Why do people continue to watch reality television programs despite their promotion of negativity?

I have never been a fan of reality programs. I think that they promote unnecessary drama and that they can impact audiences negatively, but, I will admit that they can sometimes help us kill time. I found myself extremely bored, with no plans on a Friday night once and decided to browse the cable channels. The only decent channel I found at the time was Bravo, so, I settled for an episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. A couple of minutes in and one of the characters was already trash talking another one behind their back. I thought to myself: “Should I really risk losing brain cells, watching a group of old women scream at each other for forty minutes because I have nothing else to do?” But, as the episode went on, I caught myself getting really invested in what Lisa had to say about the other Lisa and that’s where I turned the television off. Even though reality television often promotes bad behavior and stereotypes, people tend to keep wanting to know what is going to happen next. But why?

The most significant reason is that the episodes are manipulated to attract and compel viewers. Reality television is a genre renowned for its reliance on shock value to entertain. It is not uncommon to hear that reality TV shows are scripted. According to a reference made in an article written by Ken Wheaton, it was revealed that some scenes from The Real Housewives of New York were staged and scripted. However, that is not entirely true as some shows are essentially fabricated during the editing process. According to a Variety article written by Brian Lowry, “[p]roducers can employ editing techniques to carefully craft the stories they want to tell.” Most of what people say on television is what want to say. The magic happens during the editing process where recorded conversations are broken down during the editing process and taken out of context, then pieced together to create a narrative. The addition of background music helps embellish the scene and appeal to the emotion of the viewer. Sometimes the producers would also ask the cast to repeat what they say with more emotion to emphasize the shocking aspect of the show or come up with odd ideas to make it more entertaining. Other times, the cast would make suggestions of their own. For example, the cast of Duck Dynasty took decisions to set up events and activities that they would not usually do in real life to make the show more comedic, such as Uncle Si’s crazy reactions.

The implementation of comedy and exaggeration in reality television shows that it is not completely “real”. Reality programs are constructed, just as any other sitcoms and series, to keep the viewers hooked. The only difference is that they show the lives of real people, which viewers think are accurate representations of. So the next time you find yourself getting invested in the life of a character and judging them based on their actions, just remind yourself that what is shown on television might not have actually happened.

Works Cited

Genzlinger, Neil. “‘Duck Dynasty’ Legacy: Real, Fake and Upfront About It.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Nov. 2016,

Lowry, Brian. “Stereotypes: Reality TV’s Dirty Little Secret.” Variety, 11 Jan. 2010, p. 16. MasterFILE Premier [EBSCO].

Wheaton, Ken. “Now that ‘Duck Dynasty’ has jumped the shark, the writers need to get back to ‘reality’.” Advertising Age, 24 June 2013, p. 0026. Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly, 13 Feb. 2018.

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