This article from Mediamagazine is relevant to my critical investigation as it provides information on the history of reality TV, how it appeals to its audiences, connections with other genres and its links and relativity to society.
"We could say that there are two broad elements of a genre that make it reality TV: an observational strand, where you follow people around and see what happens, and a created strand where you make a situation work in front of the television, almost like made-for-TV reality. Both of those strands always rely on a mix of fact and fiction, of popular elements of documentary or news, combined with popular elements of lifestyle or talk shows and even little bits of drama like melodrama or soap opera."
"it blurs the boundary between factual programming like news and documentary and fictional programming like soap opera or melodrama"
"Reality TV is a hybrid of the two things coming together."
"Reality TV is a direct response to that. For example, in the 1980s, the growth and huge success of the talk show, with people talking about themselves, arguing and debating and fighting over their emotional and personal lives became high conflict situations, could be seen as a precursor of reality TV. In the 1980s there was an actors’ strike and a big conflict around what was paid to writers of drama. And this created a wonderful gap in the market which was filled by reality TV. It also exploited the success of local news, which was a boom area in the 1980s, where we had ‘on-scene/as-it-happened’ styles of news. Throughout the 1990s reality TV took over from the talk show and became the most dominant genre in factual entertainment in America and in Britain...Now in the Noughties, we have strikes going on around writers’ pay and actors’ pay once again, and we can see the huge growth of the reality talent show genre as a direct response to this. So it’s always a creative and economic response to a crisis going on within broadcasting."
"Public service broadcasters like the BBC came in early on the more instructional observational styles of reality television....Changing Rooms were good examples of reality television which, though entertaining, also had an instructional public service element."
"commercial broadcasters was much more about shows which would produce income, for example, voting revenue; that voting revenue didn’t feed back into a public service environment but into a direct commercial environment. Channel 4, being a hybrid of public service and a commercial channel, can pick a format like Big Brother where the revenue feeds back into the commercial environment of the show."
"The reality genre has had a huge impact on other kinds of factual genres. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that there’s been a more general restyling of many kinds of factual content, from news and investigative programmes, through documentary to lifestyle and reality TV as a whole."
"It’s often claimed that reality TV only appeals to stupid people, and we have to start by saying that that’s just simply not true! Firstly, it’s precisely the experimental nature of it, the fact that it is a mix of the things you like in other shows, a bit of soap opera, a bit of documentary, a bit of a talk show. We’re attracted to that hybrid nature of the genre."
"A second factor would be the emphasis on emotions, drama, relationships: our hopes and fears and dreams, and what makes us angry, what makes us cry, what makes us happy. All of that is performed within these kinds of reality TV shows. And we get to interact with these people, whether through arguing with them, relating to them, or voting for or against them. And we get to think about our own relationships and what we do in similar situations in some way. So the ‘people’ element and the emotions is crucially important."
"Reality TV couldn’t be the success story it is if it didn’t appeal to lots of different kinds of audiences. It’s an all-round pleaser, an all-round entertainer. It manages this by drawing on the things we like about other genres. However, we do know some things: first of all, it appeals to younger viewers. I would call some older viewers ‘reality refuseniks’, whereas a lot of younger viewers, especially around 15-35 are much more attracted to the experimental nature of the genre, and the fact that it’s about people, about following ideas and subjects and emotions, and seeing what unfolds. Women tend to like it a bit more than men, and that’s certainly related to the fact that much reality TV draws on soap opera which, traditionally, has been a genre that appeals to women."
"reality TV unites the public across gender, and across class, and this makes it appealing to the audience, even though it’s representing different classes within the shows themselves."
"some of the biggest and still most dominant discussions about reality TV are precisely that it’s trash TV, junk food TV. Reality TV as junk food TV has become such a dominant discourse in society that even viewers who watch it are repeating the same arguments back to us.
"Also, because reality TV is controversial in the way it mixes different things, it often makes mistakes and can produce something that’s terrible as well as something brilliant. And these concerns are not only about the quality of the content – is it good? – but about the impact of the content on the audience."
"Reality television is very much a people-orientated kind of genre. It is about emotional relations, social relations, the way we communicate, the way we don’t communicate. It draws people in and forces them to take a position, often a critical position, often by imagining, would I do that in that situation? Would I behave in that way? In some ways it provides a kind of safe space in your own home to watch the social relations, the way people fight and argue and love and hate, and so on."
"What reality TV does is bring up a moral issue and make people confront it and say, well, what kind of position are we going to take? Whether it resolves the issue for people is another matter."
Renowned documentary maker, Roger Graef’s idea of chains of trust and distrust is a wonderful concept for us to use in the analysis of reality television. I would say at its best, reality TV can invoke a chain of trust"
"If the genre continues to deal with big issues to do with health and education and mind, body and spirit matters or family breakdown, or the ‘broken Britain’ theme, then the programme-makers really need to build trust with the viewers. They’re dealing with serious issues and this requires a basis of trust that people have been treated fairly, that it’s a well-made programme with an ethical consideration to participation."
"The trend that we’ve seen already set over the last few years for reality talent shows is going to continue, for lots of reasons. One is that variety is an absolute fundamental part of popular culture, and it’s part of its history from day 1, and it will continue to be a crucial part of the way popular culture develops in the future. And secondly, economically and in terms of production issues, the birth of the format, which allows a particular show to be reproduced around the world, will continue to ride the wave in popular TV genres."
"Looking at social and cultural trends more broadly, I think we’re going to see some kind of move towards issues to do with the mind, body and spirit, perhaps to do with religious beliefs but, more importantly, in the way that we relate to our dead relatives – getting in touch with them; speaking to psychics. These issues are already featuring in daytime TV, and talk shows; Most Haunted is one quite long-running example. I expect to see examples of spiritual transformation shows in the future."
"We can also expect to see even more short-term examples of programmes that deal directly with the economic crisis – how to make more money, how to improve your CV, how to get a job in a difficult environment. So we’ll see some short-term responses to specific issues that we’re dealing with right now and I think, some longer-term trends that clearly raise much bigger questions to do with what happens to us when we die"
Annette Hill was interviewed by Jenny Grahame.
This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 30, December 2009.
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