Context Reality television has become very popular over the past decade.

Shows such as Survivor, Big Brother and The Apprentice get big audiences and make a lot of money for broadcasters. But reality TV is also often a hot topic, with some people believing it is worthless and bad for our society. There have been calls to cut the number of hours given over to reality programmes, or even to ban them completely. Others argue that people should be allowed to watch what they like, and that reality programmes make good TV. \r\nReality television is quite hard to define. At its most basic it means programmes that show things really taking place, rather than drama or comedy that follows a script. Typically reality TV involves a group of people who are not trained actors being filmed in unusual situations over a period of time. Sport and news programmes are not considered reality TV. Documentaries that explore aspects of society are a grey area, with some closer to news reporting and others blurring into reality TV because they set up situations which did not already exist. Recently celebrity versions of reality shows have made definition even harder, because they show the private lives of professional singers, actors, sportspeople, etc as they cope with new situations. This topic will focus on reality shows which do not involve celebrities, but many of the arguments are relevant to them as well.

Arguments Pros Reality shows are bad, lazy television. They mostly show ordinary people with no special talents doing very little. If they have to sing or dance, then they do it badly which doesnt make for good entertainment. TV bosses like them because they are cheap compared to putting out shows with proper scripts, actors, musicians, etc. Even if they are popular, that doesnt make them good programmes. It just means that some people have no taste and will watch any old rubbish. Broadcasters should be aiming at excellence, giving their viewers quality programmes which expand their cultural horizons. Cons Reality television programmes are very popular with audiences of all ages and types. They may not be high culture but most people do not want that from television. Most viewers want to be entertained and to escape for a while from the worries and boredom of their everyday life. There is no harm in giving the people what they want that is what the free market is all about. Reality shows are also popular because they exploit new technology so that millions of people can participate in the programme typically by voting.

Reality TV is dishonest it pretends to show reality but it actually distorts the truth to suit the programme makers. The shows are not really real they are carefully cast to get a mix of characters who are not at all typical. Mostly they show a bunch of young, goodlooking self-publicists, who will do anything to get on TV. Usually the programme makers try to ensure excitement by picking people who are likely to clash with each other. They then place them in unnatural situations, such as the Big Brother house or the Survivor island, and give them strange challenges in order to provoke them into behaving oddly. Finally the makers film their victims for hundreds of hours from all angles, but only show the most dramatic parts. Selective editing may be used to create storylines and so further manipulate the truth of what happened. Reality shows send a bad message and help to create a cult of instant celebrity. These programmes suggest that anyone can become famous just by getting on TV and being themselves, without working hard or having any particular talent. Kids who watch these shows will get the idea that they dont need to study hard in school, or train hard for a regular job.

Reality TV actually has a lot of value to our society. Humans are endlessly different and endlessly interesting to other humans. In these programmes we see people like us faced with unusual situations. That makes us think about what we would do in their place, and about what principles should govern human behaviour. It also shows us people who look very different from us, and helps us see that actually we have a lot in common with them.

Reality TV provides an important social glue. Once upon a time there were only a few television channels, and everybody watched the same few programmes. The sense of a shared experience helped to bind people together, giving them common things to talk about at work and school the next day water cooler moments. As the number of channels increased hugely, this sense of shared experience was lost and our sense of community went with it. Big reality TV programmes have brought that sense of shared experience back, as viewers from all social groups follow the twists and turns of each series together. Reality TV programmes are not corrupting. They do reflect our society, which isnt always perfect, but we should face up to these issues rather than censor television in order to hide them. On the other hand, reality TV can be very educational. Programmes such as The Apprentice have made people think about business. Jamie Oliver has raised issues of youth unemployment and poor diet, and Fit Club has got people thinking about health and fitness.

Reality shows are corrupting as they rely on humiliation and conflict to create excitement. The programmes are full of swearing, crying and argument, and often violence, drunkenness and sex. This sends a message to people that this is normal behaviour and helps to create a crude, selfish society.

Reality shows are driving out other sorts of programmes, so that often there is nothing else to watch. Reality TV is cheap and series can go on for months on end, providing hundreds of hours of viewing to fill schedules. TV bosses like this and are cutting back on comedy, music, drama and current affairs in favour of wall to wall reality rubbish. This is even worse when reality shows crowd the schedules of public service broadcasters. Stations such as the BBC in the UK, France Tlvisions, or Rai in Italy have a duty to inform and educate the public. They should be made to meet that responsibility as Rai has by saying it wont have any more reality shows. Reality TV is actually getting worse as the audience becomes more and more used to the genre. In a search for ratings and media coverage, shows are becoming ever more vulgar and offensive, trying to find new ways to shock. Already some Big Brother programmes have shown men and women having sex on live TV. Others have involved fights and racist bullying. Do we let things continue until someone has to die on TV to boost the ratings?

Television provides a wide mixture of programmes, including reality television. For those who want it, there is high quality drama such as The Sopranos or Pride and Prejudice. The BBC and other international broadcasters cover news and current affairs in great depth. Wildlife programmes bring the wonders of the natural world into our living rooms. More sports are covered in more detail than ever before. So reality shows have not ruined television as a whole. Indeed, because they make a lot of money for broadcasters to spend on other types of programmes, they are actually good for television. Some reality programmes are bad, exploiting people in nasty ways, but many are good. This is true of all kinds of television, from soap operas, to comedy and new shows. It is wrong to label the whole genre as bad just because of a few shows.

Motions This House believes reality TV is rubbish This House would ban reality television That reality television is corrupting our society This House is not watching Big Brother

nfluenced by corporate profit motive

Writers for reality television do not receive union pay-scale compensation and union representation, which significantly decreases expenditures for producers and broadcasters.[2] Many of the actors in reality television are compensated for their appearances.[20][34][35][36] [edit] Product placement Product placement, whereby companies and corporations pay to have their products included in television programming for marketing purposes is highly prevalent in reality television.[37][38][39][40]

[edit] "Reality" as misnomer

Some commentators[who?] have said that the name "reality television" is an inaccurate description for several styles of program included in the genre.[2] Irene McGee, a castmember on the 1998 The Real World: Seattle, has done public speaking tours about the negative and misleading aspects of reality TV. [edit] Unreal environments In competition-based programs such as Big Brother and Survivor, and other special living environment shows like The Real World, the producers design the format of the show and control the day-to-day activities and the environment, creating a completely fabricated world in which the competition plays out. Producers specifically select the participants and use carefully designed scenarios, challenges, events, and settings to encourage particular behaviors and conflicts. Mark Burnett, creator of Survivor and other reality shows, has agreed with this assessment, and avoids the word "reality" to describe his shows; he has said, "I tell good stories. It really is not reality TV. It really is unscripted drama."[41] [edit] Misleading editing In 2004, VH1 aired a program called Reality TV Secrets Revealed, which detailed various misleading tricks of reality TV producers.[42] According to the show, various reality shows (notably Joe Millionaire) combined audio and video from different times, or from different sets of footage, to create an artificial illusion of time chronology that did not occur, and a misportrayal of participant behaviors and actions. In docusoap programming, which follows people in their daily life, producers may be highly deliberate in their editing strategies, able to portray certain participants as heroes or villains, and may guide the drama through altered chronology and selective presentation of events. A Season 3 episode of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe included a segment on the ways in which selective editing can be used to this end.[13] [edit] Restaging According to VH1's Reality TV Secrets Revealed, the shows The Restaurant and Survivor had at times recreated incidents that had actually occurred, but were not properly recorded by cameras to the required technical standard, or had not been recorded at all. In order to get the footage, the event was restaged for the cameras. [edit] Premeditated scripting and acting Reality television shows have faced speculation that the participants themselves are involved in fakery, acting out storylines that have been planned in advance by producers.[2] The Hills is one notable example; the show has long faced allegations that its plots are scripted ahead of time. During the second season of Hell's Kitchen, it was speculated that the customers eating meals prepared by the contestants were in fact paid actors.[43] Some participants of reality shows have

also stated afterwards that they altered their behavior to appear more crazy or emotional in order to get more camera time. Daniel Petrie Jr., former president of the Writers Guild of America, west, an organization that represents 9,000 Hollywood film and television writers, stated: "We look at reality TV, which is billed as unscripted, and we know it is scripted. We understand that shows don't want to call the writers writers because they want to maintain the illusion that it is reality, that stuff just happens."[2] [edit] Wardrobe staging Some shows, such as Survivor, don't allow the participants to wear clothing of their own choosing while on camera,[44] to promote the participants' wearing of "camera-friendly colors"[44] and to prevent the participants from wearing the same style and/or color of clothing.[44] Additionally, on Survivor, some unallowed clothing items include those with corporate logos.[44] [edit] Misleading premise Even the premise of shows has been called into question. The winner of the first "cycle", in 2003, of America's Next Top Model, Adrianne Curry, claimed that part of the grand prize she received, a modeling contract with Revlon, was for a much smaller amount of work than what was promised throughout the show.[45] During the airing of the first season of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, in which a group of both men and women vied for the heart of Tila Tequila, there were rumors that its star was not only heterosexual, but also had a boyfriend already.[46] The show's winner, Bobby Banhart, claimed that he never saw Ms. Tequila again after the show finished taping, and that he was never even given her telephone number.[47]

[edit] As a spectacle of humiliation

Some have claimed that the success of reality television is due to its ability to provide schadenfreude, by satisfying the desire of viewers to see others humiliated. 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."[49] 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."[50] Television critic James Poniewozik has disagreed with this assessment, writing, "for all the talk about 'humiliation TV,' what's striking about most reality shows is how good humored and resilient most of the participants are: the American Idol rejectees stubbornly convinced of their own talent, the Fear Factor players walking away from vats of insects like Olympic champions. What finally bothers their detractors is, perhaps, not that these people are humiliated but that they are not."[51]

[edit] Participation of children

[edit] Jon & Kate Plus 8 The reality show Jon & Kate Plus 8, which showed a family of two parents (Jon and Kate Gosselin) raising their eight children, caused controversy when, in June 2009, Jon and Kate began divorce proceedings, and it emerged that Jon had been involved with other women prior to the divorce. The episode announcing their separation became the most-watched of the series, with 10.6 million viewers.[52][53] TLC has announced that Jon & Kate Plus 8 will continue under the new title Kate Plus Eight.[54] Criticism has been raised regarding Kate's intentions of continuing with the show, as well as whether or not the children are being exploited or may be under emotional distress.[55] According to lawyer Gloria Allred:

Every state does regulate to protect the health, the safety and welfare of little child performers [...] And these little ones are only eight years old and five years old, they cant protect themselves, so the state has to be sure that they are safe in their workplace.[55]

In the case of the show, the children's workplace is their home. Currently there are no clear laws in Pennsylvania (where the Gosselins reside) regarding a child's appearance on a reality show.[56] However, Pennsylvania law permits kids who are at least seven years old to work in the entertainment industry, as long as certain guidelines are followed and a permit is obtained. For example, children may not work after 11:30 pm under most circumstances, or perform in any location that serves alcohol.[56] Kate defended her position that the children are happy and healthy, and not in any danger. In addition, Jon has stated that they are "in talks" regarding ensuring the children's happiness,[55] and that there is no truth to any reports that the children have been hurt by the series.[57] TLC released a statement saying that the network "fully complies with all applicable laws and regulations" to produce the show. The statement also said that "for an extended period of time, we have been engaged in cooperative discussions and supplied all requested information to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry".[56]

[edit] Other examples

In another much-publicized case, issues have been raised about the underlying motives that led to the balloon boy hoax, in which six-year-old Falcon Heene was reportedly coerced by his father to stage for a frantic, live-on-TV chase for an out-of-control helium balloon in which he was suspected to be. The police said that the father engineered the hoax with the hope of generating enough publicity in order to get the family back into the reality-show business, after two appearances on ABC's Wife Swap. In an interview with the Denver Post,[58] child psychologist Alan Zimmerman said:

Using your family or children to please the masses, or producers of mass entertainment who want ratings and a good bottom line, is inherently risky [...] They are by definition a commodity in a profit-oriented business.

The same article quoted psychologist Jamie Huysman as saying, "It is exploitation [...] Nobody wants to watch normal behavior. Kids have to be co-conspirators to get the camera to stay on."

[edit] Counter Arguments

Despite arguments that realism cannot be achieved in reality shows because the outcomes may or may not have been scripted, Geoff King argues in his book, Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond: even though the contestants are in a fabricated setting and the situation has been set up for a certain outcome, as in real love shows such as The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, these contestants still harbor feelings that make their participation in the show real to them. King says:

[59]

I would argue, rather, that the simulated setting stimulates feeling, in part because the removal of the participants from their normal surroundings strips them to nothing but the space and affect of social interaction. The intimacy that arises out of this amplified situation is real both for the participants and for the viewers.

[59]

Love, like television, must be performed to be real. The performance of love will generate the effects of love, just as the performance of reality will generate reality effects.

[edit] Prior elements in popular culture

A number of fictional works since the 1940s have contained elements similar to elements of reality television. They tended to be set in a dystopian future, with subjects being recorded against their will, and often involved violence.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a book by George Orwell, depicted a world in which two-way television screens are fitted in every room, so that people's actions are monitored at all times. (The all-seeing authority figure in the book, "Big Brother", inspired the name of the pioneering reality series Big Brother.) Another is the impact on pop culture bearing a similarity (at least in the eyes of critics) to the concept of prolefeed, feeding the masses what critics deem as trash television.

Fahrenheit 451 (1953), a novel by Ray Bradbury, portrays a bookless future society, with omnipresent electronic media and wall-sized two-way home televisions. The protagonist's wife is immersed in a live audience participation program. "The Seventh Victim" (1953) was a short story by science fiction author Robert Sheckley that depicted a futuristic game in which one player gets to hunt down another player and kill him. The first player who can score ten kills wins the grand prize. This story was the basis for the film The 10th Victim (1965), also known by its Italian title, La decima vittima. You're Another, a 1955 short story by Damon Knight, is about a man who discovers that he is an actor in a "livie", a live-action show that is viewed by billions of people in the future. "The Prize of Peril"[60] (1958), another Robert Sheckley story, was about a television show in which a contestant volunteers to be hunted for a week by trained killers, with a large cash prize if he survives. It was adapted in 1970 as the TV movie Das Millionenspiel, and again in 1983 as the movie Le Prix du Danger. "It Could Be You" (1964), a short story by Australian Frank Roberts, features a day-in-day-out televised blood sport. Survivor (1965), a science fiction story by Walter F. Moudy, depicted the 2050 "Olympic War Games" between Russia and the United States. The games are fought to show the world the futility of war and thus deter further conflict. Each side has one hundred soldiers who fight with rifles, mortars, and machine guns in a large natural arena. The goal is for one side to wipe out the other; the few who survive the battle become heroes. The games are televised, complete with color commentary discussing tactics, soldiers' personal backgrounds, and slow-motion replays of their deaths. Bread and Circuses (1968) was an episode of the TV show Star Trek in which the crew visits a planet resembling the Roman Empire, but with 20th century technology. The planet's "Empire TV" features regular gladiatorial games, with the announcer urging viewers at home to vote for their favorites, stating, "This is your program. You pick the winner." The show included several jabs at real-world television, such as a praetorian threatening, "You bring this network's ratings down, Flavius, and we'll do a special on you!" The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968) was a BBC television play in which a dissident in a dictatorship is forced onto a secluded island and taped for a reality show in order to keep the masses entertained. The Unsleeping Eye (1973), a novel by D.G. Compton (also published as The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe), was about a woman dying of cancer whose last days are recorded without her knowledge for a television show. It was later adapted as the 1980 movie Death Watch. "Ladies And Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis" (1976) was a short story by science fiction author Kate Wilhelm about a television show in which contestants (including a B-list actress who is hoping to revitalize her career) attempt to make their way to a checkpoint after being dropped off in the Alaskan wilderness, while being filmed and broadcast around the clock through an entire weekend. The story focuses primarily on the show's effect on a couple whose domestic tensions and eventual reconciliation parallel the dangers faced by the contestants. Network (1976) was a film predictive of a number of trends in broadcast television, including reality programming. One subplot featured network executives negotiating with an urban terrorist group for the production of a weekly series, each episode of which was to feature an act of terrorism. Real Life (1979) where a pushy, narcissistic filmmaker persuades a Phoenix family to let him and his crew film their everyday lives. A parody of the ground-breaking PBS series An American Family.

The Running Man (1982) was a book by Stephen King depicting a game show in which a contestant flees around the world from "hunters" trying to chase him down and kill him; it has been speculated that the book was inspired by Robert Sheckley's The Prize of Peril. The book was loosely adapted as a 1987 movie of the same name. The movie removed most of the realityTV element of the book: its competition now took place entirely within a large TV studio, and more closely resembled an athletic competition (though a deadly one). The film 20 Minutes into the Future (1985), and the spin-off TV show Max Headroom, revolved around television mainly based on live, often candid, broadcasts. In one episode of Max Headroom, "Academy", the character Blank Reg fights for his life on a courtroom game show, with the audience deciding his fate. Vengeance on Varos (1985) was an episode of the TV show Doctor Who in which the population of a planet watches live TV broadcasts of the torture and executions of those who oppose the government. The planet's political system is based on the leaders themselves facing disintegration if the population votes 'no' to their propositions. This episode is often credited as the origins of "voting someone off".