Week 11/12 "Reality TV" infoteinment and it's audience

In recent years we have witnessed how television has been invaded by a new television format that despite of its great worldwide popularity brings some negative elements, which overshadow the image of this new television genre, ‘reality TV”.

 If it is fair to say that one of the characteristics of today's television is the protagonism given to common people, there are a wide range of programs that show a reconstruction of a reality that combines elements of drama, curiosity, intimacy, hipper-emotively, which are proven to gather a large audience. It presents reality from the point of view of the unusual, the striking, the odd, the intimate details, and the fascinating emotions; in short, It presents reality from the most sensational and shocking.

The name usually given to these programs are; reality show, talk show, games show, docu-show, late night show, etc.  The word “show” highlights its character; the show is what is meant to be shown, to draw attention. This does the job; to capture the viewer's attention and keeping them constantly entertain in front of the screen. For sure the audience is who ultimately ensures the survival of a program. Do not forget that in the current television anyone’s product which doesn't meet the expectations of the audience is destined to disappear.

Hill (2005) explains that in the early nineties, television networks are forced to adapt, with low-cost programs that minimize risks, the competition for the advertising market was tough. It takes them to import and create a new program format that generates new audiences interest, not so much in the content of the program, as in the social discussion and debate created around them.

The reality shows include a broad set of programs, no easy categorized within a specific genre, which have evolved and transformed throughout time. Thus, traditionally there have been two separate areas that have resulted in two major television types of programs; information and entertainment.

Currently, the emergence and consolidation of these new formats that mix of hybrid elements, information with entertainment, has definitely question the validity of the concept ‘classic genre’, since, every day become more blurred and difficult to specify the boundaries separating the fact from fiction.

The public knows that there is a script, but they go ahead and watch anyway because they want to keep the uncertainty until the end. It is a kind of self-deception that at the end will keep them entertain.