Reality television, a genre that documents unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors, emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s. Shows like “The Real World” paved the way, but it was in the early 2000s that reality TV truly exploded with the success of series like “Survivor,” “Idol,” and “Big Brother,” all of which became global franchises. These shows often feature “confessionals,” short interview segments where cast members reflect on or provide context for the events being depicted on-screen. Competition-based reality shows typically feature the gradual elimination of participants, either by a panel of judges, by the viewership of the show, or by the contestants themselves.
Documentaries, television news, sports television, talk shows, and traditional game shows are generally not classified as reality television. However, some genres of television programming that predate the reality television boom have been retroactively classified as reality television, including hidden camera shows, talent-search shows, documentary series about ordinary people, high-concept game shows, home improvement shows, and court shows featuring real-life cases and issues.
Reality television has faced significant criticism since its rise in popularity. Critics argue that reality television shows do not accurately reflect reality, in ways both implicit (participants being placed in artificial situations) and deceptive (misleading editing, participants being coached on behavior, storylines generated ahead of time, scenes being staged). Some shows have been accused of rigging the favorite or underdog to win. Other criticisms of reality television shows include that they are intended to humiliate or exploit participants; that they make stars out of untalented people unworthy of fame, infamous figures, or both; and that they glamorize vulgarity.
Television formats portraying ordinary people in unscripted situations are almost as old as the television medium itself. Producer-host Allen Funt’s “Candid Camera,” in which unsuspecting people were confronted with funny, unusual situations and filmed with hidden cameras, first aired in 1948. In the 21st century, the series is often considered a prototype of reality television programming.
Precedents for television that portrayed people in unscripted situations began in the late 1940s. “Queen for a Day” (1945–1964) was an early example of reality-based television. The 1946 television game show “Cash and Carry” sometimes featured contestants performing stunts. Debuting in 1948, Allen Funt’s hidden camera show “Candid Camera” (based on his previous 1947 radio show, “The Candid Microphone”) broadcast unsuspecting ordinary people reacting to pranks. In 1948, talent search shows, such as Ted Mack’s “Original Amateur Hour” and Arthur Godfrey’s “Talent Scouts,” featured amateur competitors and audience voting. In the 1950s, game shows “Beat the Clock” and “Truth or Consequences” involved contestants in wacky competitions, stunts, and practical jokes. “Confession” was a crime and police show that aired from June 1958 to January 1959, with interviewer Jack Wyatt questioning criminals from assorted backgrounds. The radio series “Nightwatch” (1951–1955) tape-recorded the daily activities of Culver City, California police officers. The series “You Asked for It” (1950–1959) incorporated audience involvement by basing episodes around requests sent in by postcard from viewers.
First broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964, the Granada Television documentary “Seven Up!” broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary 7-year-olds from a broad cross-section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life. Every seven years, the filmmaker created a new film documenting the lives of the same individuals during the intervening period. Titled the “Up Series,” episodes included “7 Plus Seven,” “21 Up,” etc.; it is still ongoing. The program was structured as a series of interviews with no element of the plot. By virtue of the attention paid to the participants, it effectively turned ordinary people into a type of celebrity, especially after they became adults.
The series “The American Sportsman,” which ran from 1965 to 1986 on ABC in the United States, would typically feature one or more celebrities, and sometimes their family members, being accompanied by a camera crew on an outdoor adventure, such as hunting, fishing, hiking, scuba diving, rock climbing, wildlife photography, horseback riding, race car driving, and the like, with most of the resulting action and dialogue being unscripted, except for the narration.
In the 1966 Direct Cinema film “Chelsea Girls,” Andy Warhol filmed various acquaintances with no direction given. The Radio Times Guide to Film 2007 said that the film was “to blame for reality television.”
In 1969, the British rock group the Beatles were filmed for a month during the recording sessions which would become their album “Let It Be” and released the homonymous film the following year. In 2021, director Peter Jackson created an eight-hour, three-episode television series entitled “The Beatles: Get Back.”
The 12-part 1973 PBS series “An American Family” showed a nuclear family (filmed in 1971) going through a divorce; unlike many later reality shows, it was more or less documentary in purpose and style. In 1974 a counterpart program, “The Family,” was made in the UK, following the working-class Wilkins family of Reading. Other forerunners of modern reality television were the 1970s productions of Chuck Barris: “The Dating Game,” “The Newlywed Game,” and “The Gong Show,” all of which featured participants who were eager to sacrifice some of their privacy and dignity in a televised competition.
The 1976–1980 BBC series “The Big Time” featured a different amateur in some field (cooking, comedy, football, etc.) trying to succeed professionally in that field, with help from notable experts. The 15-episode series is credited with starting the career of Sheena Easton, who was selected to appear in the episode showing an aspiring pop singer trying to enter the music business.
In 1978, “Living in the Past” had amateurs participating in a re-enactment of life in an Iron Age English village.
Producer George Schlatter capitalized on the advent of videotape to create “Real People,” a surprise hit for NBC, and it ran from 1979 to 1984. The success of “Real People” was quickly copied by ABC with “That’s Incredible,” a stunt show produced by Alan Landsburg and co-hosted by Fran Tarkenton; CBS’s entry into the genre was “That’s My Line,” a series hosted by Bob Barker. The Canadian series “Thrill of a Lifetime,” a fantasies-fulfilled reality show, originally ran from 1982 to 1988. It was revived from 2001 to 2003. In 1985, underwater cinematographer Al Giddings teamed with former Miss Universe Shawn Weatherly on the NBC series “Oceanquest,” which chronicled Weatherly’s adventures scuba diving in various exotic locales. Weatherly was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in informational programming.
“COPS,” which first aired in the spring of 1989 on Fox and was developed due to the need for new programming during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, showed police officers on duty apprehending criminals. It introduced the camcorder look and cinéma vérité feel of much of later reality television. The 1991 television documentary on “typical American high schoolers,” “Yearbook,” focused on seniors attending Glenbard West High School, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois and broadcast prime-time on Fox.
The series “Nummer 28,” which aired on Dutch television in 1991, originated the concept of putting strangers together in a limited environment for an extended period of time and recording the drama that ensued. “Nummer 28” also pioneered many of the stylistic conventions that have since become standard in reality television shows, including extensive use of soundtrack music and the interspersing of events on screen with after-the-fact “confessionals” recorded by cast members, which serve as narration. One year later, the same concept was used by MTV in its new series “The Real World.” “Nummer 28” creator Erik Latour has long claimed that “The Real World” was directly inspired by his show. But the producers of “The Real World” have said that their direct inspiration was “An American Family.” According to television commentator Charlie Brooker, this type of reality television was enabled by the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems for video (such as produced by Avid Technology) in 1989. These systems made it easy to quickly edit hours of video footage into a usable form, something that had been very difficult to do before (film, which was easy to edit, was too expensive to use in shooting enough hours on a regular basis).
“Sylvania Waters” (1992) was an Australian show that depicted a family, similar in concept to “An American Family.”
The 1994–95 O. J. Simpson murder case, during which live network television followed suspect Simpson for 90 minutes being chased by police, has been described as a seminal moment in reality television. Networks interrupted their regular television programming for months for coverage of the trial and related events. Because of Simpson’s status as a top athlete and celebrity, the brutal nature of the murders, and issues of race and class in Los Angeles celebrity culture, the sensational case dominated ratings and the public conversation.
Many reality television stars of the 2000s and 2010s have direct or indirect connections to people involved in the case, most notably Kim Kardashian, daughter of defense attorney Robert Kardashian, and several of her relatives and associates.
The series “Expedition Robinson,” created by television producer Charlie Parsons, which first aired in 1997 in Sweden (and was later produced in a large number of other countries as “Survivor”), added to the “Nummer 28″/”Real World” template the idea of competition and elimination. Cast members or contestants battled against each other and were removed from the show until only one winner remained (these shows are now sometimes called elimination shows). “Changing Rooms,” a program that began in the UK in 1996, showed couples redecorating each other’s houses, and was the first reality show with a self-improvement or makeover theme. The dating reality show “Streetmate” premiered in the UK in 1998. Originally created by Gabe Sachs as “Street Match,” it was a flop in the United States. But the show was revamped in the UK by Tiger Aspect Productions and became a cult hit. The production team from the original series later created the popular reality shows “Strictly Come Dancing,” “Location, Location, Location,” and the revamped “MasterChef,” among others. The 1980s and 1990s were also a time when tabloid talk shows became more popular. Many of these featured the same types of unusual or dysfunctional guests who would later become popular as cast members of reality shows.
Reality television became globally popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the successes of the “Big Brother” and “Survivor/Expedition Robinson” franchises. In the United States, reality television programs suffered a temporary decline in viewership in 2001, leading some entertainment industry columnists to speculate that the genre was a temporary fad that had run its course. Reality shows that suffered from low ratings included “The Amazing Race” (although the show has since recovered and is in its 32nd edition), “Lost” (unrelated to the better-known serial drama of the same name) and “The Mole” (which was successful in other countries). But stronghold shows “Survivor” and “American Idol” continued to thrive: both topped the U.S. season-average television ratings in the 2000s. “Survivor” led the ratings in 2001–02, and “Idol” has the longest hold on the No. 1 rank in the American television ratings, dominating over all other primetime programs and other television series in the overall viewership tallies for eight consecutive years, from the 2003–2004 to the 2010–2011 television seasons.
Another trend was to combine reality TV with a social history angle usually by having contestants taken back to various time periods primarily to see how millennials would cope without modern technology. Examples included “The 1900 House,” and “Bad Lad’s Army.” In addition to those was a series consisting of archeologists and historians running a farm through various historical periods, most notably “Victorian Farm.”
Internationally, a number of shows created in the late 1990s and 2000s have had massive global success. Reality-television franchises created during that time that have had more than 30 international adaptations each include the singing competition franchises “Idols,” “Star Academy” and “The X Factor,” other competition franchises “Survivor/Expedition Robinson,” “Big Brother,” “The Biggest Loser,” “Come Dine with Me,” “Got Talent,” “Top Model,” “MasterChef,” “Project Runway” and “Dancing with the Stars,” and the investment franchise “Dragons’ Den.” Several “reality game shows” from the same period have had even greater success, including “Deal or No Deal,” “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” and “Weakest Link,” with over 50 international adaptations each. (All but four of these franchises, “Top Model,” “Project Runway,” “The Biggest Loser” and “Dragons’ Den,” were created by either British producers or the Dutch production company Endemol. Although “Dragons’ Den” originated in Japan, most of its adaptations are based on the British version.) In India, the competition show “Indian Idol” was the most popular television program for its first six seasons.
During the 2000s, several cable networks, including Bravo, A&E, E!, TLC, History, VH1, and MTV, changed their programming to feature mostly reality television series. In addition, three cable channels were started around that time that were devoted exclusively to reality television: Fox Reality in the United States, which operated from 2005 to 2010; Global Reality Channel in Canada, which lasted two years from 2010 to 2012; and CBS Reality (formerly known as Reality TV and then Zone Reality) in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which has run from 1999 to the present.
During the early part of the 2000s, network executives expressed concern that reality-television programming was limited in its appeal for DVD reissue and syndication. But DVDs for reality shows sold briskly; “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,” “The Amazing Race,” “Project Runway,” and “America’s Next Top Model” all ranked in the top DVDs sold on Amazon.com. In the mid-2000s, DVDs of “The Simple Life” outranked scripted shows such as “The O.C.” and “Desperate Housewives.” Syndication, however, has been problematic; shows such as “Fear Factor,” “COPS,” and “Wife Swap,” in which each episode is self-contained, can be rerun fairly easily, but usually only on cable television or during the daytime (“COPS” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos” being exceptions). Season-long competitions, such as “The Amazing Race,” “Survivor,” and “America’s Next Top Model” generally perform more poorly and usually must be rerun in marathons to draw the necessary viewers to make it worthwhile. (Even in these cases, it is not always successful: the first ten seasons of “Dancing with the Stars” were picked up by GSN in 2012 and was run in marathon format, but attracted low viewership and had very poor ratings). Another option is to create documentaries around series, including extended interviews with the participants and outtakes not seen in the original airings; the syndicated series “American Idol Rewind” is an example of this strategy.
“COPS” has had huge success in syndication, direct response sales, and DVD. A Fox staple since 1989, “COPS” has, as of 2013 (when it moved to cable channel Spike), outlasted all competing scripted police shows. Another series that had wide success is “Cheaters,” which has been running since 2000 in the U.S. and is syndicated in over 100 countries worldwide. In 2001, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences added the reality genre to the Emmy Awards in the category of Outstanding Reality Program. In 2003, to better differentiate between competition and informational reality programs, a second category, Outstanding Reality-Competition Program, was added. In 2008, a third category, Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program, was added. In 2007, the web series “The Next Internet Millionaire” appeared; it was a competition show based in part on “The Apprentice,” and was billed as the world’s first Internet reality show.
In 2010 the Dutch singing competition show “The Voice of Holland,” created by John de Mol Jr., premiered; it added to the singing competition template the twist that judges could not see contestants during the initial audition round, and could judge them only by their voice. The show was an instant success, and spawned an entire franchise, “The Voice,” which has been highly successful, with almost 50 international adaptations.
“The Tester” (2010–2012) was the first reality television show aired over a video game console.
By 2012, many of the long-running reality television show franchises in the United States, such as “American Idol,” “Dancing with the Stars” and “The Bachelor,” had begun to see declining ratings. However, reality television as a whole remained durable in the U.S., with hundreds of shows across many channels. In 2012, New York Magazine’s Vulture blog published a humorous Venn diagram showing popular themes across American reality shows then running, including shows set in the U.S. states of Alaska, Louisiana and Texas, shows about cakes, weddings and pawnbrokers, and shows, usually competition-based, whose title includes the word “Wars.”
“Duck Dynasty” (2012–2017), which focused on the Robertson family that founded Duck Commander, in 2013 became the most popular reality series in U.S. cable television history. Its fourth-season premiere was viewed by nearly 12 million viewers in the United States, most of which were in rural markets. Its rural audience share ranked in the 30s, an extremely high number for any series, broadcast or cable.
Following from the “1900 House” format, the BBC produced a series called “Back in Time for Tea” in which a family would experience tea time for various decades.
In 2014, Entertainment Weekly and Variety again noted a stagnation in reality television programs’ ratings in the U.S., which they attributed to “The diminishing returns of cable TV’s sea of reality sameness.” They noted that a number of networks that featured reality programming, including Bravo and E!, were launching their first scripted shows, and others, including AMC, were abandoning plans to launch further reality programs; though they clarified that the genre as a whole “isn’t going anywhere.” Ratings and profits from reality TV continued to decline in the late 2010s.
The South Korean competition show “I Can See Your Voice,” which premiered in 2015, showed guest judges attempting to guess which of a group of contestants could sing, and which could not, without hearing them sing. The show was successful, and spawned several imitators, most notably “King of Mask Singer” several months later. “King of Mask Singer” was a more
