by Simon Garth

Created on: September 02, 2008   Last Updated: January 04, 2009

Is Reality TV real? For the hard bitten TV executives of this world it is very much a reality, as they know that millions of us will tune in to follow the progress of reality stars such as Ruth Lorenzo and Diane Vickers as they battle it out for supremacy on the 'X-Factor'. The daddy of them all 'Big Brother' still proves enough of a draw to ensure that Channel 4 will commission future series, despite claims of falling ratings by the media. The hard facts are that there is a voracious demand for shows such as 'American Idol' and 'Dancing with the Stars', which means that in the dog eat dog world of TV Ratings wars, Reality TV shows tick a lot of the boxes important to Television producers.

For the rest of us, the answer is a definite no - the world of Reality TV is as far from a mirror of real life as the storey lines of your favourite lunch time Soap Opera. The reason for this is simple - people watch Reality Shows as they are entertaining, and in order to keep them that way, the programme makers pull out all the stops to ensure that they do not reflect the hum drum day to day experiences that are part and parcel of real life. If you think about it, if shows such as 'Big Brother' were true to life, all you would see would be people doing mundane things such as queuing for public transport, going to the toilet, walking dogs, washing dishes, staring vacantly into space and sitting around watching TV. Whilst there is nothing inherently wrong with these activities (lets face it, some of them are pretty necessary to exist!), they are in no way compelling enough to keep millions of viewers glued to the screen. Would you invest your time watching footage of a person brushing their teeth? The answer would presumably be no.

To get around this problem, Reality TV shows are in fact very heavily edited to inject that all important show biz magic. A typical episode of 'Big Brother' requires that hours of video footage is painstakingly doctored by editors for events and actions that can be crafted into a cohesive storey line that will appeal to the viewers. In 'The X-Factor' those seemingly spontaneous scenes of delight when the contestants pass an audition with the judges are likely to have been filmed and re-filmed many times to maximise its viewer appeal.

The reality of reality TV is that because of its mission to entertain, it is inherently unreal, making the phrase 'Reality TV' one of the biggest contradictions of terms in modern times.

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