The Positive And Negative Aspects Of Reality Television : Life-Learning Shows

The evolution of television content is currently steadily moving towards reality television shows. The shift from interest in fiction drama series to reality shows has turned the regular television viewers into addicted voyeurs. There have been diverse views on the effect of reality television shows ranging from support to criticism. George Will, in his article “Reality television: oxymoron” believes that reality television is making ordinary people degenerate morally and act stupid in the effort to please a disinterested audience. Reality TV shows are relying heavily on building extraordinary characters or events out of the norm and attract the attention of the audience. Kellner argues that the audience is enticed by “media constructs

In the study by the Girl Scouts Institute over 1000 girls ages 11-17 said that they regularly watched reality TV and “accept and expect a higher level of drama, aggression, and bullying in their own lives as well” compared to girls who didn’t watch

The reality TV fad that is not going anywhere anytime soon, no matter how much some of us wish it had never started. As seen through the functionalist, conflict, and interactionist perspectives, reality TV has become an integral part of society.

"Reality TV is set up to make people entertaining. A good person with values and principles is not good television" a quote by Ronda Rousey a mixed martial arts artist. Many people believe or want to believe that reality tv is true, but many other people avoid it for the fact that it is obviously fake. I personally don't watch reality tv but for the sake of this essay, I watched a few episodes of many television series to see and determine what I think about them. The point of this essay is to prove how fake reality tv is and I have succeeded in accomplishing that. Most of the reality shows have the camera crew all up in people's business or "secret" cameras placed in which people don’t know about them yet keep

Some of the most popular television shows in today’s society are The Biggest Looser, Jersey Shore, and Big Brother. These programs and many others are classified as reality television. Reality television’s main purpose is to attempt to portray ordinary people in unscripted situations. Recently, however, many of these shows have achieved in creating the complete opposite, and have earned an immense amount of criticism as a result. Reality television programs are detrimental to society because they influence bad behavior among teenagers, do not produce authentic real life situations, and they humiliate many of the characters.

Television is one of the most accessible sources available to citizens. And with reality T.V, it changed the television industry forever. In today 's society, Reality Television plays an important role in people 's everyday lives. Jeremy W. Peters, the author of “When Reality TV Gets Too Real” argued that there should be a limit for how far an reality T.V should go. While James Poniewozik the author of “Why Reality TV Is Good for Us” said that reality T.V was the best thing to happen to television. Some might say television is bad for the society, and some might disagree with that, but reality T.V has proven to be the best thing that ever happened to television.

In the media, reality TV stars like Snooki and Kim Kardashian are on the rise. Most channels on television have at least one reality show, from following housewives to remodeling homes of real life families. However, there are some reality programs that display bad examples, especially for young audiences that are keeping up with each episode. On MTV people see girls being drunk in public, addicts doing drugs, and young girls raising babies at young ages; these are situations seen on reality TV shows. Jeremy W. Peters’ “When Reality TV Gets Too Real” and James Poniewozik’s “Why Reality TV is Good for us” inform readers about what the general public can view on television and how it affects the minds of children. Reality TV shows such as

Today while watching a movie or television show on cable, there were four to five minute breaks of commercials. Most of these commercials consisted of new reality shows. If they were not new, then it was the dates for when they old shows would make a comeback and start another season. Reality television has been in our lives since the 1940s. Although, the shows that were on years ago were much less vulgar than they seem to be now. It appears reality television continues to go down the wrong road. It is seen in many popular reality shows where the characters are almost getting praised for the bad behavior that they show on camera. This is important to know because it is has become a very popular thing for many people to watch, especially young teens. This gives the people in the shows the opportunity to be a role model for teens who might be looking elsewhere other than parents or peers for someone to look up to. It has also been shown that more teens would be interested in signing up to be on a reality show for the chance to gain fame by just about living their life. Reality television has done more harm than good to our society. For the most part, the shows today are showing more things that effects our teens in a more negative way. This left me with the question on does reality television really affect us? There are positives and negative effects on its viewers as well as the effect is has had on the culture of today’s society.

In the past 15 years, the world of television has gone from having its first reality TV show to now having over 300. Although reality television was meant to make TV more like regular life, it is actually wreaking havoc on today’s society perception of real life by wrongly combining entertainment material with “real” life. In Brave New World people in the society go to watch “feelies”, a type of movie/television show unaware that the feelies purpose is to alter the citizens version of reality. Reality Television has several advantages and positive effects on today's society especially that it can give people a more relatable entertainment.

Reality TV is known as exciting entertainment because the audience never knew what will happen next as it is with no strings attached and even have the freedom of speech. Despite the entertainment it can bring, the content of reality shows are actually degrading the society. Our pop culture and civilization have been affected by the reality programs in a bad way. Indeed, reality TV is promoting bad social value to the

Since the debut of radio shows in the early Twentieth Century, broadcast entertainment has completely reshaped American culture as it is known today. Many of these radio shows, comedic and dramatic alike, transitioned into television programs as the new broadcasting format gained immense popularity after World War II. Among these shows are very few that can be acknowledged as the first examples of reality television, a genre that modern Americans find to be ubiquitous today. Reality television can be defined as a cast of real people being continuously filmed to document their reactions to whatever situation production may put them in. What makes reality television unique is that unlike documentaries, the programs seek to

For close to a decade, the ethics behind the existence of reality TV have been questioned. While there are ardent viewers of reality TV, researchers and other scholars disapprove them, and claim that the world would have been in a better place. Reality TV shows, especially in America, are extremely profitable to media owners, and this has increased their popularity in the recent years. The main target audience for these shows are teenagers and women, who spend a lot of time discussing about them, even hours after the shows. Most of the reality shows in America and other parts of the world have common ideas. The most fundamental aspect of most reality TV shows is that they display people who go through embarrassing, painful and humiliating ordeals. This is what the reality shows expect their audiences to be entertained, and presumably laugh at the situations the people go through. For this reason and many more, it has been found that they are more detrimental than entertaining to the society, and therefore, the world would be in a better place without them (Pozner 89-91).

The modern era of reality TV began decades ago. The introduction of the reality show Survivor to the world has immediately caught attention of audiences from all around the globe.Apart from the basic definition of television which is to entertain, inform and educate, reality telev sion has the power to rise a trend and its' ability to influence has caused it to become the target of commerical brands to offer sponsorship for adversiting purpose. It has also triggered the emergence of more reality shows ,from the good old classic shows like Survivor, The Real World, etc. to American Idol, Amazing race, X-factor, etc that we are watching nowadays. The viewers of reality television increases by leaps and bounds every year despite the fact that some of the reality shows burn out after few seasons .Hence,in this essay we will examine the enduring population of reality television and its causes and effects .

Today, people enjoy watching reality television; they typically get home after work and relax by watching these unpredictable, and often humorous, moments of reality television. From listening to the horrific singing on American Idol, to seeing who was voted off the island in Survivor, people enjoy some stress relieving humor after a long day of work. As stated in a study conducted by Zizi Papacharissi and Andrew L. Mendelson, “A survey administered to reality TV viewers revealed that the most salient motives for watching reality TV were habitual pass time and reality entertainment.” We can now acknowledge that the primary reason for watching reality television is for entertainment rather than for acquiring knowledge. Although, is it not possible to adopt some of the qualities of life portrayed by the “characters” of these shows by watching them regularly? For example, if shows like MTV’s The Real World are watched almost daily, then eventually the things seen on these shows may become normal to its viewers. Some of the activities that can be seen on The Real World include having one night stands, getting drunk, and getting high using illegal drugs. The types of scenes often depicted in these reality shows are etched in the mind of the viewer, and, although they are based on real moments in the lives of the people on the show, this type of behavior should be unacceptable to

There has been a huge increase in “reality” based television over the last few years. From Survivor to Big Brother it seems that we are constantly being bombarded with a new type of reality television program. But why do people watch these shows? What makes these shows so interesting? One theory brought up in an article in Psychology Today by Steven Reiss Ph.D. and James Wiltz, a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University, is that, “reality television allows Americans to fantasize about gaining status through automatic fame” (Reiss and Wiltz, 2001). This is the American dream, acquiring fame with little to no work at all. And what better way to do it than on television?