0/5

The great Reality debate

TV critics take a for / against side on the volatile topic of Reality TV.

bbgkIs it entertaining and informative, or just a lot of rubbish?

Most of the time it’s somewhere in between, but Reality TV divides TV critics just as much as it doe audiences.

Fairfax scribes Melinda Houston and Bridget McManus were asked to take a for / against side for an article this week.

Here are some excerpts from a longer article you can read here:

Melinda Houston:

Reality TV is also a very broad church. At it’s most basic, it’s ordinary people put in extraordinary situations. Or, in the case of Dancing with the Stars or Ten’s new I’m A Celebrity…, semi-famous people wildly out of their comfort zone. From there, you can go just about anywhere. Sure, sometimes that’s a bad place. But the shows that are genuinely exploitative just don’t find an audience here.

Sometimes it’s an extraordinary place. Go Back to Where You Came From and last year’s beautiful Dream House successfully used the reality format to educate, entertain and move us, to shift stubborn prejudices and even, in a tiny way, make the world a better place. And there’s not much else on television you can say that about.

Bridget McManus:

It’s all promoted as harmless spectacle. “It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it is”, is a common defences and some go so far as to present their shows as altruistic endeavours – in 2013 for example The Biggest Loser Australia seconded the entire Victorian town of Ararat in an apparent effort to stem the obesity epidemic sweeping the country.

But while the success stories of The Biggest Loser, as but one example, are rightly championed, their glory is not without countless hours of footage of them at their worst, participating in often ridiculous stunts designed more for the ghoulishly gratuitous enjoyment of the audience than for their personal recovery and well-being. It is this mean spirit that beats at the heart of every reality show that seeks to separate the weak from the strong, which will always detract from what might otherwise be an interesting subject.

I take the view that the genre is absolutely about manipulation (of its subjects, of the audience) but it is also capable of brilliance and crap, like any other genre.

It’s also the most Diverse genre on television in terms of representation.

16 Responses

  1. I have never, ever watched ‘reality TV’. Even the promos used to put me off. Would I appear too smug if I stated that I feel a much better person for never having watched this stuff? I have absolutley no interest in television programmes for which the producers have made no effort to engage me and no effort to create something special to capture my imagination. Cheap, lazy TV programming that appeals only to the lowest common denominator can only end in disaster because something has to give eventually. As far as I’m concerned they’re all ‘Excess Baggage’ and look at what happened to that, thank goodness!

  2. The problem we are currently experience is reality tv overload. Between 7:30pm and 9:00pm, up to six times a week, networks are flooding viewers with reality shows. Kudos to Ten who has at least made an effort to try a few new formats eg The Bachelor, Shark Tank, Gogglebox, I’m A Celeb. However, Seven and Nine have gotten lazy. 2 series of The Block a year is wayyyy too much especially when they use contestants from past series. MKR in 2014 seemed to drag on and on.

    The most disappointing part of the reality take over is the death of Australian dramas. Secrets & Lies, Puberty Blues and Party Tricks were all high quality shows but were lost amongst the reality abyss. Also locally produced half hour comedies which were huge in the 70s and 80s have died on commercial networks.

  3. Hate to say it but love it or hate it reality isn’t going anywhere. People tune in for it. The genre will always be strong. It started with Popstars and went onto Idol and Big Brother to Dancing and Talent shows and now we’re onto the cooking and renovation phase with Masterchef, MKR, The Block and House Rules. Its ever changing but people still watch it. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. People go on and on about get rid of it but the fact remains, it brings in the eyeballs and why that happens its here to stay. There are some very bad ones though that have come through but its like everything take the good with the bad.

  4. Most of the reality shows here appeal to the lowest common denominator, so no their not great. A lot of them are just plain boring, repetitive and uneventful. People watch them because not much else is on except for more reality shows on the other channels. Networks won’t show much drama instead because its much more cheaper to bring in these tacky mindless programs. What a waste of airtime.

  5. A man living next to a railway track notices, in the distance, two trains coming towards him from opposite directions on the same track. He grabs his mobile ‘phone and rushes outside to get better reception. His fingers frantically pushing the buttons. The ‘phones camera starts recording…. Train wreck TV, there a bit of voyeurism in all of us but it wears off as we get older. Then we watch Q & A!

  6. The fact is networks want it cause they can hook viewers for many nights a week and when you take into account income in can generate from sponsors and on screen placement, it is not overly expensive to produce compared to expensive and risky drama. Very very sad!!!

  7. I am personally over the whole reality thing i took a glimps at it when it debuted on TV here more than a decade ago but no am sick of it. 1stly because its not really reality anymore its more like a game show just to keep it fresh which shows how unsustainable reality is also they overload it with so many nights and repeats during weekends on multi-channels that i get sick of it. Give me Live Sport the best reality of them all and Drama or comedy, that will suit me fine.

  8. I think the issue is the lack of variety across primetime on the big three networks. We have so much reality and not enough scripted content. These reality shows are stripped throughout the week, leaving little time for anything else, and then the networks will air two series per year in some cases! It’s oversaturation of the genre.

  9. There is nothing great about reality tv! What is great is how the FTA & Foxtel fill the airwaves and cables so full with it, that eventually it will drive people to either download or stream illegaly only to give the viewer some choice, or they will choose services like netflix or Hulu to get away from the oversupply of it ……

  10. I don’t think the mistake here on Australian TV is the reality genre its how much we have it shoved down our throats until we are sick of it. Now if the block or mkr or house rules were on once a week maybe twice a week I think everyone could comfortably accept that. But now its a case of too much of a good thing…

  11. The block used to be one night a week now its two series a year 6 nights a week. The biggest loser in the US is one episode a week, here its 4-5 nights a week. MKR sometimes airs two hours an episode 5 nights a week. Am I supposed to wait till 9.37ish or later to watch a drama that probably aired 5 months or more ago overseas. The commercial networks want to ram reality down our throats and most of it is just rubbish. Most of what the commercial networks aired the last 6 months or so was rubbish because some refused to fast track. Have gotten used to having the tv turned off and finding other things to do. Nothing much is compelling me to return. The more reality aired the more will switch off.

  12. Now, I probably sit on the side of reality fan. There’s something about watching people interacting with one another and the situations they are put in. This being said I feel like it is going downhill from where it began. Remember when Big Brother was about people interacting and not seeing how many “tasks” they can make the contestants do, or when The Block was more about renovating and not about the “challenges”? I’m all for reinventing the genre and making it relevant for the viewer, but producers need to remember that the audience is not dumb. We actually can follow what’s happening, please stop recapping what happens before the ads once we come back. What should to be done? Treat the audience as though they are smart, we are. If something has outlived it’s welcome, I’m thinking The Biggest Loser, perhaps it’s time to look at a replacement. Make the show about people, not…

  13. Is it entertaining and informative, or just a lot of rubbish? Yes its just a pile of rubbish David, too few television frequencies, too much reality effluvia

Leave a Reply