Thursday, September 27, 2001

Get Real
America’s fascination with reality TV spawns more shows — and there is no end in sight
By Laura McFarland
Skiff Staff

Eating sheep eyes. Being dropped in the middle of nowhere with limited supplies and $100 and then told to race around the world and end up at the Statue of Liberty.

Setting sail on a cruise ship with 16 people for 15 days expected to find true love.

These scenarios, preposterous as they may sound, have all happened on one network or another and they are all part of a craze sweeping America called reality TV.

J. Kent Ladewig/SKIFF STAFF

It all seemed to start in 2000 on network television stations when CBS aired a new show called “Survivor” featuring 16 strangers on an island vying to win $1 million — at any cost. The show generated huge ratings, and the following season other networks were launching their own reality TV programs.

Shawnesse Herbert, a sophomore business management major, said she watched the first seasons of “Survivor” and “Big Brother”, but stopped watching because she thought the shows had become redundant.

“In the beginning, it seemed exciting because it was something different, but after the second season it started to look the same,” Herbert said. “People are only doing it for the money and not the thrill.”

At least a dozen reality TV programs are currently on the air or will start this season, and the trend probably will not reduce for at least two or three years, said John Miller, a former WFAA news director.

Miller said the reasons are simple. First, reality shows provide the networks with the younger audiences that their advertisers want. Second, the shows cost anywhere from 1/10 to 1/3 less than what an hour-long drama would cost.

“If you can make three reality programs for the price of one drama, obviously they’re going to find that appealing,” Miller said.

The problem, Miller said, is that people were first attracted to reality shows because they were adventurous and unique. Now, it is almost impossible to escape them.

“As it usually happens with a fad in programming, or anything, it’s overdone,” Miller said. “As people become used to them and as there becomes more of them, they won’t be as unique.”

Crystal Jones, a sophomore business major, said she loves reality TV shows because they are unpredictable. But she feels the shows will not last much longer because so many new shows are flooding television, she said.

“It’s all been seen before and it gets pretty old,” Jones said. “I don’t think I can take watching people eat pig ears and live beetles or have snakes dumped on their faces for one more season.”

Before “Survivor,” reality TV shows were uncommon. One of the earliest programs was perhaps “Candid Camera,” which first aired in 1960. It would be years before shows like “Cops” and “Real World” grabbed audiences’ attentions.

Kristin VandenBelt, a sophomore pre-major, said the new reality shows are ridiculous and she doesn’t understand why people become so addicted to them.

“At the beginning, with ‘Real World,’ it was a creative new concept, but now reality shows are simply crass ways to make a buck with no new ideas,” VandenBelt said.

Many people say contemporary reality TV programs lack imagination.

Theresa Barnott, a sophomore math major, said that now every other show on TV is a “real-life” drama about the same ridiculous subjects.

“My own encounters with reality do not include lying in a coffin full of snakes or being whisked away on an 18th Century cruise boat to some island to duke it out with 16 other people for ‘love’ and, more importantly, the prize money,” Barnott said.

In addition to their representation of reality, the programs have also been accused of deceiving viewers and manipulating results. An inherent skepticism in the American audience leads to the lack of trust in these shows, Miller said.

“Since these programs are filmed with only the producers calling the shots, there’s not a lot of ways for us to know if that’s what is really happening,” Miller said.

Regardless of this cynicism, networks appear to be confident that the demand for reality TV will continue, especially CBS and Fox, who both have three reality programs airing this season. CBS has ordered new seasons of both “Survivor” and “Big Brother” and is airing a new show called “The Amazing Race,” where 11 couples are given a starting point and an ending point and told to race around the world.

Fox is taking on a second season of “Temptation Island” and two new programs: “Murder in Small Town X,” a “Survivor”-like murder mystery show, and “Love Cruise: The Maiden Voyage,” which puts 16 singles on the open seas in hopes they will find true love long enough to win the prize money.

Additional programs include ABC’s “The Mole 2” and NBC’s “Fear Factor” and “Lost.”
Janette Stanberry, a sophomore Spanish and speech pathology major, said she wants to watch “Lost” because it doesn’t have sexual overtones like “Big Brother” and “Temptation Island.”

“It sounds like a real reality TV show instead of a contrived TV show,” Stanberry said. “It’s more like the Discovery Channel than the pornography channel.”

Laura McFarland
l.d.mcfarland@student.tcu.edu