Voyeurism? - It's up to you (Has reality TV gone too far?)

Member Name: mikeb

Product:	Has reality TV gone too far?
Date:	11/02/01 (244 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining and interesting at their best.

Disadvantages: Can be boring and repetative.

Voyeurism in TV is really just the logical extension to the kind of people participation shows we have seen in recent years like Changing Rooms, Ground Force, Airport etc. In these shows it was a case of add a “star” name like Alan Titchmarsh or Carol Smilie and then let them loose with ordinary members of the public. Airport was more of a docusoap showing the working lives of people employed at an airport and their day to day involvement with members of the public. Although they didn’t start off as stars, some have developed a certain celebrity status, eg Jeremy Spake.

There now seems to be a progression towards taking just the members of the public and turning them into the stars of the show. A succession of these type of programmes including Big Brother, Shipwrecked and Castaway have been screened in the last couple of years and there seems to be little sign of the public losing interest in this sort of show. Temptation Island is currently showing on Sky, Shipwrecked has returned for a second series and there were plans for a Big Brother follow up before the first one had ended.

My question about people who want to participate in this type of programme and apply to go on them is, what is their motive for doing it? Not only that, you also have to raise the question of what the motives of the producers of these shows are for picking certain people to take part.

Quite a few of the people who are selected are clearly hoping to either further their career in the entertainment business or use the programme to start such a career. No sooner had a Big Brother contestant left/been kicked out of the house than there were articles about them either negotiating a recording contract or agreeing to present a minor television show. Not that I blame them, if you were trying to break into the fickle world of showbiz what better way than to get exposure on national prime time TV several nights a week. Even Claire, the stand in for
nasty Nick, who was only in the house for a couple of weeks managed to get a modelling contract and presented a dance show on ITV.

Other participants in the shows are not so fortunate and appear to be almost picked on by the programme makers to come across as the baddies of the group. In Big Brother’s Nick Batemans case this has worked to his advantage as the money and offers have rolled in, but I suspect most are not so fortunate. It would be interesting to see what some of the recent Castaways and Shipwrecked members really thought of the way the programmes were edited together, and whether it was representative of the reality of the situation. Given the limit of the amount of time this type of show are actually on screen, the participants are bound to end up as almost caricatures of themselves.

As for the motive of producers, I’m sure that they look at the mix of people and deliberately pick a couple that they know will argue, a couple who will go on to try their hand in the entertainment business and maybe a few who they hope will see this as their chance for a bit of romance. At the end of the day it is their responsibility to try to get not only the public interested in the show, but newspapers who will publish front page stories about developments in the house or on the island.

This type of show will only continue for as long as the public still has a desire to see it and for as long as the programme makers can come up with enough variations on the theme to keep them interested, The Mole on Channel 5 being an example of this.

My own personal view is that I was never keen on Airport or Changing Rooms but liked Ground Force. I watch some of the voyeur type shows - Big Brother and Shipwrecked but I'm not keen on others - Castaway and Temptation Island.

Whether I'll get bored of this type of show in the long run remains to be seen.

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