Get Real
By Pam Froman

To turn on the television today and not see some sort of reality-based programming seems almost impossible. These shows claim to display true lives and reality, but what makes them so popular, how real are their plots, and are they scripted or truth? Perhaps truth is stranger than fiction, or at least more interesting for producers and tv audiences alike. The reality show formula works because they get viewers, which means advertisers, and a daunting return in the marketplace of mainstream America. The number of shows within this genre increases all the time.

What is reality TV? According to Wikipedia, reality television is a type of television programming that hypes supposedly unscripted dramatic or funny circumstances, displays what seem to be actual events, and usually stars ordinary people instead of professional actors. Although the style of programming has existed since the early years of television (i.e. Candid Camera), today reality television most often describes shows created after 1990. Documentaries and nonfiction like the news or sports programs are usually not described as reality shows because reality television is not necessarily based on facts, like a documentary. Producers of this programming type want audiences to "believe" that what the show is actual, truthful events.
Reality tv describes a wide range of programming, from game shows to live contests to surveillance (Millionaire to Survivor to Big Brother). Reality television often shows a custom, highly subjective form of "reality," that uses craziness to get viewers to create advertising revenue, which leads to product placement and commercial profits. Participents often get free perks for doing something as simple as going to a certain hotel or restaurant. For example when Hugh Hefner's girlfriends go to Vegas (The Girls Next Door), they always stay in a Palms Casino suite for providing the hotel free advertising.

A problem with the "stars" in reality TV are that as the shows progress, they go further from their original selves to become the so - called reality stars. Take a look at the Gosselin family on TLC's John and Kate Plus Eight. The show is one of the network's most popular programs. Originally, it was just supposed to be a way to document a normal family that happened to have eight children (one pair of twins and sextuplets). However, fame distorted this concept. Paparazzi were following the family wherever they went and the ratings shot up once the couple was rumored to be on the brink of divorce. The tabloids ranting of extramarital affairs by both parents swathed across magazine covers and special episode advertisements is a point-by-point video documentary of a family disintegrating. Evidently, people prefer drama in their "so-called" reality, regardless of who it really affects. Scripted shows let the actors separate themselves from their characters' drama to let them lead supposedly normal lives offscreen.

People like to watch these circumstances for hours on end, which drives producers to generate maximum drama, cycling higher ratings, and making more money. It's a vicious repititious turbine of disturbing, heartless spectacle. Participants are often placed in exotic locations, that are most likely paid for by the hotel property for national notoriety or for more tourism to a show's host country. Within these locales or crazy circumstances, havoc ensues and participants are pressured to act in certain scripted ways. Off-screen "story editors," or "segment producers," manipulate events to contrive a false sense of reality, especially through editing and post-production. This troubling trend is the very reason that so many people enjoy watching others get hurt physically, emotionally, or psychologically is disturbing and humiliating for our culture. The signs of the fall of the Roman empire were when popular entertainment turned from profound dramatic works to brutal, violent gladiator battles of sport. The current trend for reality television to exploit and brutalize the human spirit in real, crude terms, sans poetry, could be the sign of the end of the American empire, or at least the American sense of taste.

After all, the contests between the gladiators were two or more athletes in a competition in front of an audience, usually to the death. Getting closer to our time, the evolution of the reality show began with radio. Early radio shows dangled microphones out the window to help hosts ambush passersby with questions. Candid Camera, started on radio as Candid Microphone, and has been around since the dawn of network television. The development of lightweight, portable cameras and sound equipment made it easier to film people at home rather than on sound stages. PBS helped pioneer the genre in the early 70's with An American Family - a look at the day-to-day life of a California family that anthropologist Margaret Mead described as possibly "as important for our time as were the invention of drama and novel for earlier generations." According to Jon Murry, one of the creators of The Real World; the popular MTV reality show that began in the 90's with a group of strangers sharing a house over a period of a few months, said that part of the idea behind The Real World was to update the show The American Family.

Does human behavior change under the scrutiny of a camera? Are these people actors, or simply living out their lives? And how are those lives disrupted by the voyeurism into their personal existence? 15 minutes of fame can be fun, but what kind of toll does it take?

Starting in the early 2000's, reality television became a huge profit-maker for network tv. Two reality shows, Survivor and American Idol, are the top-rated series for every year they have been in production. Survivor led ratings in 2001-02, and Idol topped, in 2004-05, 2005-06, and 2006-07. The shows Survivor, the Idol series, The Amazing Race, the Top Model series, the Dancing With The Stars series, The Apprentice, are all world-wide brands these days with success internationally.

Right now, there are at least two television stations devoted completely to reality television: Fox Reality in the United States, which began in 2005, and Zone Reality in the UK, launched in 2002. Additionally, several other cable channels, such as Viacom's MTV and NBC's Bravo, feature original reality line-ups as a foundation for their programming with the numbers are growing all the time.

Within many reality television shows, the audience and the camera are passive onlookers following the reality stars with what seems to be their everyday routine. What isn't explored is the set up and break down of the production crew, the negotiations of what will be edited out and the staging of the set. Although this kind of filming is supposed to be similar to a "fly on the wall," plots are often constructed through editing or premeditated circumstances, with the end result resembling dramatic television such as soap operas. Nobody wants to watch someone eating breakfast. Of course, in other types of programming, the filmmaker is more than a simple observer, their presence and influence are an integral part of the plot, but the plot must have a dramatic impact.

Following are some types of reality programming:

Special living environment shows place cast members, who don't know each other, in artificial living environments for a kind of social experiment. The Real World was the pioneer of this style. However, following shows upped the ante, by creating a specific challenge or obstacle to overcome. Road Rules, which began in 1995 as a spin-off of The Real World, started this trend: the cast trekked across the country in search of clues and performing tasks. And then there was this: often, participants came from all aspects of life, picked for the eventuality that they would clash with each other.

Another aspect of reality programming is the inclusion of celebrities. These train wrecks often show a celebrity going about their everyday life, which can be crazy. Fights, money and more fights are the norm. Some examples are Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, Denise Richards: It's Complicated and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. In other shows, celebrities are thrown somewhere and given a specific mission; these include, The Celebrity Apprentice, and I'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here! (All of which are famous for celebrity meltdowns).

Then there are the shows that follow everyday people performing an entire project over the course of a series. These often have a competition with the winner with best project taking home the prize. An example of this type of show is Project Runway. Does anyone remember the designer hopeful that coined the word "Fierce"? The show is as much about them as it is their designer dreams and projects. Yet a major part of the show is when the hopeful designers create a series of fashion outfits and are judged accordingly by people in the industry. This reality show is a contest. Whoever does the best wins.

There are other contest-type shows in reality television, but there is some controversy about whether talent type shows such as American Idol are in fact reality based programming. Idol still tops the ratings. But these reality "game" shows do in fact fit the mold in which participants vie to win the elusive prize. Participants are eliminated until only one person or team is left, who/which is then declared the winner. Voting is accomplished by the audience, the show's other cast members, judges, or some variant of the three. Think of "America's Got Talent."

What about people who just want to find love? And can you really find love on TV? Well there's reality shows for that too. Dating-based competition. This is a show where one woman or man must eliminate a number of suitors before landing on Mr. or Miss. Right. The Bachelor is of course, the main example of this style of program. There are also celebrity churned out versions, in which B-List celebrities such as Bret Michaels from Poison chooses a partner throughout his show, Rock of Love. And there is a knock-off for his losers too. Daisy of Love just premiered this season.

Looking for a job? Well you could work for Donald Trump. (But would you really want to? Well, quite a few people do.) This type of reality show is employment-related. Presented as a job search, the prize for the winner includes the career. In Donald's show The Apprentice, competitors performed a variety of tasks based around the skills that the job would entail, their performance is judged, and then a single expert or a panel of experts vote on whether to keep them or kick them to the curb.

Celebrities aren't the only famous people to be bitten by the reality bug. Athletes are into it too. And we're not just talking about the scripted wrestling competitions. There have been shows such as The Contender, a boxing show where the skills of the athletes pushed forward the program. The Big Break was a reality show in which aspiring golfers competed against one another and were eliminated.

How about a show that purports to change someone's life for the better? In the show The Swan, the participants were given an extensive makeover and then competed against each other to see who was the most beautiful. You have to wonder what kind of message that sends. That you have to fit into a mold of what is beautiful is a dangerous road to take. Are all the contestants clones to the industry standards of beauty? And what does that mean for society? Extreme Makeover Home Edition redecorates a family's home to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Of course, while these shows are superficial, at least they do help people. Celebrities need help too. Especially the B-List ones who need to pump up their careers. Celebrity Fit Club gradually assists their contestants to lose weight by checking up on them each week, providing the motivation for them to succeed and for the audience to keep watching them do just that.

Some reality shows are based on a premise of a social experiment. For example, in Wife Swap, two families with extremely different backgrounds "swap" their wives for a short period of time, exposing each family to a different way of living, sometimes with disastrous effects, such as when one takes a swing at the end of show when the two couples are reunited and the cameras are immediately turned off. Who knows what is in those contracts that cause the producer to convince the two parties to go back on camera. One word: "money." The only silver lining? Sometimes the families return with a better understanding of people with different values than they ever thought they would have.

The Candid Camera style of reality TV is still around today. Ashton Kutcher's P'unked series was all about secretly videotaping people in outrageous situations that the show purposely set out for them. The fun in the show is to see the victim's reaction, first to the situation, and next to the realization that it was all a practical joke.

With all of these types of shows out there, it is not surprising that reality shows are on TV all the time. It is also not surprising that they are popular, as there are so many styles to choose from. But there is criticism of the genre. Reality shows, which claim to be real life, are often not. Corporations fund the shows in order to benefit their own interests. And many of the participants in the shows are paid. Jon and Kate Gosslein for example, reportedly receive $75,000 per episode; however, it is becoming a matter of concern by the child actors' legislation as to whether or not the children are being subject to abuse by the situation. Should they have the same rights and restrictions as child actors?

Advertisers influence the supposed reality of these shows is through product placement. Products are used in the show, say for example someone eating a certain brand of cereal, and perhaps even talking about how they like it. It's almost like an unscripted commercial, and further pushes the show away from its main premise: the truth.

Another tactic used by these shows is by premeditated scripting. This is when the participants are literally given lines to read to further along the plot of the show. In MTV's The Hills, one of the stars (Spencer Pratt) was filmed having a "conversation" with another star, Lauren Conrad on the phone. It was later revealed that Lauren was never on the phone at all, and the whole thing was staged to boost ratings for a future episode of the show. How is that reality? It is not.

Which is exactly why this type of program can come under fire. And yet still, the ratings soar.

American magazine Entertainment Weekly, wrote, "Do we watch reality television for precious insight into the human condition? Please. We watch for those awkward scenes that make us feel a smidge better about our own little unfilmed lives." Media analyst Tom Alderman wrote, "There is a sub-set of Reality TV that can only be described as Shame TV because it uses humiliation as its core appeal." It may be true. America watches voyeuristic situations that most people would never experience, and audiences live through them. Fake or not, embarrassing or not, America still rushes to turn on that TV. Regardless of the ambiguous realm of Reality TV, it seems that it is here to stay as long as the ratings hold firm and the advertisers get the advantage. Reality TV is not going anywhere.

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