UI assistant professor of communication studies Mark Andrejevic, author of Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, analyzes the appeal of the genre.

• Where did reality TV come from?
• How does it differ from earlier shows?
• Is it likely to be a short-lived phenomenon?
• What's the attraction?
• How do you see it developing?

Reality-based entertainment has been around since the Romans and before. When it comes to electronic media, early radio shows dangled microphones out the window to help hosts ambush passers by with questions. Candid Camera (which started on radio as Candid Microphone) has been around since the dawn of network television. In practical terms, the development of lightweight portable cameras and sound equipment made it easier to film people at home rather than on sound stages. PBS helped pioneer the reality genre in the early '70s with An American Family—a look at the day-to-day life of a California family that anthropologist Margaret Mead described as possibly "as important for our time as were the invention of drama and the novel for earlier generations.” Jon Murry, one of the creators of The Real World and a former documentary film maker said part of the idea for The Real World was to re-make An American Family for the MTV generation.

Television is an intimate medium in many ways—one that we bring into our living rooms and bedrooms—and it lends itself to intimate portraits of domestic life. Think of how many sitcoms, dramas, and soaps focus on the details of the private lives of their characters. Viewers through the years have spent a lot of time staring at the kitchens and sitting rooms of Lucy and Ricky, the Bradys, Ross and Rachel, and now the Osbournes. Reality TV taps into the promise of interactivity that has become a refrain of the new media "revolution." It suggests that rather than relying on small group of writers, producers, and actors to shape entertainment, viewers can not only help mold the show but, in some instances, become part of it. In this respect, reality TV caters to a critique of the top-down, one-way character of the mass media, providing in its stead an ersatz form of inclusion or democratization. Many of the viewers I've interviewed say that they've grown weary of the hackneyed formats of prime time fiction and that reality TV at least offers something slightly less predictable.

How does it differ from earlier shows?

Reality TV in its various forms enlists the appeal of familiar fictional genres: soap operas (indeed, some formats might be described as "reality soaps"), police shows, hospital dramas, adventure shows, and so on. What it does is add the additional promise of reality: that the characters aren't acting. An interesting trend is the attempt to recycle fictional formats in reality TV form: the upcoming The Simple Life was inspired by Green Acres, and reality remakes of The Beverly Hillbillies and The Brady Bunch are in the works. In the days of multiple-TV households and digital cable, the audience is much more fractionated than it was during the heyday of network television, but one of the interesting things about reality TV has been its ability to draw a family audience (for shows such as Survivor, for example) and to bring viewers back to the networks.

One of the important differences between reality shows and other formats is that they tend not to generate money in rerun syndication: they have to make their money during their first run. This requires a fair amount of hype up-front—which the news media have been happy to provide. Indeed, reality TV fits neatly into the trend that blurs the line between news and entertainment: it is real after all, and news outlets (especially those owned by media organizations with costly reality shows) have, in many cases, covered shows such as Survivor and American Idol as if their outcomes were major news stories. Reality TV is relatively inexpensive and flexible for producers: casting is cheap, as the contestants are by definition not professional actors, and several shows can be squeezed into a typical TV season. If one isn't a hit, perhaps the next one in its time slot will do much better. One significant characteristic of reality TV is that it's so adaptable and flexible. Just when one format seems played out a new one comes along and becomes an unanticipated hit, such as The Osbournes or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

People seem to get bored with particular formats, but the genre itself is hardier than many expected. The shows burn out pretty quickly—often not lasting as long as successful fictional formats—but I suspect that producers will keep coming up with new variations, some of which will be very successful, at least for a while. Producers have described reality TV as "ratings crack": a cheap, short-lived high. But by continually re-engineering the formula, they seem to be able to make the high last a lot longer than at first anticipated. Eventually the blockbuster successes such as Survivor and American Idol will exist only as burnt-out trends: period pieces of the early 2000s. But, reality TV is not going away, because it's too cheap and easy to churn out. The low budget home video and cops and dating shows are here to stay, if only because there are so many channels that need to fill air time cheaply.

Fans say they like it because it's not as predictable as the worn out formats of fictional prime-time programming. Producers like it because its inexpensive and flexible—and a proven ratings grabber. I suspect they also like it because it gets so much free publicity courtesy of the news media. Fans also say they can identify more closely with characters who aren't professional actors. Given that we live in a world in which people are already obsessed with the private lives of celebrities, reality TV just takes the shortcut of making people celebrities based on their willingness to expose their private lives.

In a society in which we are increasingly subjected to ever more comprehensive forms of monitoring, it's fascinating that even our entertainment is becoming increasingly surveillance-based. Perhaps those who are being watched want to experience the point of view of the watchers. At the same time, these shows portray the benefits of being watched all the time: over and over we hear how much the cast members of these shows have grown and learned about themselves from the "experience" of being exposed on camera. Big Brother becomes a lot less threatening when it refers to a game show with a cash prize. Reality TV may help acclimatize us to a culture in which we're increasingly told that being watched all the time is good for us.

Plus, reality TV does cater to the sense that the viewers might actually get a chance to be on the show. And even if they don't want to be on TV, they find it easier to relate to someone who is supposedly more like them than a "phony" Hollywood celebrity. Finally, there's a strange kind of experimental character to reality TV. Some formats are described not just as entertainment but as a form of social experiment: they promise to teach us something about humans and how they behave that we don't get from fictional programming. Lots of reality TV fans say they watch because they like to learn about human nature—something that they apparently don't feel they get as much from fictional shows.

The demographics of hard core reality fans skew young and female—which helps make the shows popular with advertisers. Many people over the age of 50 express their distaste for the whole genre. My theory is that cultural attitudes toward surveillance-based invasion of privacy may have shifted after the Cold War generation—people who grew up with the specter of Big Brother not as a game show, but as a form of totalitarian social control. In the post-Cold War era, the threat of Big Brother seems to be played down, even as our own government gears up for unprecedented levels of surveillance in the name of national security. I continue to be surprised by how little opposition there seems to be toward the impending surveillance regime, and wonder if it perhaps has to do with the fact that the media are helping to acclimatize us to surveillance as something that's good for us: a rewarding form of entertainment.

It's hard to predict what format will hit it big, as some of the greatest successes were big surprises. Shows will continue to strive to deliver on the promise of reality, which is becoming increasingly hard as viewers become savvier about the ways in which reality TV is contrived. One of the standard Hollywood patterns is to rely on self-parody once a genre becomes played out. This has already started with shows such as Joe Millionaire that rely on twists that poke fun at the people who go on reality shows.

In an attempt to guarantee a taste of reality, other formats may become increasingly extreme, such as Scare Tactics, a crueler version of Candid Camera that makes people think terrible things have happened—that they're about to die from a vicious stomach parasite in their food, that they've accidentally shot and killed someone, and so on. Most likely the format will find life in continuing to explore unexpected directions, such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I'm thinking the California recall election would make a great reality show, if only Larry Flynt, Arianna Huffington, Gary Coleman, and Arnold would let the cameras in for a behind-the-scenes glimpse. I'm sure producers in Hollywood are already trying to make this happen.