Ways in Which Reality Television Has Changed

I was a huge fan of reality television. I am not ashamed to admit it. In 2000 when skeptics were saying that reality television was the death of modern television as we know it, I stood by it. When pundits suggested 2 years later that reality television was on death's door, and the genre was facing a long road ahead, I continued to watch the shows. Reality television was different from regular television, and I loved it for that. It held surprises that scripted television could not duplicate, and gave us a rather boring peek into regular lives that regular programming could not do.

The professionalism of regular television was the real dying genre, I felt. Scripted television had become stale and boring, and it took reality television to reinvigorate the medium. In fact I would have gone as far to suggest that reality television was so popular in due to the failure of regular television to attract viewers. Such arguments are always used to support new genre, and in mind there was little, if any reason why it shouldn't be any different with reality television.

But reality television had become a victim of its own success. It was always mean and cruel, and brought out the worst in its contestants, and we had always known that. In theory, reality television had always been with it, but it was the advent of American Gladiators, court television programs, and Professional Wrestling that set the stage for what was to become reality television. In theory, all of those shows had a mean streak that was to be the future basis of all reality television.