Reality Shows

Reality shows had become a huge success in our society, we have a great variety of them, and we can choose which one we want to see according to our age, or in which one of those realities we feel more connected. Seeing the huge impact that this new way of doing television has in me and the society I decided to focus my research on this topic. Before I started my research, I was thinking that this might not be easy to investigate, because some people might think this could be a superficial topic, but as I’m investigating, I have notice that besides me, there is a lot of people out there, trying to figure out why this type of television became a millionaire company and affecting so many people around the world.

I don’t see that many reality shows, so I decided for the beginning of my research, to see different TV shows, for different ages and diverse content. I took some notes of the difference between them, and what it might be the main focus on each TV show.

After spending a couple hours watching the TV and watching old episodes on Netflix, I went to the library and I was able to fin this book called “How real is reality TV: essays on representation and truth” by Escoffery, David S., and he is saying on his book, that our society is attracted today to see this shows, because they are constructed in a specific way to catch the attention of the viewer, from economic, personal and political issues, the difference is, that they tend to over exaggerate this issues, to make people interested on this.

When I was doing the research, luckily in my Intro to Communication class, the topic was reality shows, and why they are so famous in teenagers and contemporary adults, I started to take notes to the answers that other students were giving, and one of the answers catch my attention, because the student said, the reason why she watch the reality show is because, if she is feeling that she is having too many troubles and she is getting depressed and not feeling happy with her life, she will tune “Teen Mom” a popular reality show, and she will see that these teenagers that got pregnant are having, a worst life that what she does right now, so basically the reason why see this show is to feel better about her life.

I have a list, of what according to different websites, are the most famous reality shows right now on the TV, and I decided to go to Twitter and find out which one of these reality shows were having more followers, which one was trending topic the night the show was aired, and that type of information. It was amazing to see for me, how a reality show influence and impact on a huge way to our society, I was able to see people from different countries and languages, all interested on the same show. I was able to find out what was going on in the show without seeing the TV; they were giving all the information, posting comments and giving feedbacks of the episode.

I found another book, not at the UVU library, this was online and the name of the book is “Reality TV: remaking television culture” by Susan Murray and Laurie Oullette, they covered some interesting points in their book, they said it is almost impossible to turn on the television and not get across with some sort of reality programming, there are some channels that all their programs are reality shows, making of them a lucrative core. They addressed in their book more about the financial business, that this has become and it gave a comparison between the TV shows in the 1940s and now.

This topic, definitely is controversial, for some people to see a reality show has become more than just for fun, they quit doing other stuff to be able to watched the episodes, we have websites where you pay every month, that way you can see the episodes that you missed, people is buying what these celebrities are using in their reality show, so as we can see this new television is changing behaviors and attitudes in our society, that maybe didn’t happened before with another TV shows. For sure that is more information outside that I can still find and figure out, why reality shows are a huge phenomenon today.