by Alyx Grayson

Created on: June 19, 2007   Last Updated: February 21, 2009

The trend towards reality television caters to short attention span of television viewers and the need to divert themselves. The ability to laugh at one's self has always been important. In old days, fools and jesters held an important place in the royal courts. Today we have situation comedies and reality television to make us laugh. If we look closely, we often see there's more than just laughter going on though. There's sadness, pain, regret and bitterness. The difference between situation comedy and reality television, however, is that the former features scripted characters while the second portrays real people in allegedly real scenarios whether they are crammed on top of each other in a small house or fighting for survival in the African wilderness. For many people, laughter and tears come from the same well. It's appropriate then, that these shows also come from the same well. They come from the television, a device designed to entertain and inform.

One would have to live, well, on a deserted island in the South China Sea, not to be swept up by the recent wave of reality television. Or so Beth Rowen wrote in her History of Reality TV article. Reality television, however manic now, is not a new phenomenon. As early as fifty years ago with Allen Funt's Candid Camera and as recent as the PBS documentary An American Family airing in 1973, reality television has crept into the interest of the worldwide viewing public. (Rowen, 1.)

But what is reality television? It's a genre of television programming in which the fortunes of 'real life' people are followed. Given the way producers manipulate what is actually broadcast, and that they can control the format of the show, it is questionable how 'real' reality television actually is.

There are two main types of reality television program - in the first, the viewer and the camera are passive observers following people going about their daily personal and professional activities. In the second, the so-called 'reality game shows', participants are filmed intensively in an enclosed environment while competing to win a prize. In these game shows the viewing public usually (but not always) play an active role in deciding the outcome, by eliminating participants or voting for the most popular choice to win. Two of the most popular reality-based game shows are Big Brother and Survivor.

In a world where advertisers rely on ratings and the network executives value ratings over quality, there is a plethora of the so-called reality

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