Who Needs Reality?

I have a degree in Mass Media Communications, often, things that relate to other media are on my mind. I majored in production and I learned a lot about how things are put together before they go out over the air. Most of my real world experience has come from the time that I spent in local broadcast TV.

Since the TV writer's strike of 07 and several month after the strike of 2011, I've noticed that Reality TV is continuing to proliferate. Cable networks are coming onto the air with lineups that feature nothing but reality TV shows. And, some networks that once featured some of the most informative and information filled programming such as TLC which used to be The Learning Channel and Court TV, which became TruTV, now show reality based programming almost exclusively.

I'm not a snob or a TV critic, but the deepening of the reality TV rut is a little more than disappointing. While it is true that watching fewer hours of television is preferred, what do you do when you have free time and none of your 200 channels is showing very much that's entertaining.

I talked about reality before in another post when I was discussing the lack of videos on MTV. Speaking of, it was MTV's The Real World that started the current state of affairs.
The show was supposed to be a take off on the soap opera format, but when there was very little budget it was decided to use real people instead of actors, directors, or scripts. The shows success lead to a variety of spinoffs including, Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race, and while you wouldn't think of it as being one, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The latter is classified as a game show, but if you look a little closer you'll see why I include it.

The list of shows goes on, but I don't really want to name them all. There are just too many. The networks used to employ quality writing, expert direction, and superb acting to get people to watch their programming. But, with increased competition from cable, they've given up and resorted to whatever will get viewers' attention. And, reality fits the bill. There's low production cost because there are no actors, directors, or scripts. But where is the entertainment value in what is turning out to be nothing more than a lot of conflict and bad language?

Maybe what's needed is a redefining of what is considered to be entertainment with regard to TV programming. I think that it's a little more than troubling when reality shows resort to using celebrities to get people to watch. What does that tell you? Where is the reality in that? Where is the reality in a show that has to resort to staging events because the actual lives being filmed become boring at times? That sounds more like unreality to me. And if that's supposed to be real, then, who needs reality?