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based television show. The appeal of these shows has existed for almost as long as the medium of television itself, but what is the appeal now? Fame and money, of course.

This trend continued into the late 1990s with the surge of such reality television programming as Survivor, Fear Factor and Big Brother. Participants in these shows are put into pressure boiler situations in remote locations, a small house or in the case of Fear Factor, perhaps a coffin with lots of rats swarming over them.

Viewers tuned in, whether out of a sense of voyeurism or curiosity while the contestants participated out of some need to exhibit themselves and net the one million dollar prize, such as in the case of Survivor. Seeing a contestant's name in the news or on a morning talk show has become a regular occurrence rather than a novelty. Contestants voted off of Survivor are often featured on CBS' Morning Show the following day and are privy to a plethora of other talk show experiences.

Mark Burnett, the executive producer of the CBS series Survivor insists that the show is "a glimpse of raw human reality" which sets out to "see who would mate, who would fight." (Sella, p. 53). Producers of like shows argue that their shows are human experiments. The Dutch Big Brother claims "less educated people see the soap opera [in the show] . . . people with more education see the social experiment, which is interesting even if nothing happens" (p. 102).

Testing the outer limits of what people can do in front of the cameras UPN's Blind Date for example follows young couples through their awkward blind date whereas ABC's Making the Band and WB's Pop Stars tagalong with a group of young men and women competing and training to be a part of boy and girl bands, respectively.

These shows were instant hits in the ratings and have spawned a dozen carbon copy situational type shows. This trend began in Europe and moved westward. However, these shows aren't always harmless. One contestant on the Swedish show "Operation: Robinson" killed himself one month after he was voted off the island. (Page, 4.) In the United States, networks attempt to employ strict methods of psychological screening to prevent consequences such as suicide. Recently, these methods were called into question when a contestant on Big Brother 3 took a knife to the throat of another contestant and threatened to cut her throat. (Moore, 1.) Big Brother 3 also seems to be suffering from a number of bad press releases, including the fact that

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