WHY I HATE REALITY TV!

As USA Today reporter, Gary Levin aptly described it; “reality TV suggests an unrehearsed, documentary-style look at a group of people thrust into unfamiliar surroundings. But many of the shows, including Survivor, The Mole and Temptation Island, are more like unscripted dramas, with soap-opera story lines, swelling music and corny visual touches” (adapted from USA Today (2001), Gary Levin, How real is reality TV?). According to Chris Cowan, the co-creator and executive producer of Fox’s Temptation Island, reality TV does not exist, this is because once the editors and producers of the show begin cutting down the show to fit the broadcast time of less than an hour, the show loses its realism and becomes a controlled form of reality. All the producers can do, according to Chris Cowan, is tell the tale of what happened originally as accurately as possible, its all ‘storytelling’, according to him. Erik Nelson, producer of ‘Redhanded’ and ‘Busted on the Job’ as well as other Producers of Reality TV shows make one very considerable and vital assumption about their audiences, that ‘Audiences are sophisticated enough to appreciate that these shows are crafted”. However, according to our survey findings, almost 9% of those surveyed, believe reality TV shows to be broadcasted in their purest form, almost 24% feel that these shows are 80% pure, 45% think they are somewhat edited, but mostly pure and 30% feel they are 80% fake, and a small 15% feel that reality TV shows are entirely crafted. These findings show that
audiences are apparently not ‘sophisticated enough’ to realize that these shows are ‘crafted’, which goes against the assumptions made by the producers (Yahoo News, Ray Richmond, Unscripted TV: Real or Phoney? (Year of work not available)).

Many of the participants of reality TV shows have themselves criticized the shows as being unrealistic and manipulated by the producers and directors. Stacy Stillman of the first Survivor claims that the producers of the show wanted to keep another participant, Rudy Boesch on the show so much that, they schemed to have her voted off the show instead. The show Big Brother started off rather slow and was not engaging to the audience, the producers then decided to ‘break their own rules’. Although the show rules clearly stated that the contestants were not to have any form of contact with other people, the producers brought back one of the contestants who was earlier voted off the show and even tried to offer money to other contestants in order to induce them to leave the show. Another example, was at Fox’s special ‘Who Wants To Marry A Multimillionaire’ taping, the groom Rick Rockwell was guided away from certain prospective brides.

As an avid reality TV show viewer, Shad Hernandez of Arcadia, California said, “I don’t see how anything can be real when there’s a cameraman with a sandwich sitting next to you (adapted from USA Today (2001), Gary Levin, How real is reality TV?).” The filming of Survivor, includes a crew 400, the question to ask ourselves is how much ‘surviving’ can a person be doing with an entourage of 400? The crew obviously has their food along with them, and while the contestants of the show are wondering where to get their next meal, the crew is calmly sitting right behind them, conveniently out of sight of the TV audience, eating their nicely packaged food. The participants of Survivor also apparently have their own medical kit, which contains tampons, sunscreen, prescribed drugs and contact lens supplies, they are also given the liberty to call on the in-house doctor at any point of time! These luxuries are not shown on screen and just add to our hypothesis that reality TV is fake! Another fact that will shock avid Survivor viewers is that the contestants on Survivor do not walk to tribal council, as is popularly believed, but instead are driven there and only walk the last fifteen minutes or so, the fifteen minutes that is broadcasted. Another survivor participant, Sean Keniff, a neurologist, claimed that his character was given a ‘one sided’ portrayal on the show, according to him, he said a lot of ‘smart, fun things, but it was edited out”. “I guess it was better television to make the neurologist a doofus than a genius (USA Today (2001), Gary Levin, How real is reality TV?).” Chris Cowen said, “as soon as you start pulling those seconds out, you change the context, you change the reality. Some people on the show will say they weren’t fairly represented and that’s a truth of this format. This is not reality. This is entertainment.”
With the producers themselves decrying the realism content of these shows, our hypothesis that reality TV is actually fake seems to have proved itself. The next step is to examine how this information will be useful to “a group, enterprise, agency, society or country”. Reality TV shows have been gaining in extremism, lately. A new show, called Danger Island proves that. Basically, 12 convicted criminals are put on an isolated island with some of the best man hunters in the world and the man hunters try to catch these criminals, the criminals also get to vote off one of their friends at the end of each day. The reward of one million dollars goes to the victim of the winning criminal and the child of the criminal is given a fifty thousand-dollar study grant so as to help the child stay away from the route his parent took. 38% of the people interviewed in our survey felt that reality TV shows have become too risky and 45% felt that they were too unbelievable.Also, because of the glut of new reality TV shows ,television channels and reality TV show producers are trying harder and harder to garner viewership numbers and increase the ratings for their shows, so much so that they have resorted to using dangerous plots and storylines to attract audiences.

Reality TV shows also portray a twisted view of life, it shows the audiences that one must connive and backstab in order to survive, although it emphasizes the theory of the survival of the fittest, it also emphasizes cheating and being sly. The young, who are very open to influence as it is, will learn from these shows things and principles which will go against the values of honesty and such that they have been always taught by their parents. The choice may be theirs to make as to which group of people to listen to, their ‘boring’ parents or the interesting TV shows which everyone seems to be watching, but we all know that the young often fall for peer pressure and may feel compelled to lie and cheat in order to ‘survive’ and always be the best in everything.

These shows also emphasize the lust for money. Survivor, Amazing Race, Fear Factor as well as many others offer large sums of money to the winners of the show, or at least to the person who is the last remaining. This teaches the young that one should do anything for money and that ‘money makes the world go round”. Their mindset is if, these mature grown ups can embarrass themselves on national TV for some money and then they definitely can steal or join gangs and extort money just to satisfy their craving for material wants. Reality TV has placed money and material wants over the other, more important values of life, like honesty. Also, children will always look for the easy way out to succeed. Instead of studying hard to get into the university, they will think that just by joining a reality TV show, they can make their first million, as well as gain fame and popularity. Many of the female participants of shows like Survivor have gone on to become models and have even been offered roles in movies and other TV shows, young teenage girls longing for people to admire their beauty will definitely be attracted to these shows. Young teenage boys dying to show off their bravery and how macho they are will do just about anything to get on a reality TV show and show the whole world, on national TV just how big their biceps and how daring they are. Of the people we surveyed, 35% said they would like to be on a reality TV show and the majority of them said that they would join these shows mainly for the money, thrill, fame and experience.

Reality TV shows are somewhat like television serials, they continue, week after week. Teenagers are mostly students, and have homework and school. Reality TV shows enrapture the students so much that they sometimes even skip school and neglect their homework just to religiously follow the shows. When it is time for the final episode of each season, where they decide upon the winner, students have been known to skip school in order to watch the finale! This obviously shows what values matter more to the youth of today. The popular culture of Reality TV shows.
Thus, we can see how reality TV shows play a huge role in the lives of the youth today, and one that has few, if any good points. Reality TV has taken the world by storm, the entire irony lying in the fact, that reality TV is not real at all! What the viewers see on TV is actually very different from what was actually filmed at first. Some common misconceptions like survivors walking to tribal council and there being no doctor on hand, have since been cleared up. Perhaps, the name of the entire genre of shows should be changed to “highly edited reality TV”. These shows not only influence to youth of today very much, but they also create a bogus world for the youth to immerse themselves in, this encourages voyeurism. These shows greatly distort the moral values that most youth have been taught by their parents, to put kindness and honesty above all else, etc. Reality TV shows exhibit the need for survival of the fittest, the competitors often choose winning the game and money over things like honesty and friendships. The youth enjoy watching other people suffer and this gives them a sadistic kick, which keeps them hooked on the shows. “The reason reality TV is so popular is because to observe human behavior is fascinating (Stanford University (2001), Betsy Mason, Psychologist puts the ‘real’ into reality TV).” Of the people we surveyed, almost 10% said they watch reality TV shows because they like the backstabbing and cheating in the shows, and another 15% said they like to watch the participants embarrass themselves. Comparing their own safe and comfortable lives to those that the contestants of these shows seem to be living, it makes the viewers feel very good. However, these shows create a fool’s paradise, they make people think that whatever is happening on the television is real, but as the producers themselves said, due to the heavy editing of the ‘boring’ parts of the original video, the outcome is all just “entertainment”, basically reality TV shows are just “storytelling”.