Page 212 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

REALITY TV

this banner. Some who have investigated its conventions suggest that
the terms ‘factual television’ (see Dovey, 2001) or ‘popular factual
entertainment’ (see Roscoe, 2001) do more justice to a type of
programming that encompasses everything from confrontational chat
shows to surveillance entertainment such as Big Brother and Survivor.
Examples of reality TV can be traced to the early 1990s and the
emergence of programmes that traded on the reality of the everyday
tasks of the emergency services. Shows such as Cops and 999 often
masqueraded as investigative journalism and found justification and
legitimation by using the rhetoric of ‘public service’ to describe their
role (Roscoe, 2001: 10). This is most evident in shows such as Cops,
which transformed the ‘crime-stoppers’ genre into drama.
Another emergent form of reality TV is docu-soap. This hybrid
differs from documentary in that it prioritises entertainment over
social commentary (Bruzzi, 2001: 132). It shares with other ‘reality’
formats the presentation of the everyday as entertainment. One
innovation arising from this development is that ‘ordinary people’ are
doing the talking – ‘real’ folk get to be stars (Roscoe, 2001: 11).
Some of the criticism aimed at this type of programming stems
from the loss of the expert’s role. The rise of shows that foreground
ordinary people is characterised as dumbing down. Typical of such
attacks, Kronig (2000: 47) argues that reality TV is a ‘triumph of
emotional sensationalism over serious issues from politics to science’,
echoing the cry that documentary film and its supposed representa-
tion of the real are being forsaken in favour of this obviously ‘unreal’
genre.
Reality TV makes no attempt to hide the extent to which reality is
a product of its production values, which have increased in proportion
to the genre’s popularity (for example, Big Brother, Survivor, Popstars).
Indeed, Roscoe argues that the audience of these shows are well aware
of their artificial nature, and that part of the pleasure for viewers is in
evaluating the performance of participants – a pleasure that is
particularly rewarding during moments when the performance breaks
down (2001: 14). It is at such moments that a different kind of ‘reality’
pokes through. Tears, back-stabbing, injury and facial expression in the
moment of defeat are all examples of what Roscoe calls ‘flickers of
authenticity’.
Combining elements of, for example, documentary, soap opera and
quiz shows, reality TV demonstrates the continuum of television
formats and the hybridity of programming. Further research in the
area should therefore seek to understand howthese changes are related

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