normal,” “healthy,” “legitimate,” and “good.”

There is similar disagreement regarding the social impacts of reality TV. Some research indicates that such programming may have a positive effect on adolescents’ self-esteem and self-assurance and that shows such as MTV’s Teen Mom: OG (2009– ) and 16 and Pregnant (2009– ) may have a positive impact when it comes to reducing teen pregnancies . Other research suggests that watching reality TV shows may contribute to negative body image, negative perceptions of exercise , and increased aggression.

Many argue that the behaviors depicted and rewarded by reality TV have had a negative effect on how Americans relate to one another. In 2022 Time magazine TV critic Judy Berman argued that, “to the extent that the U.S. has become a harsher, shallower, angrier, more divided place in the 21st century, reality TV—which has helped normalize cruelty, belligerence, superficiality, and disloyalty, and rewarded people who weaponize those traits—bears a share of the blame.”

Other cultural critics have assigned a significant role to reality TV in narratives describing the rise of former U.S. president Donald Trump , whose public persona experienced a significant boost from his business competition show, The Apprentice (2004–17), which aired its final season after its celebrity host moved into the White House .

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• Why Publish with Screen?
• About Screen
• Screen at the University of Glasgow
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Terms and Conditions
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

• < Previous

Understanding Reality Television Reality TV – Audiences and Popular Factual Television Reality TV – Realism and Revelation

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Helen Piper, Understanding Reality Television Reality TV – Audiences and Popular Factual Television Reality TV – Realism and Revelation, Screen , Volume 47, Issue 1, Spring 2006, Pages 133–138, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjl012

• Permissions Icon Permissions

Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn (eds), Understanding Reality Television. Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2004, 302 pp.

Annette Hill, Reality TV – Audiences and Popular Factual Television. Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2005, 231 pp.

Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn, Reality TV – Realism and Revelation . London: Wallflower Press, 2005, 183 pp.

The ever-expanding range of programming we now speak of as ‘reality TV’ was commonly observed to enter a new phase around the turn of the millennium, putting us into what Annette Hill neatly dubs its ‘third wave’ (p. 24). Closely associated with transmission of the first series of Big Brother (Channel 4, 2000–), the shift was accompanied by a discernible intensification of the histrionic commentaries in magazines, tabloids and web-sites with which ‘reality’ forms are now inter-dependent. Some five years later, it should not be surprising that an erstwhile trickle of academic interest in the popularization of factual programming should begin to resemble a mini-glut of new publications. This review will consider three of these, although I should acknowledge that others are forthcoming, not least Jonathan Bignell's contribution ( Big Brother – Reality TV in the Twenty-First Century ), due for publication in December 2005.

Although all three of the studies under review pay close attention to Big Brother , it is the earliest of these, Understanding Reality Television , that it most dominates. The series is the central topic or an exemplary text for five of the fourteen chapters in this edited collection, and is cited in most others. This is evidently at the expense of the docusoap, which does not even make it to the index – echoing the manner in which it was rudely elbowed aside by turn-of-the-century commissioners scrabbling for the ‘game-docs’ that then came to epitomize the contemporary face of reality TV.

The problem here for television studies is that assumptions about Big Brother as the reality form par excellence are already looking rather dated, even if – and this is an important qualification – the theoretical modifications prompted by its innovations have a significantly longer shelf-life. In this particular regard I would emphasize Su Holmes's important reconfiguration of Dyer's ordinary/exceptional dialectic that lies at the heart of celebrity and stardom in ‘Approaching celebrity in Big Brother ’ and her exposition of the series' paradigmatically ‘fervent’ pursuit of the ‘real self’ and the authentic identity. Similarly, by theorizing the intimate temporal dimensions of Big Brother and other formats, and re-appraising their (inter)active audiences, Misha Kavka/Amy West and Estella Tinknell/Parvati Raghuram (respectively) manage to productively develop long-standing textual and cultural concepts.

More so than any previous cycle of generic development, reality TV itself constantly reminds us how fallacious is the desire for an all-explanatory theory or a definitive analysis, and indeed, that there is as yet no consensus as to what ‘it’ actually is. In their introduction Holmes and Jermyn suggest that this absence of an agreed definition is precisely because it could not be extricated from questions of generic hybridity, specific issues of theory, criticism and methodology, and reality TV's ‘relationship with the history and status of the documentary form’ (p. 2). Indeed, if the three studies under consideration here have anything in common, it is a shared concern with the genealogy of the forms, genres, modes of address, subjects, aesthetic characteristics and thematic preoccupations of this field of programming. Although there is no consensual definition, there is apparently a consensual resistance to one particular idea assumed to be widespread: that reality TV represents a radical departure or innovation in the history of programming. For example, the first three chapters in Holmes and Jermyn's collection each deal with an influential antecedent: Bradley Clissold demonstrates the Cold War ideological resonance of Candid Camera (USA, 1948–), Jennifer Gillan exposes how The Osbournes (MTV, 2002–) resurrects a 1950s star-sitcom format, and Deborah Jermyn proposes that Crimewatch (BBC, 1984–) clearly foreshadowed many contemporary reality programmes (including those altogether unconcerned with crime), partly because of similarities in the ‘spectacle of actuality’ (p. 72), but also, rather interestingly, because of the manner in which more recent debates appear to mimic the concerns of the controversies that surrounded emerging crime-appeal formats in the 1980s.

The complexity of Woolcock's work reveals the unrealised potential of many of the reality TV docusoaps that were produced in the same period to provide a voice for ordinary people in an entertaining fashion. (p. 63)

To give credit where it is due, the textual analyses themselves are sensitive and insightful, and there is much here to satisfy an interest in the modes of documentary address, but it is counter-productive to regard popular television through a prism of that which it is not. The first chapter does little to mitigate this, offering only a random and largely extraneous sashay through ‘the debates around reality TV’. However, just as I was (rather uncharitably) concluding that none of the research had been conducted with popular television in mind, the book shifts gear and we are into altogether more salient territory. The remaining chapters address, in turn, therapeutic culture, self-revelation, the public expression of private trauma in talk shows and lifestyle programming, the questionable ethics of CCTV and reality crime programming, and lastly an exploration of David Blaine's public incarceration in ‘Above the Below’. Much of this (and earlier) material will be familiar from previous publication as articles in Screen and other journals, but it makes for a perceptive and incisive contribution and deserves a book format (if not this format exactly). I would have been more appreciative had the study engaged more directly with mainstream terrestrial programming. Moreover, although it is clearly a British study, and the titles of British programmes are constantly offered as (presumably self-evident) examples, the early emphasis on documentary auteurs gives way in later chapters to analyses that privilege American texts such as The John Walsh Show and Judge Judy , apparently to demonstrate particular extremes (of trends, sensibilities, ideologies). Thus we move from a narrative of what British reality TV could or should have been to a narrative of what it is in danger of becoming. What holds the book tenuously together is less an interest in reality television than a glimpse into its ‘cultural moment’, although for that at least it deserves some acknowledgement.

watch popular factual television with a critical eye, judging the degree of factuality in each reality format based on their experience of other types of factual programming. In this sense, viewers are evaluators of the reality genre, and of factual programming as a whole. (p. 173)

Yet, although the complicated legacy of reality TV is a factor in its reception, one must still wonder at the collective gusto currently being expended in the anxiety to restore what Corner calls ‘the specific national history of factual television’ to the debate (‘Afterword’ to Holmes and Jermyn, p. 291). A perception of reality TV as ‘radical’ does not after all depend upon the purity of its generic innovations, and still less on its political accomplishments (for all the populist cant about ‘democratization’). Rather it arises from associated phenomena such as: the shift such an unprecedented volume of reality programming has brought about in what schedulers like to call ‘the mix’; the irreversible changes that these programmes have effected in the way in which we understand other, more conventional forms such as ‘straight’ documentary and drama; the expansion to the notion of what constitutes ‘a television text’ (to include simultaneous webcam streaming, text messaging, and so forth); the sheer faddish frenzy of everyday discourse that surrounds reality TV and its real/celebrity players; and even, as Daniel Biltereyst argues, the extension of programming marketing to include the whipping up of hostile ‘moral panics’, henceforth renamed ‘media panics’ (in Holmes and Jermyn, pp. 105–8). Clearly none of these would represent an aesthetic paradigm shift, but surely they amount to a cultural one?

Which of course is not to suggest that we should turn our attention away from the television screen, but we may, I think, need reminding that ‘radicalism’ is not inscribed in the text itself, but in the way it favours change more broadly. In this respect, publication of Annette Hill's qualitative audience research is both timely and necessary. The study sensibly begins with an introduction to the production contexts of reality TV and the discourses around its reception, as well as providing a refreshingly lucid account of its origins. One of her early arguments is that critical condemnation (metaphors of drug addiction and war are apparently much in evidence) ‘fails to take into account the variety of formats within the genre’ and hence she identifies at least ten common sub-genres such as ‘infotainment’, ‘reality talent’ and ‘reality life experiment’ formats (pp. 7–8). Later she attempts more actively to defend particular programmes and formats on the basis of their capacity to offer debating and learning opportunities.

These opportunities suggest the three main principles around which Hill organizes her findings. Chapters 4, 5 and 6, respectively, consider ‘performance and authenticity’ (how audiences judge ‘truth’ according to how real people act), ‘the idea of learning’ (including the acquisition of informal practical and social understandings) and the ‘ethics of care’. These chapters also throw up a number of paradoxes central to the process of watching hybrid popular entertainment. For example: ‘the more entertaining a factual programme is, the less real it appears to viewers’ (p. 57). Similarly, ‘In fictional programming, it is a sign of a good drama if television viewers find it entertaining. In factual programming the reverse is true’ (p. 86). However, the real beauty of this section lies in the way Hill extrapolates from viewers' responses an extremely complex, media-literate and ambiguous relationship between ‘real people’ in the audience, and ‘real people’ on the television. Arguably, it is this demanding process of ‘people watching’, and the commensurate need to interpret, weigh up and learn from it, that provides the principal source of audience fascination with these programmes rather than the debased, voyeuristic and even salacious impulses more commonly ascribed to them.

I am far less comfortable with Chapter 6, which jumps from a general discussion of moral philosophy (and its utility) to articulating a quite particular ‘ethics of care’ drawn from Buddhist and feminist ethical principles. Brave as Hill is to wade into this territory, I do think the sheer complexity of the issues introduced takes the matter beyond the reach of this particular study. Although she is circumspect, the highly selective criteria of moral judgement she proposes themselves work to close off the very questions a discussion of reality TV ethics should be asking. By this I mean questions posed by the fault lines of liberal oppositions between, say, moral boundaries and taste boundaries, or cultural absolutism and cultural relativism. At the very least, should we not first acknowledge that no ‘ethics’, however hotly debated, can exist in universalizing isolation from particular and competing religious, social and political traditions? Although in this chapter Hill also introduces issues relating to viewing ethics, she sidesteps them in favour of carving out a potential role for health-based reality programming to foster an ‘ethics of care’ (particularly in relation to self and family): a role we might once have more confidently described as ‘ideological’.

Just as textual approaches begin to wobble when they are obliged to confront broader social changes and to speculate about actual audiences, so too are there limits to the textual analysis and insight available from audience-centred approaches. I think Hill bumps against these limits most noticeably when she attempts to valorize texts by applying the principles she has introduced inductively, but with support from deductions drawn from audience research. So it is that a family focus-group discussion is supplied as evidence that Changing Rooms can promote debate about good or bad ways to re-decorate, or what Hill – apparently without irony – calls ‘an ethics of care for the home’ (p. 128). A rather less forgiving reading of ‘makeover’ television is available in Gareth Palmer's incisive chapter ‘“The new you”: class and transformation in lifestyle television’ (Holmes and Jermyn, pp. 173–90).

The more challenging questions about ‘the ethics of watching people's private lives on television’ (p. 133) are reduced to an ethical comparison of the different treatment of pet deaths in Animal Hospital (BBC 1994–2004) and Animal ER (Channel 5, 1998–). It is an interesting discussion and I would not want to underestimate the intense emotions of animal lovers, but it can hardly be considered a rehearsal for the ethical questions that arise about the treatment (and watching) of human subjects. It is no accident that Hill hazards firm injunctions only in respect of children and animals, who are clearly unable to exercise informed consent. Biressi and Nunn tackle rather thornier issues regarding the privatization of public space, and the use/sale of CCTV footage (Chapter 7), but there will continue to be calls for ever greater toughness, not least because the endless reinvention of reality TV has involved the shattering of so many taboos. Mercifully, Hill was sensible enough to offer the previous chapter as an invitation for further debate about ethics, rather than as a definitive word on the matter, and I would have to echo this. Public, journalist-driven debate is already polarizing into a democratizing/debasing dichotomy, in which ‘willing participation’ or ‘right to know’ are the inevitable and only responses to claims of misrepresentation or ‘breach of privacy’. A vigorous exchange of academic views on the ‘radical’ moral implications of reality TV might yet enlarge this debate beyond its present boundaries.

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Recommend to Your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1460-2474
• Print ISSN 0036-9543
• Copyright © 2024 University of Glasgow
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

Communication

• Criminology
• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Renaissance and Reformation
• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Reality Television

Introduction, general overviews.

• Realism and Genre
• Industry Moves
• Interactivity and Marketing
• Voyeurism and Discipline
• Lifestyle and Citizenship
• Gender, Race, and Class
• Celebrity and Fame
• Global and National Identities

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• Adolescence and the Media
• Audience Studies
• Celebrity and Public Persona
• Digital Intimacies
• Entertainment
• Infotainment
• Media Effects
• Media Events
• Media Logic
• Narrative Persuasion
• Parasocial Theory in Communication
• Perceived Realism
• Tabloidization
• Virtual Reality and Communication

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Media Streaming
• Web3 and Communication
• Find more forthcoming titles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Reality Television by Laurie Ouellette LAST REVIEWED: 24 April 2012 LAST MODIFIED: 24 April 2012 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0057

Reality television, which can be broadly defined as unscripted entertainment programming, has existed since the emergence of television in the late 1940s. Hidden-camera programs, daytime talk shows featuring ordinary people as guests, and cop shows involving real police officers are some early strands of reality television in the United States and Europe. The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge of prime-time reality formats that combined the conventions of dramatic entertainment and documentary, including “docu-soaps,” reality sitcoms, adventure games, and makeover programs. Because of their cost efficiency and adaptability, these formats and their cultural offspring have become a staple of television production across the globe. On broadcast and specialized cable channels, ordinary people provide the raw material for a seemingly unstoppable wave of unscripted entertainment that trades on a combination of authenticity and spectacle. Television’s investment in the “real” has also triggered a wave of scholarship concerned with the ethical, cultural, economic, and political dimensions of entertainment built around nonactors and real-life situations with unpredictable outcomes. Debates about reality television’s commercialism, voyeurism, and cost-cutting techniques soon emerged, as have questions about reality television’s contrived settings and staged conventions. Because reality entertainment has overtaken less profitable forms of news and information on television, scholars have pondered its relationship to a “post-documentary” culture and an increasingly privatized civic landscape. Because reality television has concurrently served as a testing ground for integrated marketing, branding, and audience participation across new media platforms, including cell phones and computers, other scholars have focused on its place in a rapidly changing media environment. Debates over whether viewer interactivity is democratic or exploitative cut across the literature, as do questions about the new forms of ordinary celebrity and “fifteen minutes of fame” encouraged—and commodified—by reality television. What unites the relatively new discussion is an attempt to situate the forms, meanings, and stakes of unscripted television entertainment within the intersecting institutional, cultural, and social contexts in which it has taken hold.

Scholars bring interdisciplinary approaches to the study of reality television. Scholarly literature draws from film and television studies, media studies, political economy, and social and cultural theory to address reality television from multiple methodological and theoretical vantage points. Several books provide useful starting points for the study of reality television. Because reality entertainment only emerged as a major strand of global television in the past fifteen years, this literature is fairly new and continually evolving. Edited collections offering a range of conceptual, historical, methodological, and political economic frameworks on reality television have been particularly influential in defining what is still an emerging field of study. Particularly helpful anthologies include Friedman 2002 , Holmes and Jermyn 2004 , and Murray and Ouellette 2009 . The earliest book-length treatments of reality television also established an agenda for scholarly inquiry and future research. Biressi and Nunn 2005 situates reality television’s conventions within a history of documentary and visual culture. Andrejevic 2003 places reality entertainment within the interactive capitalist economy and theorizes its conventions in relation to critical theories of voyeurism and surveillance. Hill 2005 explores how audiences understand the hybrid conventions and truth claims of reality programs.

Andrejevic, Mark. 2003. Reality TV: The work of being watched . Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Focusing on Big Brother , a global program that set the template for many reality shows, Andrejevic shows how “watching and being watched” manipulates unconscious psychic desires and connects viewers to new forms of marketing and corporate surveillance. The book also critiques the interactivity (such as voting via cell phone) associated with shows such as Big Brother , arguing that profit-making threatens any meaningful connection between participation in television and political democracy.

Biressi, Anita, and Heather Nunn. 2005. Reality TV: Realism and revelation . London: Wallflower.

This book examines reality television’s claims to authenticity and truth. Focusing on the hybrid conventions of the shows and putting reality television into a larger history of film and television, the authors show that what appears as spontaneous reality is shaped by the genre’s entertaining twist on established visual conventions of realism and surveillance.

Friedman, James, ed. 2002. Reality squared: Televisual discourse on the real . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.

The first scholarly treatment of reality entertainment, this edited collection examines the history of unscripted television formats and the changing conventions of liveness, handheld camera footage, and “real” events covered 24/7 by television cameras. Anticipating the explosion of prime-time reality entertainment since it was published, the book shows how unscripted television combines the conventions of spectacle, documentary, political structures (such as courtrooms), and therapy.

Hill, Annette. 2005. Reality TV: Factual entertainment and reality audiences . London: Routledge.

DOI: 10.4324/9780203337158

This book offers an overview of reality television’s conventions, with a focus on the British context. Arguing that understandings of the real are culturally shaped, the author presents qualitative and quantitative research on how audiences evaluate the authenticity of reality programs and how they judge the performance of ordinary people on television.

Holmes, Su, and Deborah Jermyn, eds. 2004. Understanding reality television . London: Routledge.

This collection examines the aesthetics and cultural politics of prime-time reality television from a range of critical, sociological, and philosophical perspectives. Essays discuss the cultural merger of documentary and fiction, the representation of “real” people and social groups, and the active audience presumed by reality entertainment programming.

Murray, Susan, and Laurie Ouellette, eds. 2009. Reality TV: Remaking television culture . 2d ed. New York: New York Univ. Press.

This collection argues that reality television is remaking television culture and attributes the shift in part to changes in the political economy of television. Several essays examine the industry’s turn to cost-cutting production styles (including the avoidance of paid talent and unionized writers) and the integration of advertising into content and website participation. Other essays examine the hybrid conventions and representational politics of reality formats and situate waves of reality television within changing sociopolitical contexts, from the 1950s to the present.

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About Communication »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• Accounting Communication
• Acculturation Processes and Communication
• Action Assembly Theory
• Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis
• Activist Media
• Adherence and Communication
• Advertisements, Televised Political
• Advertising
• Advertising, Children and
• Advertising, International
• Advocacy Journalism
• Agenda Setting
• Annenberg, Walter H.
• Apologies and Accounts
• Applied Communication Research Methods
• Argumentation
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advertising
• Attitude-Behavior Consistency
• Audience Fragmentation
• Authoritarian Societies, Journalism in
• Bakhtin, Mikhail
• Bandwagon Effect
• Baudrillard, Jean
• Blockchain and Communication
• Bourdieu, Pierre
• Brand Equity
• British and Irish Magazine, History of the
• Broadcasting, Public Service
• Capture, Media
• Castells, Manuel
• Civil Rights Movement and the Media, The
• Co-Cultural Theory and Communication
• Codes and Cultural Discourse Analysis
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Collective Memory, Communication and
• Comedic News
• Communication Apprehension
• Communication Campaigns
• Communication, Definitions and Concepts of
• Communication History
• Communication Law
• Communication Management
• Communication Networks
• Communication, Philosophy of
• Community Attachment
• Community Journalism
• Community Structure Approach
• Computational Journalism
• Computer-Mediated Communication
• Content Analysis
• Corporate Social Responsibility and Communication
• Crisis Communication
• Critical and Cultural Studies
• Critical Race Theory and Communication
• Cross-tools and Cross-media Effects
• Cultivation
• Cultural and Creative Industries
• Cultural Imperialism Theories
• Cultural Mapping
• Cultural Persuadables
• Cultural Pluralism and Communication
• Cyberpolitics
• Death, Dying, and Communication
• Debates, Televised
• Deliberation
• Developmental Communication
• Diffusion of Innovations
• Digital Divide
• Digital Gender Diversity
• Digital Literacy
• Diplomacy, Public
• Distributed Work, Comunication and
• Documentary and Communication
• E-democracy/E-participation
• E-Government
• Elaboration Likelihood Model
• Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM)
• Embedded Coverage
• Entertainment-Education
• Environmental Communication
• Ethnic Media
• Ethnography of Communication
• Experiments
• Families, Multicultural
• Family Communication
• Federal Communications Commission
• Feminist and Queer Game Studies
• Feminist Data Studies
• Feminist Journalism
• Feminist Theory
• Focus Groups
• Food Studies and Communication
• Freedom of the Press
• Friendships, Intercultural
• Gatekeeping
• Gender and the Media
• Global Englishes
• Global Media, History of
• Global Media Organizations
• Glocalization
• Goffman, Erving
• Habermas, Jürgen
• Habituation and Communication
• Health Communication
• Hermeneutic Communication Studies
• Homelessness and Communication
• Hook-Up and Dating Apps
• Hostile Media Effect
• Identification with Media Characters
• Identity, Cultural
• Image Repair Theory
• Implicit Measurement
• Impression Management
• Infographics
• Information and Communication Technology for Development
• Information Management
• Information Overload
• Information Processing
• Innis, Harold
• Instructional Communication
• Integrated Marketing Communications
• Interactivity
• Intercultural Capital
• Intercultural Communication
• Intercultural Communication, Tourism and
• Intercultural Communication, Worldview in
• Intercultural Competence
• Intercultural Conflict Mediation
• Intercultural Dialogue
• Intercultural New Media
• Intergenerational Communication
• Intergroup Communication
• International Communications
• Interpersonal Communication
• Interpersonal LGBTQ Communication
• Interpretation/Reception
• Interpretive Communities
• Journalism, Accuracy in
• Journalism, Alternative
• Journalism and Trauma
• Journalism, Citizen
• Journalism, Citizen, History of
• Journalism Ethics
• Journalism, Interpretive
• Journalism, Peace
• Journalism, Tabloid
• Journalists, Violence against
• Knowledge Gap
• Lazarsfeld, Paul
• Leadership and Communication
• LGBTQ+ Family Communication
• Mass Communication
• McLuhan, Marshall
• Media Activism
• Media Aesthetics
• Media and Time
• Media Convergence
• Media Credibility
• Media Dependency
• Media Ecology
• Media Economics
• Media Economics, Theories of
• Media, Educational
• Media Ethics
• Media Exposure Measurement
• Media, Gays and Lesbians in the
• Media Literacy
• Media Management
• Media Policy and Governance
• Media Regulation
• Media, Social
• Media Sociology
• Media Systems Theory
• Merton, Robert K.
• Message Characteristics and Persuasion
• Mobile Communication Studies
• Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Approaches to
• Multinational Organizations, Communication and Culture in
• Murdoch, Rupert
• Narrative Engagement
• Net Neutrality
• News Framing
• News Media Coverage of Women
• NGOs, Communication and
• Online Campaigning
• Open Access
• Organizational Change and Organizational Change Communicat...
• Organizational Communication
• Organizational Communication, Aging and
• Participation, Civic/Political
• Participatory Action Research
• Patient-Provider Communication
• Peacebuilding and Communication
• Personalized Communication
• Persuasion and Social Influence
• Persuasion, Resisting
• Photojournalism
• Political Advertising
• Political Communication, Normative Analysis of
• Political Economy
• Political Knowledge
• Political Marketing
• Political Scandals
• Political Socialization
• Polls, Opinion
• Product Placement
• Public Interest Communication
• Public Opinion
• Public Relations
• Public Sphere
• Queer Intercultural Communication
• Queer Migration and Digital Media
• Race and Communication
• Racism and Communication
• Radio Studies
• Reality Television
• Reasoned Action Frameworks
• Religion and the Media
• Reporting, Investigative
• Rhetoric and Communication
• Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication
• Rhetoric and Social Movements
• Rhetoric, Religious
• Rhetoric, Visual
• Risk Communication
• Rumor and Communication
• Schramm, Wilbur
• Science Communication
• Scripps, E. W.
• Selective Exposure
• Sense-Making/Sensemaking
• Sesame Street
• Sex in the Media
• Small-Group Communication
• Social Capital
• Social Change
• Social Cognition
• Social Construction
• Social Identity Theory and Communication
• Social Interaction
• Social Movements
• Social Network Analysis
• Social Protest
• Sports Communication
• Stereotypes
• Strategic Communication
• Superdiversity
• Surveillance and Communication
• Symbolic Interactionism in Communication
• Synchrony in Intercultural Communication
• Telecommunications History/Policy
• Television, Cable
• Textual Analysis and Communication
• Third Culture Kids
• Third-Person Effect
• Time Warner
• Transgender Media Studies
• Transmedia Storytelling
• Two-Step Flow
• United Nations and Communication
• Urban Communication
• Uses and Gratifications
• Video Deficit
• Video Games and Communication
• Violence in the Media
• Visual Communication
• Web Archiving
• Whistleblowing
• Whiteness Theory in Intercultural Communication
• Youth and Media
• Zines and Communication
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [185.80.151.41]
• 185.80.151.41

Reality Television and Social Evaluation Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Fascinating viewers, works cited.

Television networks strive to produce unique programming each year. New-fangled programs guarantee more anticipation, comedy as well as amusement whereas they push the envelope of communally and ethically suitable, exciting, humorous, and enjoyable programs away.

A reality founded television, with regard to the current towering ratings, fits all these criteria. Reality Television is a programming genre that revolves around the daily practices of “real life” citizens.

This is, in contrast to the fictional characters, assumed by actors. In reality, TV shows that an individual is followed personally by the cameras.

On the other hand, it is possible to say that viewers do not really participate in the whole production process but only become involved in the fascinating day-to-day drama and plotlines as depicted on their screens (Frisby 35). It appears that individuals simply have fun and contentment in studying other individual’s lives.

There exist three very important classes within the reality field. These include: dating shows such as “The Bachelor”, game shows like “Survivor” as well as talent shows such as the “American Idol”.

Despite the fact that reality programming intensely runs during the normal season, there is a greater superfluity in the summer because such programs are economical to create and, in case they fail to portray ratings, they can easily be done away with. Furthermore, they can quickly be replaced with programmes that show progress and high ratings.

It is becoming more and more complicated to keep away from reality TV today. In restaurants, offices, health clubs and bars, the citizens are engrossed in discussions with regard to whatever they viewed on television the previous night.

Interestingly, such talk does not touch on world news but rather personalities. For instance, the topic may be based on what occurred on “The Apprentice.” Consequently, the talk may be a “did-you-see” discussion with regard to “The Bachelor” or any other Reality TV show such as “Cheaters” (Frisby 135).

Programs like such as “Fear Factor”, “The Apprentice,” “American Girl”, “Survivor,”, “American Idol”, “Temptation Island,” “Big Brother,” “Cheaters,” “Extreme Makeover” “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” “The Bachelorette” as well as “The Bachelor,” have become so popular and taken hold of the current television viewer.

During the 2003-2004 interval, ten reality shows were categorized among the twenty five influential prime-time series. These were in the audience-masterpiece directory for adults aged between eighteen and forty nine.

The income realized from these shows was approximately seventy five thousand dollars. It is further approximated that over seventy million viewers are captivated by television programs that places an individual in a position that enables him or her to contend in the current dispute while at the same time, being screened.

What is in these shows that keep millions of viewers daily? This question has triggered a lot of answers yet there is no satisfying reason as to why such programs attract such attention.

From “Survivor” to “Average Joe,” it looks like reality television thrives since it is concerned with real-life situations such as contending for a job or award, love, or achieving ones vision of becoming rich.

Most individuals can relate to these issues. Nonetheless, as these programs grow to be more invasive, their clutch on “reality” seems to become tenuous.

It is refreshing and encouraging to see that new faces get some spotlight, rather than the usual stars, mostly from the movie industry. The very aspect of being human that gives confidence to individuals to rumor about their family, friends, and even a foreigner is what constitutes and promotes an audience for such reality television shows. It is more of a car crash on one side of the freeway.

The glimpses into the lives other individuals are regularly shucking, yet impractical to ignore. Based on this theory, television show, “The Real World,” was discovered.

It is frequently known as “the forerunner of reality television shows.” In this show, seven foreigners are chosen to live jointly (Frisby 232). The viewers are presented with the opportunity to watch and discover what happens when strangers with varying backgrounds are made to live together.

Researchers regularly acknowledge, as a minimum, six gratifications of media exploits. These include: information which is also referred to as “knowledge” or surveillance, entertainment, escape, relaxation, passing time, and social viewing or status enhancement.

Even though the brands for these indulgences may be changed, diverse studies substantiate that they are sustainable and targets all circumstances. Based on this, the main question would be on the type of indulgence that viewers obtain from such reality television shows.

The social comparison theory might play a crucial role in explaining and uncovering a very essential motive which a lot of individuals might not be able or are not willing to articulate openly.

Researchers have referred to communal evaluation as “the procedure of contemplating about information with regard to one or more individuals in relation to personality.”

Communal evaluation theory puts forward that people have a need or drive to evaluate their opinions and abilities. In the year nineteen fifty four, Festinger, the individual who came up with the theory and established research in this field, proposed that individuals who were uncertain about their opinions and abilities would evaluate themselves through associations linked to their equals. In fact, people evaluate themselves for a range of reasons.

This may include: to establish a virtual standing on a particular matter or related aptitude; verify norms; emulate behaviors; raise spirits or feel better about life (Frisby 262). In addition, they may want to establish their personal situations as well as evaluate personality, emotions, and self-worth.

Those individuals who were better than others were known as “Upward comparisons”. These individuals who engaged in “upward comparison” would discover from others, be motivated by their illustrations, and become extremely aggravated to attain analogous goals.

Research states that “Upward comparisons” are solicited when an individual is provoked to modify or prevail over difficulties and obstacles (Frisby 262).

Self-development is the key result of a growing evaluation since the targets act as role models. It also motivates and teaches individuals to accomplish or conquer related problems.

On the other hand, a communal evaluation that encompasses a target who is regarded to be substandard, inept, or less providential is referred to as a descending evaluation.

Its fundamental principle is that individuals feel healthier about their own condition and develop their prejudiced well-being when they do comparisons.

Hypothetically, downward comparisons assist individuals to cope with individual predicaments by allowing them to view themselves and their troubles in a more constructive way by acknowledging that there are others with more complex matters.

Reality televisions enable the audience to live vicariously, giggle, and weep via the daily, average individuals who have the chance to experience things, which until the minute they are shown, a lot of individuals only dream of.

Viewers mostly tune into these programs since they posses elements that the audience would admire to experience on their own. In addition, it enables them to express amusement at other’s mistakes or commemorate successes. This makes them feel healthier about themselves since they are not as “bad as the individuals on television.”

Introduction to heartbreaking events or terrible news calls for social comparison among the viewers. It is supposed that reality viewers may be encouraged to evaluate and differentiate their own state of affairs with those stars of the reality shows.

This comparison procedure could ultimately create a sense of self-satisfaction. To better comprehend the reactions made when an individual is exposed to media content, an analysis of the opinions made in the course of watching the reality television was carried out. The investigator coded all the opinions that contained terms of social comparisons which members made on their own volition.

It is an actuality that reality television can enthrall thousand of spectators at any given occasion on a particular day. Research has started to document on how individuals get involved in impulsive and habitual communal evaluations when exposed to particular media pictures, especially those of reality television.

It is also evident that one main impact of being exposed to reality television program is to feel healthier with regard to an individual’s aptitude, life situations as well as gifts.

Reality TV further acts as a much-required diversion from the constant parade of disastrous global events. It enables viewers to have an option of watching others triumph over adversity, escape menace, get a job, learn to endure and even discover feeling of affection.

Whether the plan is adoration, cash, motivated expression, becoming a star, or just an opportunity to be seen on television, the impact on the audiences is similar.

Individuals admire to know that there are other people who are facing similar situations that they may be in. They also do make the same mistakes (Frisby 275). Regardless of the changing desires of the community and the uncertainty of television viewers, the humans’ requirement to evaluate and communicate has guaranteed a market for this venture.

A social evaluation does not call for an individual to provide elaborate, careful, conscious ideas about the assessment, but it means that there ought to be, to some extent, an endeavor to discover or look for resemblance or disparities between the self and other on a few particular aspects.

Quite a number of theorists would argue that for an evaluation to be regarded as a comparison, the individual ought to have knowledge about the assessment and get in touch with with the other person directly.

Nevertheless, social evaluations do not need individual contact or awareness since imaginary characters showed in the media could represent significant standards of evaluation.

Information on social evaluation and media utilization suggests that daily encounters with television programs may provide the viewers with information that persuades them to participate in a customary and impulsive communal evaluation.

This eventually impacts on mood and other features of prejudiced well-being. Individuals may not be in a position to deliberately articulate the evaluation process or willfully register its impact on issues such as self-development and self-improvement.

Frisby, Cynthia. Getting real with Reality TV . New York, NY: Mc-Graw Hill, 2010.

• Television and Cultural Change and Fragmentation of Audiences in the 21st Century
• Concept of “Lifestyle” in the 20th Century
• Is HTML a Programming Language?
• Bachelor Degree and Employment
• Bachelor of Science in Nursing Curriculum Critique
• How Entertainment Television Shapes Social Values and Beliefs
• TV Show's Influence on Perception
• TV Show Classification
• Television Criticism in Advert
• Need for Reality TV on Television Programming
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, April 2). Reality Television and Social Evaluation. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reality-television/

"Reality Television and Social Evaluation." IvyPanda , 2 Apr. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/reality-television/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Reality Television and Social Evaluation'. 2 April.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Reality Television and Social Evaluation." April 2, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reality-television/.

1. IvyPanda . "Reality Television and Social Evaluation." April 2, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reality-television/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Reality Television and Social Evaluation." April 2, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reality-television/.

IvyPanda uses cookies and similar technologies to enhance your experience, enabling functionalities such as:

• Basic site functions
• Ensuring secure, safe transactions
• Secure account login
• Remembering account, browser, and regional preferences
• Remembering privacy and security settings
• Analyzing site traffic and usage
• Personalized search, content, and recommendations
• Displaying relevant, targeted ads on and off IvyPanda

Please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy for detailed information.

Certain technologies we use are essential for critical functions such as security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and ensuring the site operates correctly for browsing and transactions.

Cookies and similar technologies are used to enhance your experience by:

• Remembering general and regional preferences
• Personalizing content, search, recommendations, and offers

Some functions, such as personalized recommendations, account preferences, or localization, may not work correctly without these technologies. For more details, please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy .

To enable personalized advertising (such as interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. These partners may have their own information collected about you. Turning off the personalized advertising setting won't stop you from seeing IvyPanda ads, but it may make the ads you see less relevant or more repetitive.

Personalized advertising may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of the information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have the right to opt out. Turning off personalized advertising allows you to exercise your right to opt out. Learn more in IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy .

Advertisement

How Reality TV Works

• Share Content on Facebook
• Share Content on LinkedIn
• Share Content on Flipboard
• Share Content on Reddit
• Share Content via Email

So, you're home on the couch in front of your new plasma screen with a few hours to kill. You start channel-surfing and come across a show with people slurping a concoction of maggots and hissing beetles for a chance to win 50 grand. On channel after channel you see shows with truckers driving across treacherously icy roads in Alaska , two people telling folks what not to wear, and crab fisherman braving a mother of a storm. Now you're asking yourself, when did Elaine, Jerry, George and Kramer get replaced by Lauren, Heidi, Audrina and Brody? Who in the world are New York and Tila Tequila, and why do they have their own shows? Just when did reality TV get to be so popular? And, finally, how do people come up with this stuff -- and how real are these shows anyway?

Reality TV has morphed from radio game show and amateur talent competition to hidden camera stunt show to dating show to documentary-style series. The genre now encompasses unscripted dramas, makeover sagas, celebrity exposés, lifestyle-change shows, dating shows, talent extravaganzas and just about any kind of competition you can think of (and a few that you probably can't). In the fall 2007 season, there were more than a dozen reality shows in prime-time slots on major networks and cable channels. On any given night, you can watch "The Biggest Loser," "Dancing with the Stars," "The Real World," "I Love New York," "Beauty and the Geek," "America's Next Top Model," "Ultimate Fighter," "The Bachelor," "Run's House" or "Project Runway" -- to name just a few.

By definition, reality TV is essentially unscripted programming that doesn't employ actors and focuses on footage of real events or situations. Reality shows also often use a host to run the show or a narrator to tell the story or set the stage of events that are about to unfold. Unlike scripted shows like sitcoms, dramas and newscasts, reality TV does not rely on writers and actors, and much of the show is run by producers and a team of editors. Because of this, it can be a very affordable programming option from a production standpoint -- and it's why networks are scrambling to add reality content in the wake of the Writers Guild of America strike.

The defining aspect of reality TV is probably the manner in which it is shot. Whether the show takes place in a real setting with real people (much like a documentary), shoots in front of a live studio audience that participates in the program, or uses hidden surveillance, reality TV relies on the camera capturing everything as it happens. In this article, we'll learn about what constitutes reality TV today, the types of reality programs, when they got to be so popular -- and if they're all as "real" as they claim to be. But first, let's take a look at how it all started.

A reality show's segment producers or story editors usually assemble storyboards and shooting scripts, important tools for shaping the direction of the show. In the TV sitcom and drama world, these folks would be known as writers. But unlike writers, they're generally not recognized by the Writers Guild of America and so aren't union employees. This distinction could be seen as a disservice to the segment producers and story editors, but it benefits the show in that it lowers production costs -- and it helps preserve the idea that the shows are real and unscripted. It also allows reality shows to keep on rolling when a writers' strike hits, like it did in fall 2007. Many reality show staffers have contested the distinction in ongoing court cases since 2005.

Reality TV Evolution

Groundbreaking reality shows, the survivor craze, reality show structure.

Before there were shows like "Ice Road Truckers" and "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila," there was "This is Your Life." It originally broadcast on the radio in the late 1940s and made the switch to television in the early 1950s. "This is Your Life" was reality TV because it presented the story of a real person's life -- and relied on the participation of real people, who were shot in front of a live audience or filmed on location. It didn't matter if the subject was Joe Schmo or Johnny Cash -- they were all surprised by host Ralph Edwards and his camera crew (they famously surprised Cash on stage in the middle of a concert).

"The Original Amateur Hour" crossed over from radio in 1948. This talent show featured acts that performed for a voting audience. The act with the most votes was invited back the next week. This might sound familiar -- "The Gong Show," "Star Search," "American Idol," "America's Got Talent" and "Dancing with the Stars" are all based on this formula.

Another 1950s radio crossover was "Queen for a Day." It involved four female contestants who competed for household appliances by describing how difficult their lives were. The studio audience determined the queen via an applause meter. Current reality shows like "10 Years Younger," "A Makeover Story" and "Deserving Design" are its direct descendants.

Art Linkletter and Allen Funt brought practical jokes, stunts and hidden surveillance to TV in the '50s. Radio's "Candid Microphone" became "Candid Camera," with Funt hosting and performing practical jokes. The gags and stunts were contrived, but the unsuspecting targets' reactions were very real. Audience members on Linketter's "People are Funny" participated in outrageous skits and gags. "Fear Factor" later took this idea to the nth degree, and "Candid Camera" passed the torch to "Girls Behaving Badly" and "Punk'd."

Other early reality shows included "I'd Like to See" (1948) and "You Asked for It" (1950), which required audience members to write in or vote for what they'd like to see on the show. The picks were often filmed in a documentary or clip-type style -- shot on location and presented to the audience with a narrator. Shows like "Real People" and "That's Incredible" incorporated similar techniques and were popular in the late 1970s and early '80s.

While much of reality TV in the 1960s and '70s continued to revolve around game shows and amateur talent, there were some changes. Merv Griffin created several new game shows, including "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune." Chuck Barris also arrived on the scene, inventing a whole new type of game show. "The Dating Game," which premiered in 1965, was shot in front of a live studio audience and featured three bachelors or bachelorettes vying for a date with a contestant on the other side of the set. It has spawned dozens of dating shows. Capitalizing on the success of "The Dating Game," Barris went on to produce other reality shows, including the popular amateur talent series "The Gong Show."

Another type of reality show premiered in 1973 -- a 12-episode documentary series called "An American Family." It captured the day-to-day lives of the Loud family over a seven-month period. "An American Family" was groundbreaking, showing the Louds' marital problems and not shying away from the eldest son Lance's openly gay lifestyle. TV Guide considers it the first reality show.

In 1988, TV writers staged a 22-week strike that greatly affected network programming. Several networks were already committed to running one reality show in their season's lineup, but channels like Fox resorted to reality TV during and after the strike. During this season, Fox premiered "Cops," which became one of TV's longest-running shows (it aired until 2020). The show follows police from around the country, filming real response calls and arrests. "America's Funniest Home Videos" and "America's Most Wanted" also premiered around that time and are still going strong.

The next big shift in reality TV came in 1992, when MTV premiered "The Real World." MTV paired an ex-soap opera scribe, Mary-Ellis Bunim, with Jonathan Murray, who had a background in news and documentaries, and commissioned them to write a hip soap opera for the MTV generation. They did, but when they flew it by the studio execs, it was branded too expensive. So Bunim and Murray asked if they could try it without a script and actors. When MTV gave them the green light, they auditioned hundreds of 18- to 25-year-olds and put together a cast of seven. Then they filled a New York City loft with cameras, producers and editing crews and filmed the group for three months. The immediate (and ongoing) hit spawned "Road Rules" -- and countless "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" shows.

Eight years later, "Survivor" would change the landscape of network TV. Read on to learn more.

In 2000, CBS picked up a new reality show called "Survivor." The decision might have had something to do with another looming writers' strike, the success of similar shows in Europe, or the ever-rising cost of producing sitcoms and dramas -- or maybe it was a combination of all of these things. No matter the reason, it ended up being one of the most successful TV moves in recent history. The "Survivor" concept had been created by British producer Charlie Parsons almost a decade earlier, but it was Mark Burnett who brought it to American television. Burnett had unsuccessfully shopped the idea to several networks (including CBS) before CBS picked it up.

"Survivor" assembles 16 to 20 strangers (plus host Jeff Probst, camera crews, producers and various administrative personnel) on a remote island with little to no food or supplies. The contestants are divided into "tribes" upon arrival, and the show revolves around the competition created by a series of challenges. The contestants vote one person off the island every week until only two remain, one of whom wins $1,000,000.

Burnett is considered by many to be the instigator of the reality TV show revolution, but he continues to refer to "Survivor" as an "unscripted drama" -- not necessarily a reality show. The first season aired in the summer of 2000 and garnered one of the largest audiences in CBS's history. Other networks took note and soon, clusters of reality shows began appearing on every channel.

Some of the shows that followed in the wake of the "Survivor" success were "Big Brother," "The Mole," "The Amazing Race" and "The Bachelor." But how "real" are they? We'll try to get to the bottom of it on the next page.

It was probably only a matter of time before mock-reality shows started appearing on the airwaves. "The Office" is probably the most recognizable show in the reality-spoofing genre -- the workplace mockumentary hopped the pond to the United States in 2005 after a short but very successful run in England. Other current reality-like sitcoms include "Trailer Park Boys," "Drawn Together," "Reno 911" and "The Flight of the Conchords."

So, just how real is reality TV? While it certainly varies from show to show, consider this: All of the concepts were created by someone (usually the producer), the people who populate the show were auditioned or hired in some way, and, while the footage may be real, it is usually extremely edited. For example, the first season of MTV's "The Real World" was shot over a three-month period, ostensibly 24 hours a day -- this would add up to about 2,160 hours of footage. But only 13 half-hour episodes aired (technically, each episode was 22 minutes plus commercials), or approximately six and a half hours.

In 2001, first-season "Survivor" contestant Stacey Stillman filed a lawsuit against producer Mark Burnett and CBS, claiming that Burnett rigged the show by talking two other contestants into voting her off the island. Stillman said that Burnett wanted to keep 72-year-old contestant Rudy Boesch on the island to maintain an older viewing demographic

A number of contestants on shows like "The Apprentice," "The Bachelor" and "Joe Millionaire" have claimed that their actions were taken out of context and presented in misleading ways.

Reality shows typically don't have scripts, but there is often a shooting script or an outline that details aspects of an episode or part of the show. For example, on shows like "The Real World" and "Big Brother," which take place in confined quarters, the outline might give directions for which rooms or cameras to focus on. It might set up a specific challenge for the contestants on "Survivor" or "The Amazing Race." A shooting script could also create conflict between some of the participants (by pairing specific people as roommates or partners on "The Real World" or "Beauty and the Geek"). In extreme cases, a shooting script might include a storyboard -- a visual representation of the concept that physically illustrates what will occur in a scene.

Ultimately, reality producers and editors have a lot of control over what happens on the show, just by the sheer fact that they've put the people together in certain situations, and they're controlling what footage gets aired and what doesn't. They can also use a device known as frankenbiting to edit together conversation excerpts or sound bites to create a whole new dialogue or conversation. Frankenbiting -- and a savvy editor -- can essentially create alliances, crushes, fights and relationships. Footage that was captured days apart can come to appear as one scene or situation.

Another thing that separates reality TV from scripted dramas and sitcoms is the use of actors. Reality TV shows are supposedly populated by real people -- average Joes, geeks, the girl next door -- not actors. But, after the initial seasons of "The Real World," "Survivor," "The Bachelor" and "American Idol," it quickly became apparent that a lot of the real people auditioning for these shows were out-of-work or would-be actors trying to get screen time. But as long as it's entertaining, no one seems to be complaining -- people will keep coming back for more.

• "Smile, you're on Candid Camera!"
• "The tribe has spoken." ("Survivor")
• "Is that your final answer?" ("Who Wants to be a Millionaire")
• "You are the weakest link, goodbye." ("The Weakest Link")
• "You're going to Hollywood!" ("American Idol")
• "You're fired!" ("The Apprentice")
• "It's time to cut the fat." ("The Biggest Loser")
• "That's hot." ("The Simple Life")
• ­"Make it work." ("Project Runway")

Reality TV FAQ

Why is reality tv so popular, is reality tv real or scripted, why is reality tv bad, lots more information, related howstuffworks articles.

• How Television Works
• How Radio Works
• How Writing a TV Show Works
• How Getting Your Show on TV Works
• How TV Production Works
• Inside "The Amazing Race"­
• If only "Lost" were real -- wait, is it?

More Great Links

• Reality TV World
• Reality TV Magazine  
• ABC. http://www.abc.com
• Candid Camera. http://www.candidcamera.com/
• CBS. http://www.cbs.com
• Cook, Martie. "Write to TV: Out of Your Head and Onto the Screen." Focal Press, 2007.
• Discovery Channel. http://www.discovery.com
• Epstein, Alex. "Crafty TV Writing: Thinking Inside the Box." Owl Books, 2006.
• Fox. http://www.fox.com
• Gay, Verne. "Who's Doctoring Reality Shows?" Newsday, July 21, 2005.
• Huff, Richard M. "Reality Television." Praeger Publishers, 2006.
• Murray, Susan and Laurie Ouellette. "Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture." New York University Press, 2004.
• Museum of Broadcast Communications. http://www.museum.tv/
• NBC. http://www.nbc.com
• PBS. http://www.pbs.org
• Poniewozik, James. "How Reality TV Fakes It." Time, July 29, 2006.
• TV Guide. http://www.tvguide.com

Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article:

It’s Time to Start Taking Reality TV More Seriously

Danielle J. Lindemann ’10GSAS , a sociology professor at Lehigh University, understands reality TV better than practically anyone else. Her new book True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us takes an intellectual dive into a massively popular but maligned genre. 

Why should we take reality TV seriously?

Despite the stigma associated with lowbrow entertainment, studies reveal that more people in the US are watching reality TV than not, and nearly half of all TV series are unscripted. Media research has long shown that what we see on TV impacts our beliefs, values, and attitudes and how we move and act in the world.

I see reality TV as a kind of fun-house mirror, because it can show us ourselves in caricatured or amplified form. The genre reveals some of the worst things about society — sexism, racism, classism, materialism — and dials them up to eleven. But it also shows us the best of ourselves in its creativity. Historically, reality TV has been more diverse than other forms of media in its representation of people of color and queer people, even if those representations haven’t always been positive. Reality TV reveals how much society has evolved and, at the same time, how conservative it remains. 

You teach a course that pairs episodes of reality-TV shows with sociological readings. Which shows do you find particularly interesting?

I like RuPaul’s Drag Race , because it emphasizes how aspects of gender are performed in everyday life. A show like The Bachelor , with its fixation on marriage and rigid gender stereotypes, reveals how long-standing ideas about courtship still powerfully influence the way we think and behave. The Real Housewives franchise offers fascinating character studies and insight into group dynamics, while Keeping Up with the Kardashians explores the strength of the family unit.

What’s your take on why reality TV is so popular?  

Reality TV is voyeuristic. We like watching the “train wreck” character to remind ourselves that even if we’re messed up in our own ways, we are not the train wreck. We might feel smugly superior to the people on these shows. There is a freak-show aspect to this voyeurism too. Sometimes, it’s marginalized groups that are ridiculed, as in the case of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo , where the central family is portrayed as buffoonish and stereotypically lower-class.  

Reality TV involves real people ostensibly reacting to real-world situations, which allows us to put ourselves in the participants’ shoes and see flashes of ourselves. The genre tends to traffic in broad character archetypes — the “smart one” and the “shy one” and the “athletic one,” for example. There’s usually someone you can identify with and say “I’m a Bethenny” or “I’m a Ramona,” and so on. Reality TV is also unique in the way it encourages audience participation: we engage with the stars via social media and, with shows like The Voice or Love Island , we even vote on the outcomes. 

Binging reality TV, at least for me, can have a kind of anesthetic effect. Viewers do not need to see these shows as pure mirrors of life in order to enjoy and connect with them. We know they are constructed by producers and some scenes may be staged. Personally, I enjoy looking for “really real” moments, the smudges in the gloss — like when the Housewives haul out one another’s real-life text messages to read during reunion episodes. 

How has reality TV influenced other areas of society? 

Studies have shown various behaviors to be associated with watching reality TV; heavy viewers of the genre are more likely to drink alcohol, get fake tans, and use hot tubs on dates. While correlation does not necessarily equal causation, one well-known study established a link between viewership of 16 and Pregnant and reduced teen-pregnancy rates. 

Many people have launched successful careers after starting out in reality TV. Cardi B, for example, entered into the public view in 2015 as a cast member of Love & Hip-Hop: New York , where she was portrayed as an aspiring musician. Since then, she has pulled herself up the celebrity pipeline and become a Grammy-winning rapper. 

Some reality stars have even entered politics, the most famous being Donald Trump. Would he have been elected president if he hadn’t appeared on The Apprentice and been shown in a position of power, wearing a suit, and barking orders from behind a desk, and been depicted as always being right? We can’t know for sure, but it’s reasonable to suggest that reality TV helped pave his road to the White House. The media coverage surrounding Trump’s presidency arguably became its own reality show — in 2018, major news outlets even covered a visit to the Oval Office from Kim Kardashian. Trump is an important data point for helping us understand how reality TV both reflects and molds culture. If we learned anything from his presidency, it’s this: one thing that’s “really real” about unscripted programming is its impact.   

More From Books

6 New Books to Read this Fall

All by Columbia alumni and faculty authors

Will Your Data Come Back to Haunt You?

In The Secret Life of Data , Aram Sinnreich ’00JRN explores the unknown impacts of the information age

Review: Creation Lake

By Rachel Kushner ’01SOA

Stay Connected.

Sign up for our newsletter.

General Data Protection Regulation

Columbia University Privacy Notice

Reality television: a discourse-analytical perspective

Cite this chapter.

• Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich &
• Nuria Lorenzo-Dus  

1300 Accesses

7 Citations

The empirical chapters of this book offer original studies of reality television (RTV henceforth) in a wide range of cultural contexts. Importantly, they all share a discourse-analytical approach even though they employ different discourse-analytic frameworks in order to address specific research questions, from multimodality and interactional sociolinguistics to Critical Discourse Analysis. The aim of this chapter is to explain the need, at this point in time, for a discourse-analytical approach within RTV scholarship. Doing so requires explaining our conceptualization of RTV as a discourse , one comprised of various genres. It also requires reviewing, albeit briefly, the two broad areas on which the empirical studies of RTV included in this book focus: identity and impoliteness.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime
• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Unable to display preview.  Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Introduction: Researching Reception and Discourse

Entextualization and resemiotization as resources for identification in social media

Postscript: Futures for Genre Studies

Barnfield, Graham (2002) From direct cinema to car-wreck video: Reality TV and the crisis of content. In Dolan Cummings (ed.), Reality TV: How Real is Real? (London: Hodder Arnold), pp. 47–66.

Google Scholar  

Baruh, Lemi & Ji Hoon Park (eds.) (2011) Reel Politics: Reality Television as a Platform for Political Discourse (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

Beebe, Leslie M. (1995) Polite fictions: Instrumental rudeness and pragmatic competence. In James E. Alatis, Carolyn A. Straehele, Maggie Ronkin & Brent Gallenberger (eds.), Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press), pp. 154–68.

Benwell, Bethan & Elizabeth Stokoe (2006) Discourse and Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

Bonner, Frances (2003) Ordinary Television: Analyzing Popular TV (London: Sage).

Bousfield, Derek (2008) Impoliteness in Interaction (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins).

Book   Google Scholar  

Brown, Penelope & Steven Levinson (1987) Politeness: Some Universals of Language Usage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Caughie, John (1991) Adorno’s reproach: Repetition, difference and television genre. Screen , 32(2): 127–53.

Article   Google Scholar  

Collins, Kathleen (2009) Reality television: Scholarly treatments since 2000. CBQ 40(1): 2–12.

Corner, John (2000) What can we say about ‘documentary’? Media, Culture and Society , 22(5): 681–8.

Coyne, Sarah M., Simon L. Robinson & David A. Nelson (2010) Does reality backbite? Physical, verbal, and relational aggression in reality television programs. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media , 54(2): 282–98.

Crook, Sarah E, Tracy R. Worrell, David Westerman, Jeffrey S. Davis, Emily J. Moyer & S. H. Clarke (2004). Personality characteristics associated with watching reality programming. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, New Orleans, LA (April).

Culpeper, Jonathan (1996) Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics , 25: 349–67.

Culpeper, Jonathan (2005) Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research , 1: 35–72.

Culpeper, Jonathan (2011) Impoliteness. Using Language to Create Offence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Culpeper, Jonathan, Derek Bousfield & Anne Wichmann (2003) Impoliteness revisited: With special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics , 35 (10/11): 1545–79.

de Fina, Anna, Deborah Schiffrin & Michael Bamberg (eds.) (2006) Discourse and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Eelen, Gino (2001) A Critique of Politeness Theories (Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing).

Fairclough, Norman (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (London: Routledge).

Friedman, James (ed.) (2002) Reality Squared: Televisual Discourse on the Real (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).

Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar (2009) Impoliteness and identity in the American news media: The ‘Culture Wars’. Journal of Politeness Research , 5(2): 273–304.

Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar (2010) A genre approach to the study of impoliteness. International Review of Pragmatics , 2: 46–94.

Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar (2013) El modelo del género y la des/cortesia clasificatoria en las evaluaciones de Sálvame por parte de la audiencia. In Catalina Fuentes (ed.), (Des)cortesía para el espectáculo: Estudios de pragmática variacionista (Madrid: Arco Libros), pp. 167–96.

Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus & Patricia Bou-Franch (2010). A genre-approach to im-politeness in a Spanish TV talk show: Evidence from corpus-based analysis, questionnaires and focus groups. Intercultural Pragmatics 7(4): 689–723.

Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus & Patricia Bou-Franch (2013) Identity and impoliteness: The expert in the talent show Idol . Journal of Politeness Research , 9(1): 97–120.

Gee, James P. (2005) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis Theory and Method , 2nd edn. (New York: Routledge).

Genzlinger, Neil (2011) An old-fashioned date can’t beat a night out debating reality TV. The New York Times (October 7). Available at http://www.nytimes.com /2011/10/08/arts/television/reality-tv-debate-critics-notebo ok. html

Goffman, Erving (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books).

Goffman, Erving (1963) Stigma. Notes on the Management of the Spoiled Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster).

Graham, Todd & Auli Hajru (2011) Reality TV as a trigger of everyday political talk in the net-based public sphere. European Journal of Communication , 26(18): 18–32.

Grindstaff, Laura (2003) Daytime talk shows: Ethics and ordinary people on television. In Larry Gross, John Katz & Jay Ruby (eds.), Image Ethics in the Digital Age (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 115–41.

Holmes, Su & Deborah Jermyn (2004) Introduction. Understanding reality TV. In Sue Holmes & Deborah Jermyn (eds.), Understanding Reality TV (London: Routledge).

Kavka, Misha (2008) Reality Television, Affect and Intimacy: Reality Matters (Language, Discourse, Society series) (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

Kienpointner, Manfred (1997) Varieties of rudeness: Types and functions of impolite utterances. Functions of Language , 4: 251–87.

Kienpointner, Manfred (2008) Impoliteness and emotional arguments. Journal of Politeness Research , 4: 243–65.

Locher, Miriam A. & Richard J. Watts (2005) Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research , 1: 9–33.

Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2005) A rapport and impression management approach to public figures’ performance of talk. Journal of Pragmatics , 37: 611–31.

Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2006) Buying and selling: Mediating persuasion in British property shows. Media, Culture & Society , 28: 739–61.

Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2008) Real disorder in the court: An investigation of conflict talk in US courtroom shows. Media, Culture & Society , 30: 81–107.

Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2009a) Television Discourse. Analysing Language in the Media (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria (2009b) ‘You’re barking mad — I’m out’: Impoliteness and broadcast talk. Journal of Politeness Research , 5: 159–87.

Lunt, Peter & Paul Stenner (2005) The Jerry Springer Show as an emotional public sphere. Media, Culture & Society , 27: 59–82.

Miller, Carolyn (1984) Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech , 70: 151–67.

Montgomery, Martin (2001) Defining ‘authentic talk’. Discourse Studies , 3: 397–405.

Mutz, Diana & Byron Reeves (2005) The new videomalaise: Effects of televised incivility on political trust. American Political Science Review , 99: 1–15.

Nabi, Robin L., Carmen S. Stitt, Jeff Halford & Keli L. Finnerty (2006) Emotional and cognitive predictors of the enjoyment of reality based and fictional television programming: An elaboration of the uses and gratifications perspective. Media Psychology , 8(4): 421–47.

Neale, Stephen (1990) Questions of genre. Screen , 31(1): 45–66.

Ochs, Elinor (1993) Constructing social identity: A language socialization perspective. Research on Language and Social Interaction , 26: 287–306.

Pennycook, Alastair (2010) Language as Local Practice . (London: Routledge).

Penzhorn, Heidi & Magriet Pitout (2007) A critical-historical genre analysis of reality television. Communication , 33(1): 62–76.

Reeves, Byron & Clifford Nass (1996). The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Reid, Gwendolynne (2007) The Rhetoric of Reality Television — A Narrative Analysis of the Structure of Illusion (London: Routledge).

Reiss, Steven & James Wiltz (2011) Why people watch Reality TV. Media Psychology , 6: 363–78.

Rojek, Chris (2001) Celebrity (London: Reaktion).

Sanneh, Kelefa (2011) The reality principle. The rise and rise of a television genre. The New Yorker (May). Available at http://www.newyorker.com /arts/critics/atlarge/2011/05/09/110509crat_atlarge_sanneh.

Scollon, Ron & Suzanne W. Scollon (2001[1995]) Intercultural Communication , 2nd edn. (Oxford: Blackwell).

Sellers, Mortimer (2004) Ideals of public discourse. In Christine T. Sistare (ed.), Civility and its Discontents (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas), pp. 15–24.

Siegel, Lee (2003) Reality in America. Available at http://www.tnr.com /article/reality-america (Accessed November 29, 2010).

Stempel-Mumford, Laura (1995) Love and Ideology in the Afternoon: Soap Opera, Women and Television Genre (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press).

Swales, John (1990) Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings . (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Thornborrow, Joanna & Deborah Morris (2004) Gossip as strategy: The management of talk about others on reality TV show ‘Big Brother’. Journal of Sociolinguistics , 8(2): 246–71.

Tolson, Andrew (2006) Media Talk: Spoken Discourse on TV and Radio (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

Turner, Graeme (2010) Ordinary People and the Media. The Demotic Turn (London: Sage).

White, M. (2002) ‘Television, therapy and the social subject; Or, the TV therapy machine’. In J. Friedman (ed.), Reality Squared. Televisual Discourse on the Real (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), pp. 313–21.

Download references

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Department of English Language and Linguistics, Swansea University, UK

Nuria Lorenzo-Dus ( Professor in English Language and Linguistics ) ( Professor in English Language and Linguistics )

University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA

Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich ( Professor of English ) ( Professor of English )

Copyright information

© 2013 Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich and Nuria Lorenzo-Dus

About this chapter

Blitvich, P.GC., Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2013). Reality television: a discourse-analytical perspective. In: Lorenzo-Dus, N., Blitvich, P.GC. (eds) Real Talk: Reality Television and Discourse Analysis in Action. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313461_2

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313461_2

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, London

Print ISBN : 978-0-230-36872-9

Online ISBN : 978-1-137-31346-1

eBook Packages : Palgrave Language & Linguistics Collection Education (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

What are the Elements in Reality-TV Shows That Result in High Viewership and Engagement in the Audience?

• February 2020

• Coventry University

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations

• Marc Pendzich

• Publ Relat J

• Leigh H. Edwards

• Michael Lovelock

• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

• Join Donate
• OUR PROGRAMS
• IN THE NEWS

The Impact Of Reality TV On Our Teens: What Can Parents Do?

By Holly Peek, MD, MPH

Posted in: Hot Topics , Teenagers

Topics: Culture + Society

Research has shown  that reality TV has an impact on the values of young girls and how they view real-life situations. That being the case, it’s important to take a look at some of the standards portrayed on reality TV.

Kim Kardashian was preparing to have her baby.

Instead of making sure she had her hospital room reserved and her bags prepared, she was instead on the phone with members of her “glam squad” to make sure they would be available to ensure her hair and makeup were perfect for the day of her delivery. Her sisters chastise her vain behavior as being “typical Kim,” and it is apparent where her values lie.

Meanwhile, on another cable channel, female socialites of Beverly Hills prepare for a dinner party. Almost as soon as the women arrive in their designer clothes, the wine, catty remarks and tears begin to flow. Throughout the booze-fueled dinner, the women accuse each other of spreading rumors, and the yelling and finger-pointing ensue. A typical dinner party for the “real” housewives.

Reality television is a huge part of our television viewing culture. It may be clear to many adults that not all is “real” in the world of reality TV. However, how do children and adolescents understand the world of reality TV? What could reality TV be teaching adolescent girls, in particular, about what is valued in the real world? And, how does it affect their attitudes, beliefs, self-image and behavior?

What are some of the common themes in reality TV?

Physical Beauty And Sex Appeal

Many reality shows depict women idealizing beauty and thinness, giving the impression that a woman’s value is based on her appearance, and that popularity is derived from beauty. Competition shows such as America’s Next Top Model perpetuate this ideal, as women compete with one another to gain a lucrative modeling contract. Plastic surgery shows such as Botched , as well as the former Dr. 90210 and The Swan feature people altering their appearance and becoming more satisfied with their looks and quality of life after surgery. Many cast members of other reality shows, such as The Real Housewives franchise, are very open about their numerous plastic surgeries.

Keeping Up with the Kardashians features the life of a family that spends a great deal of time and money on appearance, with a consequent rise in fame and popularity of its girls and women.  Their Instagram pages, often followed by young fans of the show, are full of “selfies,” bikini and modeling photos. Photos that feature their “ordinary” everyday lives are highly sexualized, including the pages of the youngest teenage members of the family. This practice perpetuates the notion that “real” people gain popularity and happiness by focusing on their appearance—and to be successful, personal image, even at a very young age, should be laced with sexuality.

Materialism And Excessive Partying

Other common values perpetuated by reality TV include materialism, and an idealization of a hard-partying and “celebrity” lifestyle without regard for consequences. Both Rich Kids of Beverly Hills and Shahs of Sunset feature the lives of privileged young adults living in southern California. They take extravagant trips, wear designer clothes, spend a lot of money on alcohol-fueled parties, and are rarely seen working regular jobs. The cast of The Jersey Shore spends an entire summer binge drinking to excess, participating in risky sexual behavior, engaging in physical altercations, and even being arrested. Despite their obvious poor behavior and decision-making, their popularity continues to grow.

For anyone who has seen the 2013 movie The Bling Ring , this is an extreme example of how emulation of the celebrity and reality TV lifestyle can cause issues in teens. The movie is based on the true story of a group of teenagers in southern California who were responsible for the “Hollywood Hills robberies,” in which they robbed the homes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Audrina Patridge and several other celebrities. The teens idealized the party and high-fashion lifestyle that is often featured in gossip magazines and reality TV, and subsequently robbed the homes of celebrities to fuel this lifestyle. Although this is an extreme case, it does demonstrate the ability of this type of media to influence the values placed on materialism and excessive partying.

Aggression And Bullying

Reality TV typically reveals inappropriate behavior within peer groups, often promoting interpersonal drama, aggression and bullying. For example, women in The Real Housewives franchise gossip, back-stab and behave aggressively, condescending and catty toward one another. The expression of relational aggression between females seen across several reality shows gives girls the idea that gossiping is a normal part of a female relationship, that it’s in girls’ natures to be devisive and competitive with one another, and that being mean earns respect and is often necessary to get what you want.

As we try to discourage bullying, gossiping and other forms of interpersonal aggression between young girls, it’s unfortunate that reality shows often feature adults behaving in exactly this manner, all the while continuing to gain popularity in mainstream media.

Lack Of Focus On The Importance Of Intelligence And Real World Success

While reality TV seems to place emphasis on sex appeal, materialism, hard-partying and relational aggression, it does not emphasize the fact that many women on these shows are highly intelligent and successful in their real lives.

For instance, Adrienne Maloof, a former cast member on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills , is a successful entrepreneur as a co-owner of several business ventures that include Maloof Productions and the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. However, it was her divorce and disputes with other female cast members that were her main focus on the show. Married to Medicine , a show featuring the lives of doctor’s wives and female physicians, focuses primarily on the conflicts among the women, not on their successful medical practices.

How To Talk With Your Children And Adolescents About Reality TV

It’s important to know how to talk to your kids about the blurred line between reality and reality TV. Since reality TV has such a strong foothold in American pop culture, it is likely not going anywhere or changing its content any time soon. However, parents can learn how to help their children critically appraise what they see in the media.

Tips for critical appraisal of the media:   

• Watch one or more reality TV shows with your teenager: First, ask what shows your teen is watching, and then determine which shows are appropriate for the age and maturity of your child. It might be that you decide that a young teen, like a 13-year-old, should not watch certain shows that a 16-year-old teen would be permitted. If you introduce “TV rules” such as these in your home, you might consider viewing the shows alone first before determining which are appropriate for your child. When watching a show with your child, feel free to make the statements or ask the questions posed in the tips below.
• Make a clear statement about the reality of reality TV shows: This is important, since kids need to know that while reality TV appears to be “reality,” it is a sensationalized reality of the television world. Nevertheless, it has an impact, and like many TV shows, can serve as a foundation for imitation. Example : “You know these shows are NOT REAL. They look like real life but are written just like other shows.”
• Find out what your child thinks is real: Start a conversation to gauge how your child views reality TV. There is no way of knowing what she thinks unless you ask. You can pose these questions about reality TV in general, or about a specific show that your child is watching. Examples : Ask her to describe what is going on in the show to get a sense for how she thinks people look and act. What is good or bad about some of the behavior you are watching together? Does she think people act in real life as they do on reality TV? If so, what has she seen among her peers or adults that resembles what she is seeing on reality TV?
• Find out if TV images affect your child’s self image and values: Reality TV and popular culture can dictate what is “cool,” and what it means to be accepted. Find out if your child is emulating values portrayed on reality TV. Examples : Does she envy the lifestyle of the charchters? Is there anything she would change about herself or wish she could do after seeing a particular show? What values are being displayed in the show? What are her values?
• Talk to your child about why she likes certain characters: It may be enlightening to find out why your child likes or dislikes certain characters. This can indicate what values your child may or may not be reflecting. Examples: What connections is she making between herself and the reality TV characters? Why does your child find certain characters appealing? Explore if that character is truly admirable, or is there something else that makes her or him seem cool. Does that character make a good role model?  Would she like to behave similarly to that character? Who does make a good role model?
• Ask your teenager about what her friends are watching: Most kids watch the same shows, as it gives them common ground for conversation. Ask about her friends’ reactions to certain shows, episodes and/or behaviors. Examples: What do her friends think is cool? Would her friends want her to act like the characters in the show? Would she want her friends to act in certain ways?
• Help your child develop critical responses to what she observes on reality TV: Talking to the television and commenting when something seems unreal or scripted can help your child develop these critical skills. Use commercial breaks to discuss these elements or pause the show when you want to take a break and talk. Examples: Ask your child, “What is going on here? What is the message in this part of the show?” If your child cannot come up with answers, you can say, “I see people being really self-centered and vain, or nasty to a friend.” Your commentary may help initiate a conversation about the content of the show at any given point.

Although the programming of reality TV can be highly entertaining, it’s important to be aware of the messages and values that these shows often portray. More importantly, it’s essential to be aware of what our children are watching so that we can teach them how to recognize and process the skewed values of television reality. This is tricky, as this programming easily deceives viewers into believing it is a true reflection of the real world.

However, by following the tips above, your child can ultimately learn not to accept what is portrayed on reality TV as the truth, but rather to think more critically about what the characters are doing, and why they are behaving in certain ways. This knowledge will give your child the tools to develop stronger values, and a more solid self-esteem that is free from the influences of reality TV.

Share on Social Media

Holly Peek, MD, MPH

Holly Peek, MD, MPH, received her medical degree from Tulane University School of Medicine. She also received a dual Masters of Public Health degree at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, with a concentration in global co...

To read full bio click here .

Related Posts

Reality TV: What’s Really Real?

What’s the Effect of Violent or Graphic Television?

When Idols Fail: How Do Kids Manage?

Subscribe today, your monthly dose of the latest mental health tips and advice from the expert team at the clay center..

Quick Jumps