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Enagaging Ausiences With Reality Television

: Reality Television’s strategies for engaging the Audience

Reality Television was developed during the mid 1990‘s as a means to revitalize a world of jaded television viewers by adding new sensations of immediacy and agency to the television viewing audience. Some scholars have argued that reality television is popular because it is voyeuristic (McLean 2000). Others have argued that is popular because it is interactive—we decide the winners and the losers (Jones 2001).
Early documentaries such as Seven Up where a group of children were filmed every seven years, and Sylvania Waters which was a programme that documented the lives of a so called ―ordinary family‖ were the beginnings‘ of reality TV. Although these were known as ‗fly on the wall‘ programmes it wasn‘t until these were improved by going to more appealing and unusual locations, having willing participants who were more glamorous, adventurous and sexy, that eventually lead to the makings ‗Reality TV‘.
During the mid 1990‘s there were televisions shows that involved the surveillance of ‗real‘ people, which started to emerge. One of the first of these was an MTV show called The Real World, in which seven young adults lived together in a house for a few months while being filmed on a daily basis. From this a spin-off programme called Road Rules was introduced to audiences, again filming the everyday lives of young adults while travelling around America in a bus. Also during the 1990s Australian commercial networks started introducing programmes such as Real Life, which emphasized human interest and hidden camera stories. Television designed largely for entertainment steadily co-opted the claim of news and current affairs programmes to show ‗real life‘. American programmes like Cops and 911 followed police and other emergency workers on their daily rounds, and other reality shows, including ones set in hospitals, appeared. This in turn led to shows such as Survivor and Big Brother, which by all accounts...