Week Twelve

How 'real' are game shows? / how 'real' is reality TV?

Reality programmes draw from existing television genres and formats to create a hybrid programme by marrying factual with fictional clouding the 'real' in reality TV and reality gameshows. There are 3 distinct features from which both are derived from: tabloid journalism, documentary television and popular entertainment.

'Interplay between ordinary people and celebrities, or information and entertainment' are drawn on from tabloid journalism' Hill (2005). Tabloid journalism relies on personal and sensational stories to create informative and entertaining news creating the sense that 'real' seems to be more created than natural. Hill explains that personal and sensational 'real-life' stories are distributed to the general public through popular media and oral storytelling to an extent where some cases would become a par to everyday conversation and speculation. Readers of tabloid papers and viewers of reality TV sometimes mix and match their consumption of news and reality programmes evolving into a popular hybrid of hard news and gossipy chat that was often preferred by viewers.

The issues of realism within documentary televsion are found in two notions: observational realism (set of formal markers that allow us to think that what we are watching is partly media independant reality) and expositional realism (rhetoric of accuracy and truth). 'Both types of realism, ask the audience to register the techniques used to observe real life or the way in which an argument is presented to us' Hill (2005). In terms of reality programming, the extent to which these shows address realism, accuracy and truth are significant as they do not stray from such values but at the same time are unable to conform to documentary conventions due to their reliance on entertainment formats as seen in Survivor. Hill (2005) points out that there are even traces of observational documentary in reality gameshows such as Big Brother although its claims to observe real life are heavily subsumed within the game genre.

Popular entertainment recognises that gameshows have been a staple in television because it is cheap and easy to produce and is extremely exportable, specifically for this discussion would be the mentioning of melodramatic soap operas. The way in which these shows attempt to represent heightened or sensational realities within popular entertainment can be directly related to gameshows about relationships, (Joe Millionaire, the Bachelor). Such shows combine observational documentary techniques with sensational narrative techniques of soap opera. According to Hill (2005) reality gameshows encourage participants to indulge in gossipy, soap like forms of interchange and maintain narrative pace and interest by switching the focus of attention from one group of characters to another.

So essentially the 'real' within gameshows and reality TV is manipulated and extorted for entertainment purposes. However it is this combining of genres to make a hyrbid show that allow gameshows and reality TV to be successful. The idea that such shows are 'real' is what entices viewers to watch no matter how sensational the plots of shows are, people want to watch what they are led to believe is real.


Reference

Hill, A. (2005) The rise of reality TV. In A. Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television (pp.15-40). Oxon: Routledge.