Reality Television Shows

Video technology had a large impact on how entertainment was distributed (through videocassettes) and exhibited (on a home VCR), but in production video has made its own market. Hollywood uses video now to record dailies to see how the film will turn out, but video as a medium is usually reserved for the documentaries, not for features. However, television as an industry has incorporated video into its structure. Video not only changed television from being a live medium, it also broke down the fourth wall by through its use of home videos as entertainment. Consumers for the first time could become the producers of entertainment.

The roots of reality television lie in the quiz shows of the 1950s. A hang on from radio production, quiz shows offered the spectacle of a person coming from the real world and entering television production. The contestant could win money and become a star without ever learning how to act. However, these shows were often fixed such as in the well known Herb Stempel and Charles Van Doren Twenty-One scandal that eventually lead to congressional hearings in 1959. These hearings proved to the world that the birth of reality television was clouded in falsehoods. However, congress may have been interested in making sure the television studio were not lying to the people, the public themselves did not take the matter so seriously as a majority of people still approved the quiz shows. (Stark p.106) The public was entertained and the truth seemed secondary.

Reality television also applies to the commercial sports industry that also stars non-actors. However, unlike the quiz shows, sports existed before television and video, but they would change with their invention. Similar to quiz show, the participants in the sports program had to be extraordinarily talented and any common person could not just be on television. In 1967, video changed the sports institution forever through Ampex’s release of the VR-3000 VTR. This VTR was the first color VTR that was portable and had capabilities of showing events in slow motion. Slow motion was first used that year to record a skiing competition in Colorado. Slow motion became instrumental in the display of sport over the television where good plays could be repeated and shown again at differing speeds and angles. Although sports offered instant gratification and a quick rise to success, the actors were not ordinary people.