Are Reality Shows Reality?

[George_F]

I get the feeling that they are scripted and produced more than most people seem to think. I think their first goal is to entertain people and keep the audience interested, and that the "winners" and "losers" on reality shows are reflection of that. I can't help but feel that the producers gives direction and manipulate the results based on what they think people want to see, or what will surprise them....

Anyone else get that feeling?

[gcutler]

I don't think they are scripted, but they are either edited to get the content they want or they manipulate the situation to get people to react a certain way. As early as "MTV's The Real World-NY" which was over 11 years ago, the people who appeared on the show had complaints how things were shown out of context. People or Things were planted into the situation to stir things up of things were not exciting enough. And MTV wasn't out to break ratings history. You add the pressure of wanting to be #1 in the ratings and things get even worse.

[DarrellP]

You gotta wonder because at the end of Joe-6-Pack-Millionaire when they were given the $million, there was like no emotion. Maybe they were in shock, but the reaction was so plain Jane vanilla, it got me wondering.

[Steve Mehs]

I follow Gcutler's line of thinking. They're not necessarily scripted but there's more to it then the viewers know. I don't care much for reality tv myself. But I'm sick of all these new shows popping up. The Batchlorette, Are You Hot and the countless number of others. I'd rather watch a good fiction series with some excitement then seeing people stoop to any level to come out with a cool million and a fancy car. Some of these shows can be paralleled to real life, but I don't care what an x amount of random people will do in a given situation and how the would react to different conflicts and such. Besides football and news, I watch tv to get away from reality, not to get more into it.

My $0.02

[raj2001]

Originally posted by DarrellP
You gotta wonder because at the end of Joe-6-Pack-Millionaire when they were given the $million, there was like no emotion. Maybe they were in shock, but the reaction was so plain Jane vanilla, it got me wondering.

I agree. I wouldn't be surprised if Evan was a paid actor, and that Joe Millionaire was a complete fake.

By the way, I hate this reality crap. We want real shows, not reality shows.

[Mike123abc]

I do not think it is scripted any more than events are picked out to be done. Things like ladies here is a closet full of dresses for you to choose from. Unrealistic situations are dreamed up, the people are pretty much artificially placed into them and then tons of cameras are rolling to catch every possible scene angle as they react unscripted. Then all the footage is edited down to show what they want to show. I would not be surprised if over an hour existed for every minute shown.

Plus tons of editing is probably done after they know the outcome. If for example he dumps someone, they go back and edit all the tapes they have of them to make them look like complete trailer trash, or if they do not think America would be happy with them being dumpped, they could go back and edit the same footage to make it much more flattering... She was just too nice and sweet for Joe at this time, maybe when she was out in the world more.