Page 448 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Real ty Telev s on |

to the first, namely the selling and promotion of formats rather than fully formed shows.
Formats are templates (an ensemble of rules and procedures around a central idea) which
can, like code, be modified depending on context. Among the Endemol empire’s prod-
ucts are Fear Factor, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Gay, Straight, or Taken?, Changing
Rooms, Deal or No Deal, and 1 vs. 100.

Form/gEnrE
There is wide debate over the validity and accuracy of the name “reality TV.”
The most basic comment is that the term covers too many types of program-
ming to be useful. What does The Surreal Life have in common with Design on
a Dime, or Punk’d with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? Some programs have a
game component, others are about style makeovers; some focus on celebrities,
others on ordinary people; some focus on pranking people, others on therapeu-
tically rehabilitating them; and there is a varying degree of scriptedness in each.
The wide range and sheer amount of programming make reality TV a dubious
and exhaustive category.
Another more philosophical criticism leveled at the label is that these pro-
grams cannot be said to be accurately representing reality. Take the case of The
Real World: the cast members are selectively chosen, their conditions are highly
unusual (free food and booze in a lavish house), their antics are often provoked
or staged, and the result is a highly edited package. Reality TV’s roots in docu-
mentary styles and aesthetics (like An American Family) further complicates its
relationship to reality.
For these reasons, a host of names have been proposed to divide reality TV
into various subgenres or to clarify its representational status: gamedoc, docu-
soap, factual entertainment, postdocumentary television, dramality, reality sit-
com, lifestyle programming, unscripted drama, actuality programs, experiment
TV, virtual TV, neo-verite, and more pervasive forms of “infotainment” or
“edutainment.” Perhaps reality TV is not a genre at all, but an array of formats.
Reality TV can be seen as a medium, a recombinant series of formats that fuses
narrative, previous television genres, games, documentary styles, drama, and
skills/education. Its experiments and formats have appeared on news channels
(CNN’s Turnaround) and influenced film documentaries (Super Size Me). More
importantly, the emergence of reality TV has demonstrated that reality can be a
marketing tool, and that these kinds of classifications are products of a conver-
gence of industry, critical, and audience expectations.

ControVersial shows

Besides the ongoing debates around reality TV as a whole, a few programs generated signif-
icant controversy when they were released. A couple of months before the premiere of Sur-
vivor (often noted as the beginning of the second wave of reality TV), FOX broadcast Who