That depends on your definition of television. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, television is the electrical transmission of pictures in motion and the simultaneous electrical transmission of the accompanying sounds. In that sense, television is a reality, as it exists.
In terms of television programs being reality, most television programs are of real life:
E.g.
But there are those programs (which we are by now thinking about) which are fictitious constructions, and in that would seem to be not part of reality. That's where you're wrong.
That they are fiction means that they are unreal, and imaginary. BUT, just as we can have imaginary numbers such as the square root of -1, so it is possible to conceptualise imaginary TV worlds.
There are as many television worlds as there are television show concepts, and all that happens in those seemingly fictitious television shows is actually happening in another world. In most cases, each separate "television show" occurs in a separate world, which explains the incredible discontinuity between television shows. The exceptions to this are spin-offs and sequels, which occur in the same world as their predecessors, e.g. Star Trek, Spellbinder, Hercules/Xena.
The one thing that is constant throughout the television worlds: they do not see themselves on TV. (As always, there are exceptions to this rule, but I cannot think of any offhand.) The reason this happens is that the source of the branches of the television worlds is the television itself (even in places where it would seem there are no televisions, there are still television waves which transmit the dimensional fabric in which the worlds exist). As such, with the television being the link between worlds, the world in which the television "show" exists does not transmit to itself (Imagine that the television world is a picture in a gallery of pictures; from within the picture, one can see all the other pictures, but cannot see itself).
This intertwining link between this world and the worlds of television means that events that occur on television are reflections of events in the "real" world, and vice versa. Imagine the televsion world is a mirror, and that looking into it, one sees reflections of one's own world. From within the mirror, someone looking back would see a reflection of themself, i.e. there is another world in the mirror, which looks like the real world, but is different.
In each of those other worlds, people think of themselves as being real (as we would in their place), even if to us they seem unreal, i.e. "reality" is in the eye of the beholder.
As time passes, and the reflections continue, the proportion of similarities between the television worlds and ours will increase, so in that sense, television is becoming a reality, but will not be a reality until the proportion of similarities to differences reaches infinity, which is at time=infinity, i.e. beyond the end of time.
In this light, it is possible, and not unlikely, that in at least some of those television worlds, we are on television, as our world would appear as a television world to them. Therefore, be careful what you do, for you never know who is watching you on their television sets (the universe's own Candid Camera). In that case, "reality", as we know it, is in fact television.
Think about it.
This is a modified version of my Year 11 2 Unit English Term 2 Assessment Task speech, as given on Monday the 22nd of June, 1998.
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