I was a huge fan of reality television. I am not ashamed to admit it in 2000 when skeptics were saying that reality television was the death of modern television as we know it I stood by it. When pundits suggested 2 years later that reality television was on death’s door, and the genre was facing a long road ahead, I continued to watch the shows. Reality television was different from regular television, and I loved it for that. It held surprises that scripted television could not duplicate, and gave us a rather boring peek into regular lives that regular programming could not do.

The professionalism of regular television was the real dying genre, I felt. Scripted television had become stale and boring, and it took reality television to reinvigorate the medium. In fact I would have gone as far to suggest that reality television was so popular in due to the failure of regular television to attract viewers. Such arguments are always used to support new genre, and in mind there was little, if any reason why it shouldn’t be any different with reality television.

But reality television had become a victim of its own success. It was always mean and cruel, and brought out the worst in its contestants, and we had always known that. In theory, reality television had always been with it, but it was the advent of American Gladiators, court television programs, and Professional Wrestling that set the stage for what was to become reality television. In theory, all of those shows had a mean streak that was to be the future basis of all reality television.

We were warned about the future that reality television would create. Movies like “Blade Runner” and shows like “Max Headrom” suggested the future that society was facing if reality television began to dominate our entertainment landscape. When MTV premiered “The Real World” in 1992 we got our first real taste of life in New York that we hadn’t seen since the gritty movies of the seventies. The city was alive, vibrant, and cool but could also be a rather sick and twisted place if your head was screwed on tight. The city wasn’t a character, as it was in those earlier films, but you could tell that it was the dark angel whispering sweet nothings into the ears of the contestants, suggesting that turn on each other.

The Real World had an authenticity about it that future reality shows could never duplicate; the contestants were truly on the show for fame and to take part in this social experiment. There wasn’t any money exchanging hands, no prizes to win; though such would have to become a component in this genre in order to make it interesting. Bringing such about would bring out the absolute worst in individuals, open the door for exploitation, and dominate reality television for years to come.

About the same time as The Real World had come about to American audiences the ideas for a new series called “Survivor” were floating around. At the time no one wanted to be a part of it, and it wasn’t until 5 years later, in 1997, that the series took off in Sweden as American and British broadcasters wanted little part in it. Little is known about the show, but it debuted there as “Expedition Robinson” and was a huge hit. The fact of American programmers taking ideas from elsewhere and incorporating them into their own programming was a sign of things to come. These days everything from soap operas to cartoons to movies have a definitive foreign look and feel, and inspiration; these days much reality programming, scripted television programming and game shows have actually originated in Britain.

The same happened when “Expedition Robinson” was adapted for American audiences and premiered as “Survivor” in 2000. Before long reality shows were everywhere, all day long, and audiences were hard pressed not to find a network that wasn’t predominated by them. To date, only CBS, the network that had originally premiered Survivor, continues to have a reliable and innovative offering of reality television. MTV is still using reality television, through any number of different concepts, as the basis for their programming. Second to CBS was the success of NBC, though arguably, ABC has stronger and more memorable reality programming in the forms of such hits as “The Bachelor” and “Extreme Makeover:Home Edition”.

What we have learned, is that audiences will anticipate and go out of their way for quality reality programming but mediocre or uninspired programming will always suffer. For example, ABCs repeated attempts at reviving “Extreme Makeover” in its traditional format have failed miserably. Viewers were okay with it at first but a number of copycat programs (and some lawsuits) killed the show, most notably “The Swan” a controversial show by the Fox network.

The show was popular in part to the ease of which individuals could receive plastic surgery, a controversial technique that allows an individual to remake themselves into someone who is aesthetically perfect. Part of the fascination for plastic surgery had come through the observations of people who had seen their peers get their breasts or buttocks worked on, and figured that doctors could help make them into a more sexy and desirable individual. This was in part due to the constant media attention about celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez; doctors were quick to sell the idea that they could give women something similar, though in an ironic twist, Mrs. Lopez inevitably decided to do away with it herself.

The real question is whether or not reality television is still relevant, and while it does provide quality entertainment, it is no longer new or interesting. Some of our more benign forms of reality entertainment, such as court shows, have taken predominance in an era burned out on everything from talk shows to reality porn. We want a little bit of the drama that comes with reality television, but not too much, and certainly not in a way that denigrates, insults, humiliates and otherwise attempts to destroy the character of the next person.

Reality television will always be with us, in fact in the early days of television much of it was reality based anyway, though variety shows, game shows, and other impromptu live entertainment that always held our interests. Does reality television affect viewers; probably not, but does the cruel nature of it attract us to the big screen, when that is the strongest argument for the program we are watching, absolutely…