Sye Johnson Week 11 - 12: Reality TV.

How does Hill define reality TV?  Describe his definitions in the context of a contemporary Reality TV show.

The evolution of the reality TV genre over time makes it difficult to give an exact definition as noted by Hill "the treatment of 'reality' in reality programming has changed as the genre developed over the past decade" (2005).  however several elements have remained consistent.  The use of non-professional actors as the major 'talent', surveillance footage styled as 'fly on the wall' and the notion that the audience are seeing events as they unfold on the camera are frequently used conventions within the genre of reality TV.

According to Hill the television industry "often cannibalises itself, feeding off successful genres and formats in order to create new hybrid programmes" (2005).  Through the combination of the Soap Opera genre (e.g. Days of Our Lives) with the Observational Documentary genre (e.g. Cops) came the creation of the Doco-Soap genre which created shows like Bondi Beach and Rescue 1.  This implies that the genre of 'Reality TV' there are multiple sub-genres another being the Game Show genre.

The United States of America is one of the largest producers of game show television.  Shows like Survivor, American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance have run for multiple seasons, each of those examples having run into the double digits in season quantity.  These shows are further examples of a new genre created by cannibalising others.  "Taking the 'raw' ingredients of on-scene emergency services reality TV and processing them into more 'cooked' reality formats" (Hill. 2005).

Survivor is an excellent example of this, as one of the longest running reality TV series it has grown and changed with the industry.  Initially it started as a game show in which two teams or 'tribes' compete to win immunity and the losers vote out a member until they were left with the 'sole survivor' who would win one million dollars.  This version focused heavily on the human psychology of surviving in a stressful environment with strangers over the sensationalised drama that arose.  However over time the show began to include twists like tribe swaps and immunity idols for an individual to increase the tension and drama.  This has taken the show from a more realistic look at a survival game show into a over-dramatized soap opera game show.

"There is no one definition of reality programming, but many, competing definitions of what has come to be called the reality genre". (Hill. 2005).  Through the growth of the television industry and audiences the definition of any genre, not just reality TV, has become difficult to accurately describe.  Reality TV does have a few element that are consistently utilised, the use of 'real' people in lieu of actors and the use of surveillance footage are mainstays of the genre and are found in most shows ranging from the game shows to the doco-soaps.

References:

Hill, A. (2005) The reality genre. In A. Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and popular factual television. (pp. 14-40). Oxon: Routledge.