Week Twelve - Filip

I thought the texts for this week were particularly informative :)


How have game shows influenced reality TV?

As a product of major hybridization, reality TV and game shows alike ‘include interaction between non-professional actors and celebrities, although increasingly non-professional actors are often treated as celebrities in their own right in such programmes.’ (Hill, 2005, p. 21)
This gave rise to the hugely popular ‘reality gameshow’ genre, including shows like Survivor and Big Brother, filled with challenges and prizes supplemented with interaction between celebrities, contestants and home audiences.

Following further hybridization into ‘life experiment programmes’ like Wife Swap,Take My Mother-in-law and Holiday Showdown, Reality programming is now generally broken down to:

-Infotainment (Tabloid TV) [Mythbusters, Animal Planet]
-Docu-Soap (Observational personal adventure drama) [Deadlist Catch, Storm Chasers]
-Lifestyle (Life experiment programmes/Professional help journal series) [Supernanny, Wife Swap]
-Reality Gameshow (Weekly elimination challenge series) [Survivor, Big Brother]



Why is reality TV so popular for both programme makers and TV viewers?
Drawing on its influence from gameshows; ‘two reasons: it is ‘cheap and easy to produce’ and is ‘extremely exportable’. (Hill, 2005, p. 22)
Because of the nature of reality TV (mostly observational, with a formula put in place for challenges), there wasn’t much need to spend money on hiring a writing staff as a Soap Opera would need.
These shows ‘were successful in the 1990’s and early 2000’s because they drew on existing popular genres, such as soap opera or game shows, to create hybrid programmes.’ (Hill, 2005, p. 39)




References:
Hill, A. (2005) The Rise of reality TV. In A. Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. (pp. 15 – 40). Oxon: Routledge