by Sheridan Winn

Reality shows have us hooked. Why? Because anybody can become a star and everyone wants to be famous. We love the idea that an ordinary person can sing his way to superstardom, beating 999 other contestants on the way, and that we, the viewers, have the power of choice. We can’t get enough of “real” life. We like to drop in on someone else’s world and observe, from the safety of our own couch, how he reacts to problems. And we dream—that the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition team will come and transform our house and life. “It could be me,” we think.
Reality television’s inexpensive programming and huge audience figures have proven a highly lucrative combination for television networks and production companies. Some 35.5 million people sat down to watch the premiere of the fifth season of Fox’s American Idol on January 17, 2006. Television shows do not usually run for five go-rounds—but American Idol did, making it Fox’s second-largest audience ever for an entertainment show. “Idol was already the highest-priced show in television at a reported $600,000 for a 30-second commercial,” writes Bill Carter in the New York Times. That figure, he says, will increase next season as the result of the show’s performance.

Peter Liguori, president of Fox Entertainment, believes American Idol has a place in the nation’s cultural cycle. “You have an NFL season, a NASCAR season and now an Idol season,” he said to Carter.

The first American Idol winner, Kelly Clarkson, has become the biggest-selling recording artist around the world, executive producer Simon Fuller told Carter. “[The show] has become definitive,” he said.
Candid Camera was first up in the reality shows, way back in 1953. The “granddaddy of the reality genre,” as it has been called, played pranks on unsuspecting ordinary people. The first fly-on-the-wall reality documentary was PBS’s An American Family, broadcast in 1973, which showed a family going through a divorce. In 1991, the Jerry Springer Show aimed to get real-life drama within the talk-show format by putting together guests who stood a fair chance of fighting one another.

The reality game show really took off with Endemol’s Big Brother.
First broadcast in the Netherlands in 1999, it has now been shown in 31 countries. In the U.S., it has aired on CBS every summer since 2000.

The idea was simple, but inventive—and it feeds our voyeuristic inclinations. In this “real-life soap,” as Endemol calls it, a group of people is locked in a house away from the outside world. Every moment of their lives is recorded on camera as they perform a series of tasks that test their teamwork skills, tempers and spirit. One by one, contestants are voted out of the house by the viewers—or by the other houseguests, in the U.S. version. The last one in the house wins.
The challenge for reality show producers will be to keep the formats fresh. Striving for innovation, Endemol has teamed up with BT Group, the U.K.’s No. 1 telecommunications company, to provide tailor-made programs for the carrier’s impending Internet-over-television venture, to be launched autumn 2006, writes Parmy Olson in Forbes.com.
The future for reality shows may also lie in podcasts. One of the most downloaded podcasts in the U.S. provides the intimate details of an anonymous young London woman’s personal life, reports Ciar Byrne in The Independent (February 20, 2006). The university student’s innermost thoughts on men, sex, her parents and her obsession with her weight are produced by Faceless. The only person who knows her identity is DJ Bam Bam at Kiss FM. Every week, the girl calls a voicemail and updates her life; Bam Bam transcribes her message and puts it through a voice synthesizer. “It’s an addiction when it comes to learning about girls,” he told Byrne. “It’s got soap-operatic value and reality television value. I love the fact that it can’t be done on television.”
Sheridan Winn is a freelance business and lifestyle journalist based in the UK. Her insightful and entertaining features are published regularly in newspapers and journals on four continents.