Reality television is a genre of television programming in which the fortunes of "real life" people, as opposed to actors or fictional characters, are followed. I must reveal that I am a Reality T.V. junkie and I watch and keep up with shows, such as The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Atlanta, and Orange County, along with Jersey Shore, Jerseylicious, and sappy makeover shows. I don’t necessarily sit and have time to watch television; however, when I do it’s usually reality t.v. There are several reasons that reality television has become part of popular culture today. The two that I will focus on are the concepts of money and instant fame. The first catalyst for reality television being popular today is money. Today’s shows offer huge sums of money to people who do not necessarily possess the career skills that would make them a productive enough member of society to amass such wealth through honest work. Simplified, dumb people get lots of cash. Now, some shows do in fact have, at least at first, a pseudo-intellectual premise. Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, for example, offered up to a million dollars to people answering a set of questions. The questions, however, differed from related shows in that they were usually trivia oriented. Also, the audience was involved, as well as calling a friend and so on, which added to the drama aspect. The lighting, music, and editing all were contrived to produce the maximum possible suspense surrounding. The promise of money and the vicarious joy at someone winning lots of money, or more commonly spectacularly losing said money, is what draws millions of viewers.
The second reason I believe reality television has become popular today is that of instant fame. Reality television takes ordinary people, sets them up in extraordinary situations on a world stage with other similarly commonplace individuals, and makes them the focus of a nation’s attention on, for example, an hour every Tuesday. Obviously the majority of the population has no chance of ever being picked as a participant for the show itself, but again the concept of vicarious living kicks in and the audience is hooked. The members of the show are satisfactorily every-day individuals for fans to willfully suspend their disbelief. That’s what keeps thousands of twenty year olds auditioning every year for a chance to participate in MTV’s The Real World, which offers no monetary reward. The message of reality television is that ordinary people can become so important that millions will watch them. The secret thrill of many of those viewers is the thought that perhaps next time, the new celebrity might be them.
