That’s fine for drama and written TV. But nah, reality TV ruined the world.
The Real World and Cribs on MTV led to Big Brother and Survivor - which as well as popularizing the format and leading to endless trash, led to The Apprentice, which revived Donald Trump’s image and brand and convinced millions of really dumb people that he’d make a good president.
In the good parallel timelines, the execs that suggested reality TV were laughed at and it never came up again. MTV still plays great music videos all day, the History channel actually talks about history, and barely anyone outside of the US knows the name ‘Kardashian’ or ‘Donald Trump’.
The problem is that reality TV is inevitable. People, generally speaking, like to know what other people are doing. Or like to see other people react to things.
The first “reality TV” program was Candid Camera, which technically got its start as “Candid Microphone”, all in the late 1940s. Of course things evolved from there into our current “reality TV” situation.
The real problem is that the line between “entertainment” and “reality” has gotten blurrier and blurrier. When we watch Godzilla we know that’s just entertainment, we know a giant lizard creature isn’t walking down the street.
It’s also funny that you mention MTV because realistically MTV should have died out years ago. In the same way that video killed the radio star, the Internet killed the video star. Why would I turn on the TV and hope the video I wanted to watch was on, when I could just go on the Internet and see it now. Of course MTV the television station wants to keep making money, so they pivoted hard into reality TV.
If I don’t like something, I just don’t watch it. It doesn’t bother me if others enjoy it.
That’s fine for drama and written TV. But nah, reality TV ruined the world.
The Real World and Cribs on MTV led to Big Brother and Survivor - which as well as popularizing the format and leading to endless trash, led to The Apprentice, which revived Donald Trump’s image and brand and convinced millions of really dumb people that he’d make a good president.
In the good parallel timelines, the execs that suggested reality TV were laughed at and it never came up again. MTV still plays great music videos all day, the History channel actually talks about history, and barely anyone outside of the US knows the name ‘Kardashian’ or ‘Donald Trump’.
The problem is that reality TV is inevitable. People, generally speaking, like to know what other people are doing. Or like to see other people react to things.
The first “reality TV” program was Candid Camera, which technically got its start as “Candid Microphone”, all in the late 1940s. Of course things evolved from there into our current “reality TV” situation.
The real problem is that the line between “entertainment” and “reality” has gotten blurrier and blurrier. When we watch Godzilla we know that’s just entertainment, we know a giant lizard creature isn’t walking down the street.
It’s also funny that you mention MTV because realistically MTV should have died out years ago. In the same way that video killed the radio star, the Internet killed the video star. Why would I turn on the TV and hope the video I wanted to watch was on, when I could just go on the Internet and see it now. Of course MTV the television station wants to keep making money, so they pivoted hard into reality TV.
Wait, what?