In the beginning, people watched television to escape their mundane rituals and everyday worries. Back then, bus drivers schemed to get rich quick, genies were dreamy, and people lost at sea happened to be carrying their entire wardrobes with them.
But then in 1973, PBS premiered ?An American Family.? The show chronicled the real-life, upper-middle class Loud family. Unlike its glossy, happy counterparts that featured nuclear families, in the show?s 13 episodes Mrs. Loud demanded a divorce and son Lance lived an openly gay lifestyle. The show drew in 10 million viewers and introduced America to reality TV.
That grew, of course, into the reality TV explosion of the late ?90s. Primetime was chock-full of everyday, ?average Joes? plucked off the street. Suddenly everybody knew who Rudy, Darva and Clay were. In 2005, Nielsen Media Research found that 56 percent of all American television (including both cable and broadcast) is reality TV.
But since the ?90s, the genre has lost its appeal. Ratings for ?The Apprentice? (NBC?s lifesaver) have dropped dramatically. TV?s 25 top-rated list used to be choked with reality shows; now two or three make the cut at most. People have become bored with million-dollar bug eating contests and choosy brides-to-be.
And the people on reality TV have gradually become not-so-average. Compare the original Real Worlders to the recent casts. They went from being doughy and pockmarked to looking like they?d stepped out of the Spring catalog of Abercrombie ‘ Fitch.
That?s because people don?t watch television to see themselves. They still want coconut radios and bottle-dwelling semi-slaves. So in the great tradition of television, the networks spiced it up. However, rather then having a baby or bringing in a new love interest, they turned to the rich and famous. People still want to the ?unpredictability? of unscripted situations, but with a lot less reality.
In the past few years, MTV (which still has the nerve to put ?music? in its title) has been pumping its primetime with this ?rich reality.? It started off with ?Rich Girls? two years ago. The daughter of Tommy Hilfiger and Leo Gleicher (founder of Innovation Luggage) ?dealt? with life in ?lass Manhattan.
?Laguna Beach? follows around a bunch of ?average? kids in their last years of high school. Yes, in this ?average? beach front town, the ?average? income is $102,816 and the ?average? property value sales are $747,948, according to homegain.com. They deal with everyday teen problems, like being a complete heifer and having to settle for the size 4 Marc Jacobs dress as opposed to the size 2, or finding that only the 34-foot stretch Hummer is available for prom and not the 39-foot. You know, stuff every teenager can relate to.
But nothing can prepare one for the indulgence that is ?My Super Sweet 16.? Every week, one super-rich teenager plans the ultimate birthday party ? using Daddy?s wallet. Rather then using the money to send an inner city kid to college or feed an entire African country, these parents spend a small fortune to celebrate a minor stepping stone in their children?s lives. Lord knows what the wedding is going to cost. In the real world, you?re lucky if your parents rented out a hall at the Knights of Columbus.
These shows and countless others, like ?Filthy Rich Cattle Drive,? ?Growing Up Gotti? and ?Gastineau Girls,? all have one thing in common: they?re spending someone else?s money. Nobody in these shows earned their income; they were given it.
Then, of course, there is ?The Simple Life.? The simple plot found hotel heiress Paris Hilton and Lionel Richie?s daughter Nicole, living with poor folks. The girls were thrown into crazy fish-out-of-water situations, like working or preparing their own dinners. This show propelled Hilton to fame (among other things).
This brings us to our next trend: celebrity. If you are or were a minor figure in pop culture, guess what? You are interesting enough to have your own reality show.
Very reminiscent of ?An American Family,? ?The Osbournes? was MTV?s highest rated show of all time. The family?s crazy yet heart-warming antics connected with audiences. This was the first of many shows featuring famous and ?famous? people in a number of reality genres. The idea is that anything and everything is far more entertaining when famous people do it.
VH1 (which also still has the nerve to put ?video? in its title) currently has eight celebrity reality shows in its line-up, which the network has dubbed ?CelebReality? ? though celebrity has become a very lose term in reality TV. ?The Surreal Life? finds famous folks in a Real World-like setting. The show has snagged superstars like Carey Hart, Jerri Manthey and the guy who played Joey from Full House. God knows how they pulled that casting miracle! ?Celebrity Fit Club? whips cast members like Wendy the Snapple Lady and Willie Aames back into shape. ?But Can They Sing?? answers the burning question of whether Morgan Fairchild or Antonio Sabato Jr. have completely given up on real acting careers.
Other networks have been serving up their own form of CelebReality. E!?s ?Taradise? documents party-girl/actress Tara Reid?s future liver failure and wild flings in tropical ports. Bravo?s ?Being Bobby Brown? follows the more sad then outrageous lifestyle of Brown and his wife Whitney Houston.
Reality TV hasn?t been real since people started getting voted off by tribes; wealth and CelebReality are really just the next step in this illusion. So why do we love it? Maybe it?s a realistic fantasy. Nobody can be inspired to have the gift of flight after watching ?Smallville,? but you could win the lottery ? and then you could lose weight or live with a group of strangers in front of a bunch of cameras.
