You call this REALITY?

I used to love watching tv shows when I got home from school. My computer skills have jumped 10x what they used to be in the last 5 years, mostly due to the fact that television has gone to the dogs.

First off, there are one actual reality show that I will truly call "Reality TV"

**COPS**

The only editing in that show is to take out the nudity, swear words, and boring parts of just driving around doing nothing, or stopping for gas.

THAT'S real life, not this hack-crap that is pushed on us every day by MTV, FOX, ABC, CBS, etc.

Here is a good example:

Parental control.

If anyone here can tell me that this show is not scripted, including the answers, conversations, and parent/boyfriend/girlfriend arguments while the significant other is on a date, then I'll give you all the money in my pocket right now. (Coincidently, that is about 3 cents, which is what they are all worth)

Every day I see this overly-scripted so-called "reality" tv shows that cram our lineups with useless S***.

I have all but given up on television altogether. The only reason I wish to watch tv is to see Married with Children re-runs, simpsons, and Robot chicken. Oh, and spongebob, you're never too old for spongebob.

I remember when MTV used to be actual Music videos!! Is it really that sad that i'm only 27? And if someone doesn't take "My super sweet 16" off the air and give those b****** a good smack across the cheek and a job, then i'm gonna be up in a tower waiting for them with a rifle. (metaphorically..don't go calling the cops )

I am so sick of all of these stupid shows, just as my movie thread says, copying each other. They don't even get original anymore, it's all just following someone around a scripted event while those shows who do have actual things going on, edit the shows to make those on seem like jerks they are really not. The real life is no longer real, it's all edited to make people constantly fight, screw each other, and get drunk. Can you think of anything else they do?

I hate television now, and there are more commercials than anything, which, as much as I hate them, are dead equal in annoyance.

You have to understand.

The real problem with TV is not the content, or "product."

That product is merely the product of an underlying, root illness. It is the decaying demographic that is dragging TV down. Your 27, and your not telling me anything I couldn't tell you much more clearly than you could hear it.

I'm nearly a decade-and-a-half older than you. When I was a kid, there were three networks. Three. And that was on cable. Some people with rabbit-ears only got one or two. After the 10 o'clock news, the whole nation was going to watch The Tonight Show with Johny Carson. ABC ran the __(day of the week)__ Night Movie, and CBS ran "bowling for dollars" or something. PBS was only on about 30 hours a week, and would show you footage of waterbuffaloes or something.

See, EVERYBODY watched, and watched the same thing. Until about 1980, the whole nation watched the same show on TV every night. Even if you personally thought it was crap, you still watched, so you could hold a knowing (if not intelligent) conversation about Whether Fonzie was banging Mrs. C. or whatever. You knew who was on the Carol Burnett show, because if you missed it, the kids at school would tell you. Subversive content meant having Frank Zappa do a guest appearance on the Muppet Show, or watching the Muppets host saturday night live, with alien muppets "doing a crater"--- getting high off the vapors oozing from some crater on one of the moons of megwarp. seriously, dude. Land of Gortch



Anyways. After about 1986, the market fragmented. Which meant that, even if you had the Super Bowl rights for your network, you were not gonna get more than about a fourth of all viewers. Which meant that no single show could brag about "being watched by america" any more. And since fewer people were watching, the shows didn't bring in as much advertizing money----and thus needed to be CHEAP.

And that's reality TV. Filming a bumfight or asking crazy tom what he thinks about being in love. It's still cheaper than elaborate sets and scripts.

To the point where now, the only people watching TV fall into the following categories:

- Invalids.
Cancer patients, nursing mommies. Most of these people cannot remember having watched a commercial two minutes after it aired, much less get in a car and go buy something.

-Children
Kids too young to get on the internet. Their only ability is to tell mom which brand of peanut butter to buy

- Meth Addicts.
Since you cannot sell cigarettes on TV, this is not exactly an ideal audience.

-People who are waiting on a family member.
They may be headed to school, work, or church, but they have to wait for a loved one to find their earings or nicer shoes. This demographic is hardly enthusiastic about what they are watching, and will compulsively change channels every 15 seconds, and cuss the TV while they do it.

-Immigrants
These people are saving money on language tapes, and trying to teach themselves English by watching TV. But they don't understand anything but slapstick

-People without internet access.
Do you think these people are big spenders?

- People in waiting rooms and airport bars.
This demographic consists entirely of people who are more or less being forced to watch television against their will. Includes prison inmates and relatives of hospital patients, which represent subcategories. That's why there's so many lawyer ads, btw.


Now, imagine that I'm a big-wheel advertizer. Convince me that I should advertize on your network, because of your demographic. What are you gonna show? Cops, or old ER episodes? Re-runs of Law & Order, or a home improvement reality TV-show about people fixing each other's lawns? (BTW, I actually have a treatment for this program in development--- it's called "Lawn Order.")


all the best.

I completely agree.

However, one of my original points is that TV is no longer TV, it's more patronizing than anything. They think we are all stupid. All of the "REALITY" shows are scripts, and most of the good shows fall by the wayside because the fat-soccer moms who stay at home and have nothing to do after oprah, make these shows popular; mostly because the producers of said shows glamourize a life which isn't real, and these moms want.

It isn't real, yet it isn't fake. The line is blurred, this is my beef, not that the shows are complete crap.

Most of them are, but shows like The 4400, and The dead Zone, those are interesting ideas, original, and we know they are fake, but at least those scripts don't make us think it's real.

I would like to rant about this rant..

because sure that IS real life.. (COPS) ... but it's totally biased... 100% ... Those people are criminals.. despite what you hear about people being innocent until proven guilty.. if thats how they pursue innocent people I'd hate to see how they pursue criminals.. shiite...

What about a show called CRIMINALS ??? Never happen in this cow-boy society..

Reality? ... I'm almost positive that REAL-ITY is a NON-BIAS, Naturally Occurring phenomenon happening on a daily basis because fakeness wanted to take the day off.. Even fake things are REAL-ITY in this ODD place... odd eh?

I just can't see you equating the first popular reality tv show with REALITY and using the poor crap we watch today as an example for it being REAL..

Dude if I got a camera and decided to look for Smurfs and harassed a bunch of midgets that were painted blue, my audience would do the same thing the COPS audience does... (watch it) because its fun to see our fellow man get harassed for living his life his way and making his mistakes his way, to learn from.. or die from ..

Point well taken, however, my main gripe and link between the two shows would be that one is fake, one is real. However biased one may be over the other, the simple fact of the matter is, cops is not scripted, they do not walk up to a person who has committed domestic violence, and say, "hey what are you doing boy?", to which some other obviously fake reply would follow.

Have you ever watched a show like parental control? It is OOZING with fake scripts, yet it is peddled to us as reality.


That is my point. Not that one is necessarily better the other, merely that one is real, however bias, and the other is not. Do they really think we are that stupid?

Originally posted by Kingalbrect79

the simple fact of the matter is, cops is not scripted,

merely that one is real, however bias, and the other is not.

Depends on what you mean by a "script." No, the dialogue definitely ISN'T planned. But the situations sure are. Every officer, and every department that allows cops to film, is carefully "playing to the cameras." They have their lead dispatch, their lead cops etc.

I know what you mean; it is impromptu, and they don't control the reactions of the trailer-dwellers they deal with. But ehy certainly PLAN FOR IT.

That said, my favorite episode was about 10 years ago, from the Fort Worth PD. They were riding with a cop that night, and he degraded a dispatcher, on the air. The rest of the show was of him being dispatched to every 10-16 (unattended dogs fighting) the dispatcher could find in Fort Worth on a Friday night. Now personally, the cops I worked with found that hilarious! But not the gripping TV the producers had in minds.

A lot of shows, like they archetypal "MTV Real World" wasn't scripted, but the cast has said they were told HOW to react and "create drama" for the lens. The people who are good at that, like Puck or Vanilla Ice, get invited to return. There was a chick from New Orleans who made a D-list career out of playing a drunken slut on various reality shows. Is that real? Others have charged that the cameras implied people having sex when they didn't, etc.

The whole genre is just stock footage of "stupid human tricks" playing over and over, with different characters every time.

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The whole genre is just stock footage of "stupid human tricks" playing over and over, with different characters every time.

Isn't that the truth....
:w:

Reality shows are some of the most "not real" shows on tv. I have a good friend who is an agent with a big talent agency and he has several clients who are on or have been on reality shows. Many more have tried out for shows. His clients have been told to "gay it up" for things like queer eye and the "contestants" on the shows are steered toward situations and conversations.

It's truly odd that reality tv is put on tv at all. Most people watch tv, read books, see movies etc to escape reality. (non-fiction and documentaries notwithstanding). If reality was exciting, we'd be living our lives instead of denting our couches.

I watched, for the first and last time, American Idol last week. Perhaps it's just me but the show seems staged. For starters, every single person I saw that made it to the next round was not ugly. They weren't all good looking but they weren't horrific. The three judges were much nicer to these people, the minute they entered the room. They were truly obnoxious to the "ugly" people the minute they entered the room. It actually looked like the nasty comments were edited into the show.

Also, the premise seemed to be that contest 1 walks into the room, sings and either gets an invite to round 2 or is ridiculed and told to find a new hobby.

then, at the end of the show, they have clips of all the "losers" singing a different song on what appears to be another stage. The end result looked like they recorded these people singing one song, figured they were worthy of the mock and ridicule routine and then had them sing for the judges. In other words, totally staged.

Well, you have some good points, however, idol is too funny, even if it is setup, mostly because the people that audition are still real, and they honestly think they can sing. However, they suck to the Nth degree.

If reality was exciting, we'd be living our lives instead of denting our couches.

A truer statement could not have been made.
When it comes to television, you're right, it's entertainment, I just have major issues with the SO obviously fake that I'm ready to puke.