Is Reality TV Fake?

There was a time when FRIENDS ruled the television and reality shows are just mere audiences. But nowadays, reality TV is the rage. People tune into these shows more regularly and more religiously than they tune into other shows or networks like CNN, for example. Most of the people who are fans of these kinds of shows are attracted to these shows’ unusual knack to portray the “realness” of people. But are these shows genuine? I had doubts myself. And upon researching further and deeper into the topic, my doubts were confirmed. Some of these shows are actually rigged so that we get all the dramas and almost none of the “reality”.

Fake "Reality" TV

Take for example, the Fox show “Stupid Behavior Caught on Tape”. A tape that showed a woman doing aerobic exercises with horrendous results were actually faked. In the footage that was actually shown on the show, the woman was shown stumbling through skipping rope exercises. But before extensive editing of the footage, it was actually pretty obvious that the bloopers were staged. One unedited scene even showed the featured woman practicing her “bloopers” and taking instructions from a man behind the camera on how to look like a natural klutz.

In the show Blind Date, a former freelance editor of the show divulged secrets in an interview with TIME on how they use editing to portray things out of context. This show’s staple is a date setup that will inevitably go comically or horribly wrong at the end. But what if nothing happened on the date? This is where the editing comes in. The editor says that they use numerous video clips to shape the story. A man on the date is portrayed as bored if he is unresponsive or looking around while his date is talking to him. But in reality, those where just footages taken while his date was on the bathroom and then inserted into the scene.

MTV’s highest rated show ever, The Hills, is also subject to attacks about the show’s authenticity. For instance, an insider insinuated that most of the love triangles on the show don’t really exist. To make things out of context, some of what was actually said was spliced and new words come out of the casts’ mouths instead. Editing botches were also very obvious throughout the show’s whole run. And finally, on the show’s finale episode, the producers hinted of its staged antics. In the last scene, one of the show’s main casts, Brody Jenner, was portrayed standing in the middle of a Hollywood set. And the set was being dismantled while cameras were still rolling.

But why are these shows out to fool its millions of adoring fans? Isn’t faking reality an immoral issue? The truth is, ratings decide for everything. When a show’s not full of dramas, who are going to watch it? I, personally, wouldn’t watch a show where nothing ever happens. And that is the reason why producers of these shows are forced to do the immoral: to increase the shows’ ratings, and in turn, its income.