unit5
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Unit 5
Part A
Reality
television
Reality television is a
genre of television programming which presents
purportedly unscripted dramatic or
humorous situations, documents actual
events, and usually features ordinary
people instead of professional actors.
Although the genre has existed in some
form or another since the early years
of television, the term reality
television is most commonly used to describe
programs of this genre produced since
2000. Documentaries and nonfictional
programming such as news and sports
shows are usually not classified as
reality shows.
Reality
television saw an explosion of global popularity
starting in the early
2000s. Two
reality series - Survivor and American Idol - have
been the
top-rated series on American
television for an entire season. The shows
Survivor, the Idol series, the Top
Model series, the Dancing With The Stars
series, The Apprentice,
impact, having each been successfully
syndicated in dozens of countries.
Currently there are at least two
television channels devoted exclusively to
reality television: Fox Reality in the
United States, launched in 2005, and Zone
Reality in the UK, launched in 2002. In
addition, several other cable channels,
such as Viacom's MTV and NBC's Bravo,
feature original reality programming
as
a mainstay.
In April 2008,
the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
announced it will
give its very first
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a
Reality
Show or Reality Competition on
September 21.
such an integral part of
television and our culture, so it only made sense
for us
to create this new highly
competitive category,
CEO John Shaffner
said in the announcement.
Types of reality TV
Documentary-style
In many
reality television shows, the viewer and the
camera are passive
observers following
people going about their daily personal and
professional
activities; this style of
filming is often referred to as
television
the results
resembling soap operas
—
hence the term docusoap or docudrama.
In other shows, a ciné
ma
vé
rité
style is adopted,
where the filmmaker is more
than a
passive observer
—
their
presence and influence is greatly manifest.
Within documentary-style reality
television are several subcategories or
variants:
Special living
environment
Some
documentary-style programs place cast members, who
in most
cases previously did not know
each other, in artificial living
environments; The Real World is the
originator of this style. In almost
every other such show, cast members are
given a specific challenge or
obstacle
to overcome.
Big Brother is probably the best known
program of this type in the world
with
different versions produced in many countries
around the globe.
Celebrities
Another subset of fly-on-the-wall-style
shows involves celebrities. Often
these
show a celebrity going about their everyday life.
In other shows,
celebrities are put on
location and given a specific task or task. VH1
has
created an entire block of shows
dedicated to celebrity reality, known as
Professional
activities
Some
documentary-style shows portray professionals
either going
about day-to-day business
or performing an entire project over the
course of a series. No outside experts
are brought in (at least, none
appear
on screen) to either provide help or to judge
results. The earliest
example (and the
longest running reality show of any genre) is COPS
which has been airing since 1989,
preceding by many years the current
reality show phenomenon.
Elimination/Game shows
Another type of reality TV is
shows
living together in a
confined environment. In many cases, participants
are
removed until only one person or
team remains, who/which is then declared
the winner. Usually this is done by
eliminating participants one at a time, in
balloon debate style, through either
disapproval voting or by voting for the
most popular choice to win. Voting is
done by either the viewing audience, the
show's own participants, a panel of
judges, or some combination of the three.
(These programs have also been called
Steve Beverly.
A well-known
example of a reality-competition show is the
globally-syndicated
Big Brother, in
which cast members live together in the same
house, with
participants removed at
regular intervals by either the viewing audience
or, in
the case of the American
version, by the participants themselves.
There remains some disagreement over
whether talent-search shows such as
the
Popstars series, America's Got Talent, Dancing
with the Stars, and
Celebrity Duets are
truly reality television, or just newer
incarnations of shows
such as Star
Search. Although the shows involve a traditional
talent search,
the shows follow the
reality-competition conventions of removing one or
more
contestants per episode and
allowing the public to vote on who is removed; the
Popstars series also require the
contestants to live together during the run of
the show (though their daily life is
never shown onscreen). Additionally, there
is a good deal of interaction shown
between contestants and judges. As a
result, such shows are often considered
reality television.
Modern game shows
like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? also lie in a
gray
area: like traditional game shows,
the action takes place in an enclosed TV
studio over a short period of time;
however, they have higher production
values, more dramatic background music,
and higher stakes than traditional
shows (done either through putting
contestants into physical danger or offering
large cash prizes). In addition, there
is more interaction between contestants
and hosts, and in some cases they
feature reality-style contestant competition
and/or elimination as well.
Popular variants of the competition-
based format include the following:
Dating-based competition
Dating-based competition shows follow a
contestant choosing one out
of a group
of suitors. Over the course of either a single
episode or an
entire season, suitors
are eliminated until only the contestant and the
final suitor remains.
Job
search
In this category,
the competition revolves around a skill that
contestants
were pre-screened for.
Competitors perform a variety of tasks based
around that skill, are judged, and are
then kept or removed by a single
expert
or a panel of experts. The show is usually
presented as a job
search of some kind,
in which the prize for the winner includes a
contract to perform that kind of work.
The first job-search show which
showed
dramatic, unscripted situations may have been
America's Next
Top Model, which
premiered in May 2003. Other examples include The
Apprentice (which judges business
skills), Hell's Kitchen (for chefs),
Shear Genius (for hair styling) Project
Runway (for clothing design),
Top Chef
(for cooking),Top Design (for interior design),
Stylista (for
fashion editors), Last
Comic Standing (for comedians), The Starlet and
Scream Queens (for actresses), On the
Lot (for filmmakers), The Shot
(for
photographers), So You Think You Can Dance (for
dancers) and
the MuchMusic VJ Search
(for television hosts).
.
Fear-centric
Possibly introduced in the mid 1990s
with Australia's Who Dares Wins,
then
in the US with MTV's Fear in 2000, fear-centric
shows place
people in situations or
locations aimed at generating emotions of fright,
panic, or revulsion. Shows in the genre
include Fear Factor, Scare
Tactics and
Celebrity Paranormal Project.
Sports
Most of
these programs create a sporting competition among
athletes
attempting to establish their
name in that sport. The Club, in 2002, was
one of the first shows to immerse sport
with reality TV, based around a
fabricated club competing against real
clubs in the sport of Australian
rules
football; the audience helped select which players
played each
week by voting for their
favorites.
Self-improvement/makeover
Some reality television shows cover a
person or group of people improving
their lives. Despite differences in the
content, the format is usually the same:
first the show introduces the subjects
in their current, less-than-ideal
environment. Then the subjects meet
with a group of experts, who give the
subjects instructions on how to improve
things; they offer aid and
encouragement along the way. Finally,
the subjects are placed back in their
environment and they, along with their
friends and family and the experts,
appraise the changes that have
occurred. Other self-improvement or
makeover shows include The Biggest
Loser and Fat March, (which covers
weight loss), Extreme Makeover (entire
physical appearance), Queer Eye For
The
Straight Guy (style and grooming), Supernanny
(child-rearing), Made
(attaining
difficult goals), What Not to Wear (fashion and
grooming), Trinny &
Susannah Undress
(fashion makeover and marriage), Tool Academy
(relationship building), Flavor of Love
Girls: Charm School & Rock of Love
Girls: Charm School 2 (manners), The
Girls of Hedsor Hall (etiquette) and The
Bad Girls Club & Bad Girls Road Trip
(self-improvment).
Renovation
Some shows make over part or all of a
person's living space, work space, or
vehicle.
Social
experiment
Another type of reality
program is the social experiment that produces
drama,
conflict, and sometimes
transformation.