Understanding Reality TV
Andy Warhol predicted in 1968 that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Contemporary observers such as David Weinberger suggest that Internet technologies will make everyone famous to 15 people. But Reality TV shows confirm to viewers that anyone can become famous to an audience of millions – well almost anyone…
The hybrid nature of the genre comes from the way ordinary people are put into situations from other genres such as sitcom, as in Channel 4’s Big Brother where all the action takes place in one sitcom style location.
Reality TV is like drama in the way it is edited for interpersonal drama based on detailed exploration of character. The ‘live’ element of the show gives it unpredictability, but usually makes less interesting viewing than the edited highlights.
It is like a game show in being based on competition, where contestants compete to stay on the show, and win a prize, even if they are called housemates by Big Brother.
Reality TV is like a talk show as it is a way of reflecting on social issues – for example contestants can react to someone who does not share the same social background or sexual orientation, and create a debate in the press as well as on the show. Also confession is usually an important aspect of reality TV shows such as the Big Brother Diary room. A Reality TV show is often mediated by a presenter(s) who stokes up the competition between contestants and steers the audience towars the interpersonal drama.
Reality TV is like lifestyle TV with its emphasis on showing that a person can change and learn from each other.
One of the most important aspects of Reality TV is its unpredictability – nobody knows what is going to happen.
The top Reality TV titles in Sept 2009 are:
The X factor
Strictly Come Dancing
Big Brother series 10
Britain’s Got Talent
Dancing on Ice
The Apprentice
I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk
The main codes and conventions of Reality TV are:
The influence of reality TV extends beyond the screen. The everpresent hidden cameras that observe the contestants mirror the continuous surveillance that is evident in our streets and public places.
Reality TV has become an important part of celebrity culture as it creates and maintains ‘celebs’ such as Jade Goody, and reinvigorates faded personalities in reality shows such as I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here.
Reality TV exploits the unpredictability and excitement that other areas of television have lost.
In Britain Reality TV came to our screens in the 1990s as many new channels, via cable and satellite, offered opportunities for new programming. Technology brought the digitalisation of transmission, cameras, audio and video editing which opened up whole new possibilities for these nonstop 24 hour channels. New smaller digital cameras and radio microphones meant that it was now easy to film people for very long periods in all types of situations. The introduction of non –linear computer editing meant that video footage could be ‘turned round’ in a very short time. New methods of storing video on long duration tapes, and later on computer hard discs meant that cameras could record for 24hours and the recorded material could then be edited.
The term Reality TV was first given to shows such as the BBC Crimewatch UK, and Police, Camera, Action where surveillance footage, reconstruction of crime scenes, and studio presentation combined to give the impression of ‘real people involved in real situations’. The hybrid nature of these programmes to include elements of news, surveillance footage and police drama contributed to the development of Reality TV as a genre.
The scope of Reality TV expanded to include constructed factual programmes such as Castaway where a situation was devised for the sole purpose of making a television programme.
Reality TV grew from a combination of the more conventional docusoap programmes such as Airport, and the entertainment elements of live action in a controlled situation such as Castaway, with the added ingredients of 24 hour surveillance from the police camera shows.
Reality TV is now a fully fledged genre that covers most of the fly-on-the-wall programming, and programming involving ordinary people. In high profile cases such as The X factor and Strictly Come Dancing it replaces traditional entertainment shows in broadcasting schedules.
The genre now covers a wide range of programming formats, both factual and entertainment. I think it is worth considering the whole genre under two headings: factual, and entertainment.
The factual formats are:
Audiences love Reality TV for two main reasons:
First audiences can vote on many entertainment shows, usually to exclude someone from the BB house or X factor or Strictly Come dancing. This is the interactive factor that gives audiences the impression they are contributing.
Secondly audiences can identify with contestants because they are ‘ordinary’ people taking part in a television programme. This is particularly true of the factual formats and make-over formats.
In the past the public have been included in television programmes but typically as a passive and often unseen audience – still true in pure entertainment programmes such as Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, and quiz/entertainment shows like Qi and Have I Got News For You. Presenters like a live audience to laugh at their jokes, but often the TV format is to keep the audience behind the camera – in Light entertainment this is a hang over from radio entertainment shows that are recorded with a live audience.
Both factual and entertainment Reality TV shows encourage audience participation at both levels – as voters and on some shows as contestants.
Researchers in the US have found a strong link between reality TV viewership, social networking site usage, and celebrity identity formation. Also Researchers at the University at Buffalo and the University of Hawaii report a statistical correlation between heavy reality-TV watching and social network usage, ranging from time spent per session to the prevalence of “promiscuous friending.” Are you on your way to becoming an online “Idol”?
See http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=2172
2 In groups ask students to discuss how interactive an audience really is for a particular show, such as X factor,– compare the type of interactivity to other interactive media formats on the internet such as Facebook, Blogs and Youtube.
3 Discuss: how can television audiences for Reality TV become more active?
4 Would you take part in a make-over show? If so which one? (Knowledge of Reality TV texts is very important to use as an exam topic).
A key area of study is in the consideration of how real is this version of reality? Reality TV formats are constructed, and audience viewpoint is manipulated. It is important to examine how this is achieved.
The Public Service BBC created and transmits on Saturday evening the hugely successful Strictly Come Dancing – a hybrid of a game show format derived from Bruce Forsythe’s The Generating Game, and the old fashioned but popular ballroom dancing show Come dancing. The BBC invented the factual make-over Reality TV shows, and these are an important part of the BBC schedules. Similar ideas, such as Wife Swap have emerged on other channels.
ITV has the enormously successful X factor which dominates the Saturday evening schedules, and attracts a substantial advertising revenue – even so ITV is currently not making healthy profits. This shows how difficult it is to make money out of broadcasting alone as audiences find other ways of using their screen time such as online activity.
Reality TV shows generate good income from audiences, and from the income from the phone lines used to vote on the show, but the entertainment shows are costly to produce. After several voting scandals – one cost ITV a very big fine – the rules have been tightened up to restrict the cost of calls.
Media institutions like Reality TV as they can be cheap to produce when members of the public are the main contributors to shows, and they attract attention the press and appeal to audiences. However the formats need constant refreshment to capture big audiences, and as we can see with the demise of Big Brother new ideas are always needed.
By its very nature Reality TV is providing a type of voyeuristic experience. The audience is eaves dropping and looking at other people’s lives even though they have agreed to be looked at. It is often the conversations caught on the sound track from the personal radio mics that are the most revealing. Participants have to wear mics at all times, and occasionally forget they are being recorded for sound, and so reveal secrets or indiscretions.
Some of the most watched segments of Reality TV shows such as I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here are where the participants have to undergo some ordeal such as eat maggots or survive an invasion of ants. Clips from these segments appear on Youtube.
What is the attraction of seeing someone suffering for our entertainment? Think of the gladiators in ancient Rome.
It is useful to explore the nature of voyeurism in relation to Reality TV and the concerns that give rise to this type of viewing experience. Some contestants manipulate the fact that they are being observed to gain prominence, or to get some sort of advantage.
How important is the selection of types of participants to create tensions and drama?
Some Reality shows such as Wife Swap and Ibiza Uncovered push the boundaries of taste and decency and question the values they present to a viewing audience.
Taste and decency regulation does not cover the internet – so how can broadcasters promote cutting edge reality shows in such a constricted environment, or are safeguards not only necessary but desirable?
The winner of Big Brother 10 (2009) after 93 days and 23 housemates was Sophie who took home £71,000. You could argue that 71K for 93 days incarceration in public is not over generous, even though it works out at £763 a day. The last night is nicely chronicled in Heidi Stephens blog on the Guardian website
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/sep/04/bigbrother-reality-tv
Some participants have becomes celebs and gone on to make substantial amounts of money. But for the occasional Jade Goody there must be many more of those 23 housemates who have no job and who may wish they had not bothered with Reality TV – certainly an area worth researching.
Zone Reality says on its website http://www.realitytv.co.uk/ that it is the only TV channel dedicated to showing reality programming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Zone Reality says:
‘it is inspired by real life drama, crime, the bizarre and the unexplained. Bringing you sensational unscripted programmes to stir your emotions and provide incredible insight that will keep you hooked.
From fast paced, sensational series to heart felt, emotional documentaries. Zone Reality offers only real life programming.’
Whether this is true or not you can decide from this clip from the schedule.
And you can get clips and screen savers sent straight to your mobile – a good example of multi media convergence.
For a gossipy US site about celebs in reality shows see http://www.realitytvworld.com/
The Guardian, showing it will go to any lengths to attract a young audience, has pages of online content dedicated to Reality TV http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/reality-tv
For a list of current Reality TV shows go to :
http://www.whatsontv.co.uk/reality
The way Reality TV has been exploited by the Press throughout the world is one of the major contextual stories around this genre.
In September 2009 this villa in Istanbul was where nine Turkish girls were held captive for two months believing they were in a Reality TV show. The women had responded to an ad seeking contestants to a Big Brother type show. Some of the ways in which Reality TV has invaded people’s lives can be seen in a comment from the mother of one of the girls:
“We were not after the money but we thought our daughter could have the chance of becoming famous if she took part in the contest,” one captive’s mother is quoted as saying. “But they have duped us all.” The Guardian 10/09/2009
The BBC takes a bleaker view of the impact of Reality TV in a Newsnight programme when Stephen Smith asks
What is the connection between New Labour and TV talent shows? Apart from Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s solicitous enquiry after the state of Susan Boyle’s health, I mean.
The answer is that the whole rigmarole of voting for your favourite performer has been imported from reality TV lock, stock and barrel into the government’s most cherished area of policy -education.
Believe it or not, some would-be head teachers are now required to make a pitch for the job in front of members of the student body.
In agonies of uncertainty, they must wait to see which way the pupils will turn their ink-blotched thumbs.
A decade of Labour rule, and of Simon Cowell on our screens, have reached a fitting climax of sorts then in The Head Factor. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8224687.stm
The obvious case study for 2009 is Big Brother because Channel 4 announced on August 26th 2009 that in 2010 it will axe the Reality TV show after 11 years.
See The Guardian website for full history and lots of info about BB http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/bigbrother
An American website that takes rt seriously is Realitycube.com
www.realitycube.com/reality-tv-rules.aspx
For a visitor from Mars it describes BB:
‘A reality show that has gained much viewership is the Big Brother series which involves ordinary people living together in one house for a specific number of days. Depending on their obedience to the house rules and other circumstances, the participants are gradually eliminated until only one remains. With this reality TV show, viewers get a glimpse of how the housemates of different personalities live inside the house from sunup to sundown without television and stereo. Their ability to adjust to their housemates away from their usual company of family and friends are really put to the test. Viewers are also involved as they get to vote for their favourite participant during the entire series. Great rewards are at stake here including a huge sum of money as well as a chance to become celebrities in their own country.’
Further research:
http://www.videojug.com/interview/reality-tv-basics-2#what-are-some-surprising-influences-on-reality-television
Reality TV - Annette Hill – Routledge ISBN: 978-0-415-26152-4
Understanding Reality TV – Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn – Routledge ISBN: 0-415-31795-9
Genre
Reality television is a hybrid genre. It is like a documentary as it is a factual form concerned with investigating human behaviour and relationships using ‘fly-on-the-wall’ camera techniques. The dialogue is unscripted and actual events are shown, featuring ordinary people not professional actors.The hybrid nature of the genre comes from the way ordinary people are put into situations from other genres such as sitcom, as in Channel 4’s Big Brother where all the action takes place in one sitcom style location.
It is like a game show in being based on competition, where contestants compete to stay on the show, and win a prize, even if they are called housemates by Big Brother.
Reality TV is like a talk show as it is a way of reflecting on social issues – for example contestants can react to someone who does not share the same social background or sexual orientation, and create a debate in the press as well as on the show. Also confession is usually an important aspect of reality TV shows such as the Big Brother Diary room. A Reality TV show is often mediated by a presenter(s) who stokes up the competition between contestants and steers the audience towars the interpersonal drama.
Reality TV is like lifestyle TV with its emphasis on showing that a person can change and learn from each other.
One of the most important aspects of Reality TV is its unpredictability – nobody knows what is going to happen.
The top Reality TV titles in Sept 2009 are:
The X factor
Strictly Come Dancing
Big Brother series 10
Britain’s Got Talent
Dancing on Ice
The Apprentice
I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk
Reality TV Codes and conventions
The main codes and conventions of Reality TV are:
- Controlled environment, but unpredictable outcome
- Many situations work on deprivation – participants are deprived of basic things
- Contestants/guests are ordinary people and/or celebrities
- Non scripted material
- Live and edited footage
- Use of voice over narration by a presenter to link short segments and deliver an ongoing narrative
- Controlled tasks
- Use of character types e.g the villain such as ‘Nasty Nick’ Bateman who plotted to get other contestants to vote against each other in the first series of Big Brother
- Selection of contestants to annoy each other and create the equivalent of dramatic conflict
- Emphasis on outgoing personalities who can be seen by the audience as ‘ordinary’
- Use of confessional to gain an insight into character
- A created realism that simulates the linear aspect of everyday life
- The situations are controlled to create ‘television entertainment’
- ‘All seeing’ cameras in multi camera set ups
Reality TV in society
Reality TV has become an important part of celebrity culture as it creates and maintains ‘celebs’ such as Jade Goody, and reinvigorates faded personalities in reality shows such as I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here.
Reality TV exploits the unpredictability and excitement that other areas of television have lost.
Reality TV History
TechnologyIn Britain Reality TV came to our screens in the 1990s as many new channels, via cable and satellite, offered opportunities for new programming. Technology brought the digitalisation of transmission, cameras, audio and video editing which opened up whole new possibilities for these nonstop 24 hour channels. New smaller digital cameras and radio microphones meant that it was now easy to film people for very long periods in all types of situations. The introduction of non –linear computer editing meant that video footage could be ‘turned round’ in a very short time. New methods of storing video on long duration tapes, and later on computer hard discs meant that cameras could record for 24hours and the recorded material could then be edited.
The term Reality TV was first given to shows such as the BBC Crimewatch UK, and Police, Camera, Action where surveillance footage, reconstruction of crime scenes, and studio presentation combined to give the impression of ‘real people involved in real situations’. The hybrid nature of these programmes to include elements of news, surveillance footage and police drama contributed to the development of Reality TV as a genre.
The scope of Reality TV expanded to include constructed factual programmes such as Castaway where a situation was devised for the sole purpose of making a television programme.
Reality TV grew from a combination of the more conventional docusoap programmes such as Airport, and the entertainment elements of live action in a controlled situation such as Castaway, with the added ingredients of 24 hour surveillance from the police camera shows.
Reality TV is now a fully fledged genre that covers most of the fly-on-the-wall programming, and programming involving ordinary people. In high profile cases such as The X factor and Strictly Come Dancing it replaces traditional entertainment shows in broadcasting schedules.
The genre now covers a wide range of programming formats, both factual and entertainment. I think it is worth considering the whole genre under two headings: factual, and entertainment.
The factual formats are:
- Observation/Surveillance programmes where a group of strangers are put in a house or another environment, and the audience watch how they interact as they live together for a period of a time. Popular examples include Big Brother and Survivor
- Documentary style ‘fly-on-the-wall’ programming in which cameras are set up and follow unscripted situations as they happen. It is argued that this type of format provides the most realistic programming. Examples include Airport; The Cruise, Hotel, Driving School; Children’s Hospital, Vets in Practice, Air Force Afghanistan
- Programmes created to entertain a large audience involving putting real people in manufactured situations and filming what happens. The entertainment values are increased with a competitive element and audience involvement using interactive voting to eliminate contestants. Examples include: Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, The Apprentice.
- ‘Lifestyle’ self improvement/makeover programmes involving real people in real situations undergoing some sort of trauma in their life with regard to their appearance, their house, their garden, which is then transformed and made better by experts. Examples include What Not to Wear, Changing Rooms, House Doctor, How to Look Good Naked.
Audiences and reality TV
In the UK most viewers consider Reality TV to be the top entertainment shows such as X factor and Big Brother, and this would be the tabloid definition. However the genre appeals to more widespread audiences than just these shows.Audiences love Reality TV for two main reasons:
First audiences can vote on many entertainment shows, usually to exclude someone from the BB house or X factor or Strictly Come dancing. This is the interactive factor that gives audiences the impression they are contributing.
Secondly audiences can identify with contestants because they are ‘ordinary’ people taking part in a television programme. This is particularly true of the factual formats and make-over formats.
In the past the public have been included in television programmes but typically as a passive and often unseen audience – still true in pure entertainment programmes such as Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, and quiz/entertainment shows like Qi and Have I Got News For You. Presenters like a live audience to laugh at their jokes, but often the TV format is to keep the audience behind the camera – in Light entertainment this is a hang over from radio entertainment shows that are recorded with a live audience.
Both factual and entertainment Reality TV shows encourage audience participation at both levels – as voters and on some shows as contestants.
Theory
Students should be familiar with some modern audience effects theories such as the Uses and Gratifications model, but not the hypodermic model which is just too out of date.Researchers in the US have found a strong link between reality TV viewership, social networking site usage, and celebrity identity formation. Also Researchers at the University at Buffalo and the University of Hawaii report a statistical correlation between heavy reality-TV watching and social network usage, ranging from time spent per session to the prevalence of “promiscuous friending.” Are you on your way to becoming an online “Idol”?
See http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=2172
Activity
1 Reality Television is very popular. However Channel 4’s Big Brother - the show that really defined the genre of Reality TV- has been axed, does this mean the genre is in decline – discuss .2 In groups ask students to discuss how interactive an audience really is for a particular show, such as X factor,– compare the type of interactivity to other interactive media formats on the internet such as Facebook, Blogs and Youtube.
3 Discuss: how can television audiences for Reality TV become more active?
4 Would you take part in a make-over show? If so which one? (Knowledge of Reality TV texts is very important to use as an exam topic).
Representations and realism in Reality TV
Under the heading of representation is the concept of realism in television programmes. Reality TV programmes show us real life events involving real people in unscripted situations.A key area of study is in the consideration of how real is this version of reality? Reality TV formats are constructed, and audience viewpoint is manipulated. It is important to examine how this is achieved.
- The appearance of reality is set up with the use of a real location, or fully functional three dimensional set, such as the BB house.
- The timescale is real, as it is the same as day to day life – there is no film style compression of time, except in fully flagged edited sections.
- The contestants, housemates, guests, participants wear their own clothes, use their own names and can be seen to be ‘just like us’; even celebs have to be just themselves.
- It appears that outcomes are left to the parameters of the format, which may include audience participation, and are not directed by the producers – this promotes realism with the feel and spontaneity of a live broadcast
- Psychological realism is attained through devices such as the confessional, putting people in difficult but real situations (the Apprentice)
- Values and ethical issues are raised by this issue of realism. Participants on Reality shows can be humiliated in order to provide conflict or drama on the show. Audiences generally find this an acceptable and often enjoyable aspect of the show, but how far should a show go in order to attract audiences?
Activity
Discuss different shows to consider how real they seem, and what are the elements that make a show ‘real’.Institutions
In the UK Reality TV formats are produced by commercial and Public Service broadcasters. The government owned but independently run Channel 4 attracts its largest audiences for Big Brother, and this has been a very important cornerstone of the channel’s schedules. It not only fills a large amount of airtime but generates a lot of press coverage, and inspires spin off programmes.The Public Service BBC created and transmits on Saturday evening the hugely successful Strictly Come Dancing – a hybrid of a game show format derived from Bruce Forsythe’s The Generating Game, and the old fashioned but popular ballroom dancing show Come dancing. The BBC invented the factual make-over Reality TV shows, and these are an important part of the BBC schedules. Similar ideas, such as Wife Swap have emerged on other channels.
ITV has the enormously successful X factor which dominates the Saturday evening schedules, and attracts a substantial advertising revenue – even so ITV is currently not making healthy profits. This shows how difficult it is to make money out of broadcasting alone as audiences find other ways of using their screen time such as online activity.
Reality TV shows generate good income from audiences, and from the income from the phone lines used to vote on the show, but the entertainment shows are costly to produce. After several voting scandals – one cost ITV a very big fine – the rules have been tightened up to restrict the cost of calls.
Media institutions like Reality TV as they can be cheap to produce when members of the public are the main contributors to shows, and they attract attention the press and appeal to audiences. However the formats need constant refreshment to capture big audiences, and as we can see with the demise of Big Brother new ideas are always needed.
Activity
Discuss the way institutions can use Reality TV shows as cheap programming.People watching
By its very nature Reality TV is providing a type of voyeuristic experience. The audience is eaves dropping and looking at other people’s lives even though they have agreed to be looked at. It is often the conversations caught on the sound track from the personal radio mics that are the most revealing. Participants have to wear mics at all times, and occasionally forget they are being recorded for sound, and so reveal secrets or indiscretions.
Some of the most watched segments of Reality TV shows such as I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here are where the participants have to undergo some ordeal such as eat maggots or survive an invasion of ants. Clips from these segments appear on Youtube.
What is the attraction of seeing someone suffering for our entertainment? Think of the gladiators in ancient Rome.
Definition
Voyeurism is the pleasure obtained looking at someone or something while unseen. This may have a sexual context, but the pleasure really is in observing activity without being seen.It is useful to explore the nature of voyeurism in relation to Reality TV and the concerns that give rise to this type of viewing experience. Some contestants manipulate the fact that they are being observed to gain prominence, or to get some sort of advantage.
Activity
Discuss the types of people recruited for Reality TV. Do the producers go for stereotypes? Name shows with stereotypes?How important is the selection of types of participants to create tensions and drama?
Taste and decency issues
Activity
Discuss the regulation of taste and decency issues (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/) and codes that terrestrial broadcasters should follow, and the more lax values of some satellite broadcasters.Taste and decency regulation does not cover the internet – so how can broadcasters promote cutting edge reality shows in such a constricted environment, or are safeguards not only necessary but desirable?
Money!
An important aspect of Reality TV, that causes discussion and criticism, is that people, and Z list celebs, can make money from appearing in reality television programmes. Are people being paid to be exploited by the television company?The winner of Big Brother 10 (2009) after 93 days and 23 housemates was Sophie who took home £71,000. You could argue that 71K for 93 days incarceration in public is not over generous, even though it works out at £763 a day. The last night is nicely chronicled in Heidi Stephens blog on the Guardian website
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/sep/04/bigbrother-reality-tv
Some participants have becomes celebs and gone on to make substantial amounts of money. But for the occasional Jade Goody there must be many more of those 23 housemates who have no job and who may wish they had not bothered with Reality TV – certainly an area worth researching.
Activity
Does a contestant by agreeing to appear nearly naked in a make over show compromise his or her integrity, and sell their sense of self for a few pounds? Research and then discuss in relation to particular Reality TV shows.Is there too much Reality TV?
Satellite television channels are homing in on Reality TV and using the concept to link with a website and attract audiences. Some of these stretch the definition of the genre.Zone Reality says on its website http://www.realitytv.co.uk/ that it is the only TV channel dedicated to showing reality programming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Zone Reality says:
‘it is inspired by real life drama, crime, the bizarre and the unexplained. Bringing you sensational unscripted programmes to stir your emotions and provide incredible insight that will keep you hooked.
From fast paced, sensational series to heart felt, emotional documentaries. Zone Reality offers only real life programming.’
Whether this is true or not you can decide from this clip from the schedule.
For a gossipy US site about celebs in reality shows see http://www.realitytvworld.com/
For a list of current Reality TV shows go to :
http://www.whatsontv.co.uk/reality
Reality TV contexts
In September 2009 this villa in Istanbul was where nine Turkish girls were held captive for two months believing they were in a Reality TV show. The women had responded to an ad seeking contestants to a Big Brother type show. Some of the ways in which Reality TV has invaded people’s lives can be seen in a comment from the mother of one of the girls:
“We were not after the money but we thought our daughter could have the chance of becoming famous if she took part in the contest,” one captive’s mother is quoted as saying. “But they have duped us all.” The Guardian 10/09/2009
The BBC takes a bleaker view of the impact of Reality TV in a Newsnight programme when Stephen Smith asks
What is the connection between New Labour and TV talent shows? Apart from Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s solicitous enquiry after the state of Susan Boyle’s health, I mean.
Believe it or not, some would-be head teachers are now required to make a pitch for the job in front of members of the student body.
In agonies of uncertainty, they must wait to see which way the pupils will turn their ink-blotched thumbs.
A decade of Labour rule, and of Simon Cowell on our screens, have reached a fitting climax of sorts then in The Head Factor. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8224687.stm
Activity
Research news stories related to Reality TV shows. Make a list, and put the stories in order of the ones you think have the most news impact.Case study
Big Brother at http://www.channel4.com/bigbrother/index.html?day=94See The Guardian website for full history and lots of info about BB http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/bigbrother
An American website that takes rt seriously is Realitycube.com
www.realitycube.com/reality-tv-rules.aspx
For a visitor from Mars it describes BB:
‘A reality show that has gained much viewership is the Big Brother series which involves ordinary people living together in one house for a specific number of days. Depending on their obedience to the house rules and other circumstances, the participants are gradually eliminated until only one remains. With this reality TV show, viewers get a glimpse of how the housemates of different personalities live inside the house from sunup to sundown without television and stereo. Their ability to adjust to their housemates away from their usual company of family and friends are really put to the test. Viewers are also involved as they get to vote for their favourite participant during the entire series. Great rewards are at stake here including a huge sum of money as well as a chance to become celebrities in their own country.’
Further research:
http://www.videojug.com/interview/reality-tv-basics-2#what-are-some-surprising-influences-on-reality-television
Reality TV - Annette Hill – Routledge ISBN: 978-0-415-26152-4
Understanding Reality TV – Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn – Routledge ISBN: 0-415-31795-9