Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Reality TV - not so real

As you all must have noticed there is an increasing number of reality TV shows on TV. Industry 'experts' have repeatedly predicted the end of reality TV, because people wouldn't be interested in watching ANOTHER show 'The life of [fill in some celebrity's name, usually B-class]'. The interesting thing is these shows remain to attract huge numbers of viewers. My production company has recently finished some work for a large TV network here in Holland; the program was a reality TV show on a famous cook here setting up the largest fish restaurant in the country. The format was a contest in which 8 selected cooks had to compete in order to become the chef cook of the new restaurant working for this celeb cook's group of restaurants. It was a big hit on TV ranking in the top 5 nationwide every episode. But I can understand that, it's very similar to Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen and that's fun to watch as it's also interesting.

However, that wasn't what bothered me, actually intrigued is the better word. Why are people so extremely interested in watching other people's lives? And then I'm talking about all aspects of it, even scenes of parts of their lives I wouldn't even find interesting of my biggest idol. Take the TV show Big Brother for example (the producing firm pays over half our bills so I won't be too harsh haha) isn't actually even a real TV show. It's a network of CCTV camera's hanging in a house built out of containers in a studio park with people locked in it for months. I have tried to watch it once, but I hated it. Why do people like to watch that kind of stuff? Those prime time hours could be filled with much more interesting shows. And then it struck me...reality TV shows are far from reality for about 99.9% of the viewers. On the one hand you have the celebrities who live lavish lifestyles that would even make many millionaires feel embarrassed and on the other you have shows about 'normal' people like Big Brother. The celebrities have their own little world and I can understand to a certain extent that's fun to watch now and then. But the most popular reality shows remain the shows like Big Brother and the reason is the brilliant selection of the contestants. Most 'normal' and sane people wouldn't even think of having themselves locked up in a house with a group of strangers just for the slight chance of surviving long enough to win a quarter of a million dollars. That's what makes or breaks these shows. When stories about big fights or racist comments on live TV hit the press, the market share shoots up. I know we all like to catch up on gossip and juicy celeb stories, but this is different. Here we want to watch it live and wait for something to get totally out of hand in there. Because we know it's going to happen, we just don't know when and you want to have seen it first and live. You can deny it all you want, but these shows are actually very similar to the gladiator spectacles in ancient Rome. We are still a blood thirsty bunch, but just with less blood because that's not done anymore. We humans are strange beings sometimes... Would like to hear/read your comments!

2 comments:

Gail Mallo said...

Here in the Philippines, people are hooked on Big Brother because like you said, people like watching other people's lives.

I think it's silly-- watching people in a fishbowl and I think the participants themselves are silly too because they let these media companies manipulate them like mere puppets for the public's entertainment and scrutiny. But then again, the Philippines is a developing country and participants do it for the money. Our media moguls are capitalists who uses the commodification of emotions to reap fortunes from public viewers. That's why where there is conflict, I bet the production crew rejoices because they can use this to boost their ratings.

It's sad, in a way-- the way our world has become. Long gone are the educational, more meaningful tv shows. These days we have reality tv shows like "The Search for the Next Doll" and "A Simple Life". If kids watch these shows, what kind of lesson are we trying to teach them? Are these people the type of role model we want them to look up to?

dAFR said...

What the media seems to be forgetting is that it is first and foremost a social responsibility, and only secondly a business. As long as reality shows sell, they will keep making them. We will never run out of B-class celebrities, anyway.