WP1 Rough Draft

      Reality television can be a deceiving thing. Viewers of reality TV shows such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo or The Real World watch them simply because they want to know how these peoples’ crazy lives work. Who wouldn’t want to watch a loud family of rednecks living in Georgia or a group of young adults drunkenly fight with one another in an expensive resort style house? The truth of it is, there isn’t much truth behind reality television at all. The producers of these shows tend to have much more control than some like, causing controversy amongst the viewers as well as the cast members themselves. The main stakeholders that are involved in this issue would be the producers, the viewers, and the cast members. Each one of these groups of people is affected by this idea that there’s really too much scripted text behind a reality television show. 

      Those who consider the producers to have too much power in their hands all tend to make at least one solid argument; rigging the outcome of a reality television show is manipulative and unfair. The cast members as well as the audience of the show are both directly affected by this statement. Take the show X Factor, a singing competition show that allows hopeful contestants to sing their way to an expensive recording contract. Every week, the audience votes for who they want to stay on the show and the singer with the least amount of votes is kicked off. Many faithful viewers of the show may like to think that the bright future of their favorite competitor is in their own hands, but that’s not exactly the case. Lorna Simpson, a competitor for the show’s tenth season over in the UK, revealed that the show automatically chooses a winner from the start. Simpson stated after being eliminated from the show, “It’s unfair. X Factor set me up to go out in the first week. They underplayed me… it was set up. They know the outcome of the whole competition. It’s prepared. It’s TV and they have to be ahead.” This goes to show that most competition shows, those including American Idol and The Voice. But singing competition shows aren’t the only ones. On the eighth season of The Bachelorette, Bachelorette Emily Maynard had recently lost her racecar driver fiancé to a plane crash when she was pregnant with his child. Sources state that one of the contestants, Arie Luyendyk Jr., was chosen to last so long in the season because he was a race car driver himself, claiming that the producers wanted that to upset Emily and get her to cry and create some drama on the show. Producers really have no concern with the contestants’ feelings; they just want their shows to get as many views as possible and to please their audience.

      On the other hand, a reality television show wouldn’t receive many views if it the producers never stepped in and forced action. If a reality television show were to film a cast with no interference for a week, the audience would most likely get bored and stop watching the show. Producers are the ones responsible for the story of the show and which way it is supposed to go. David Rupel states that people tend to expect a beginning, middle, and end, and producers have to step and cut footage to create a story if there isn’t one present (Rupel). In most cases, there isn’t a connecting story present in a few days worth of footage, so producers find it necessary to cut the footage in a way that tells a story or creates a problem that the cast now has to deal with. Producers also typically step in and confront the cast members when there’s no action or drama present amongst them, planting seeds in their minds and giving them the idea that something is going on when really, nothing is. But with this method, producers don’t need to be in there long before a full-fledged war breaks out amongst the cast members. Their job is simple; tell someone that their cast mate was giving them a funny look earlier and then step back to watch the sparks turn into a fire. Yet again, the cast members and contestants are the ones that are being affected by this, rather than the audience or the producers.

      When it boils down to the root of a reality television show, producers are in full control. The producers have too much of a say in a show for the show to actually be considered reality, but without that power that they have these shows we see on television today would not have been created or shown.