By Rosemary Easton
Warwick & Stanthorpe Today is featuring contributions from the Rose City Writers Group – this week ROSEMARY EASTON has three pieces to share…
HOW REAL IS REALITY TELEVISION?
Reality television currently floods our free to air channels. New and additional shows relating to cooking, extreme sport, dating and ridiculous “fun” are regularly presented to draw in viewers with their bright and bubbly commercials.
This genre of TV is far from reality as it extends its tendrils into more and more ridiculous situations. Promotions for these shows display screaming contestants, canned laughter, extreme melodramas, impossible and dangerous challenges, tears, temper tantrums and similar, designed to hook viewers.
Some contestants are perceived as “evil”, bullying, sarcastic, rude, discourteous, tactless individuals venting their spleen on perceived “good” rivals. The shows have too many contestants vying for success and drawing out the length of a series, taking time slots that could be used for more interesting and stimulating content.
Reality TV draws in around fifty percent of the viewing audience and as a result the shows are peppered with multiple advertisements, interspersed with rather short snippets of the actual presentations. Rarely do these programs run to advertised time, running overtime, distressing people who record shows or await the next one, forcing them to be subjected to the reality situation, perhaps with the intent of sparking their interest.
The shows are scripted and edited with producers encouraged to depict conflict, urging contestants on to be more and more controversial. The time frame of the actual scenario is for one hour whereas the whole show is filmed over days, weeks or even months. Ridiculously the judges push the anticipation with the need to hurry as time is running out. All false. Talent is not required, and some scenarios would not be acceptable in normal society.
Shows depicting romance, dating, partnerships and similar are suggestive in some content and place contestants in unreal predicaments pushing them into difficult situations and even dangerous scenarios. Depression, extreme disappointment and false declaration have been suffered by participants. Maybe some viewers are influenced by this and their expectations may lead to unreal and impossible relationships.
Qualified judges have some role in decision making, but not all input in selecting competition winners. Team judgement and phone votes decide winners who maybe more popular than skilled.
Reality shows appear to be growing in numbers so apparently appeal to many. Psychologist have joined the debate giving positive reasons for their popularity. Statistics, however, are showing a decline in viewer numbers.
It is time for programmers to review their reality content and begin to balance shows by offering wider viewing genres to attract a larger audience. Good news, real skill activities, pleasing role models, positive outcomes, feel good movies and well scripted series would be popular and attract the sort-after advertisers and raise the standard of television viewing showing normality, real people and depict common courtesy and respect.
Viewer must move to change the flood of reality shows by making their voices heard. Silent, suffering fans deserve better treatment.
Turn off or change channels from reality shows to get the message to management. Fewer viewer will discourage advertisers, the source of revenue will decrease, and the television industry will be forced to include balanced, alternative genres to the general populous.
*This article is from 26 October 2020 and is being digitised so our readers have access to our full catalogue.
