Reality TV

Reality TV is a television genre where individuals interact, as their real selves, in situations believed to be dramatic enough to be entertaining, without a script.

In 2001, after noting that scholars find reality TV hard to define, George Bagley offered the following definition in the Journal of Film and Video:

‘‘As a presentation of non-actors in legitimately natural settings and situations working without a script, reality TV stakes its claim with viewers to regard its depictions as unadorned and spontaneous truthful documentation of natural reality’’.

Media commentator Kat Sweet, in Poptonic, agrees that Reality TV is hard to define, notes that most observers do not include traditional game shows, like Jeopardy!. She argued that, while the 1990s saw an explosion of reality TV shows, the very first show was Candid Camera, a show where the reaction of ordinary people was recorded by hidden cameras, while they were tricked by visual pranks.