How Real is Reality Television?

The steps to identifying the authenticity of reality television

By: Tim Suda

Posted: 2/19/07

With reality television being so popular these days, especially in countries like America, many viewers want to know: "How real is reality television?" "American Idol," for instance has an average of more than 35 million viewers each week. Except now, this style of programming has spread all over the world and is even popular in countries such as Nigeria and Australia. With reality television being popular all around the world, how can there be so much controversy over the validity of the shows?
"There aren't any blanket answers since every show is different and there are a lot of reality shows out there with very different formats," says Hannah Buchdahl, a former producer of "America's Next Top Model."
To begin to analyze the authenticity of these programs, one must start at the beginning with the casting. Producers of the show "Survivor" reported that more than 120 contestants tried out at the Monterey, California stop of the tour. In contestant based reality television shows, it's an industry standard that all contestants are not paid actors. One of the reasons for the popularity of this genre of show is that it does not cost much to produce. This low cost is partially because the production company has to pay for little or no talent and actors.
An important thing to note when attempting to determine how truthful a favorite reality television show can be is money. With budgets ranging anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million plus, these production companies spare no expense. Everything costs money, so wherever expense can be saved it is. In many shows this can translate into the decision about location. For instance, the CBS produced show CSI: New York includes a majority of scenes filmed in Los Angeles. In others like Simple Life 2, producers just gave one town $15,000 and a "Simple Life" DVD for each household.
The last step of pre-production on a reality television show is paperwork. Contestants on reality shows basically sign their rights away; they have confidentiality agreements, agreements to allow the footage to be manipulated, as well as other contracts. When contestants sign these, participants are not allowed to talk about outcomes of shows. This loophole gives production companies leeway to edit endings to meet the networks requests and demands for particular shows.
"Punk'd" and other non-contestant shows generally are partially scripted, but most contest-based shows are not. This does not mean that questions are not prepared for game shows or challenges for "Survivor" type shows. This only means that often the contestants are not given scripts.
This also does not mean that shows cannot be modified. Quite the contrary, in fact, it can be modified just as easily. Daniel Abrams, editor for "Joe Millionaire" recently recalled a scene where he was told by the producer to rearrange a sequence of events and sounds to make the scene look as if oral sex was preformed. This style of editing is called Frankenbiting.
Daniel Shriver, producer for Big Brother 2 recalls creating dialogue from audio. "There's a real art to it. Because of the inflection of the voice, some things just don't cut together, so you can't just look at a transcript. You actually have to watch tapes, cut them together, and see how they work," he says.
So, how real is reality television? The basic core is real, the contestants are real, the contracts and agreements the contestants sign are very real, and other than that, who knows. Everything else can be manipulated, and often is.
Take the advice of Hannah Buchdahl: "Without Frankenbiting… as well as manipulation of things like reaction shots and timelines… there would be a lot of holes in the storylines. So do not always believe what you see."