TV: Reality shows not going away in a hurry

By LOUISA CLEAVE

When Stephen King wrote about a reality game show where, in 2025, contestants run for their lives from gladiator-style hunters, he was on to something.

The Running Man had legs, all right.

Already, there is a bounty-hunter style American show called Wanted, where contestants are on the run from "trackers." Even the public can join in and win prizes.

The Dutch are also pursuing the theme with a show called Hunt.

New Zealand has not been immune to reality television and has even been one of the international front-runners in the genre, creating Popstars and jumping on the desert island trend with Treasure Island long before Survivor swept over American viewers like a giant tsunami.

Putting cameras in hospital rooms, police cars, kitchens or in the hands of ordinary people to film their lives has produced high-rating — and low-cost — programming.

The three strands of reality TV — "infotainment" and makeover programmes, shock video (World's Scariest/Funniest Home Videos) and fly-on-the-wall docu-soaps (Treasure Island) — have evolved from high-brow documentaries, game shows and tabloid talk shows.

Then there are the "aspirational" shows, like Kev Can Do, Dreams Come True, Weddings and April's Angels.

Reality TV in America dates back to 1956 to the first reality/makeover programme, Queen For A Day, which transformed ordinary housewives into "queens."

More than 40 years later Suzanne Paul fronted a Kiwi version of this in Style Challenge and the similarly formatted Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

But what is the cost to other genres, such as drama and documentaries, with the primetime slots being taken over by reality TV?

Tony Holden, general manager of television at South Pacific Pictures, makers of Shortland Street and Jacksons Wharf, says viewers still have an appetite for drama.

"I don't think we feel particularly threatened by them. I suppose the scarier thing is the morality of them. You're accused in drama quite often of social engineering and playing morals, but when you're just sitting watching people get dressed that's a bit spooky.

"I think they are two worlds and the audience sees them as two worlds. I think the audience will say, 'Well, it's cheap,' but some people want to watch a flashy show because it's good, smart clothes and big sets. It's a bit like The Blair Witch Project — could you watch heaps of them?

"From our point of view it's a phase, in the same way game shows were really big 10 years ago. It doesn't seem like it's going to go away in a hurry."

Susy Pointon, executive director of the New Zealand Writers' Guild, is concerned there is a lack of balance between reality TV and other genres, such as drama, children's programmes and documentaries.

"We're interested in seeing local quotas imposed here and that more writing opportunities are provided for local writers. The reality TV shows are a way of producing local content in a very cheap way."

When life disappoints, reality shows can offer a quick fix, Dr Mark Goulston told the Los Angeles Times in the wake of the Survivor phenomenon.

"Part of the appeal is the relative ease with which everything could change," says Goulston, an expert on contemporary culture.

"There's almost a lottery quality to these shows. There's a jackpot mentality. You get to be famous without having earned it."

Survivor's "stars" had barely been booted off the island before they were signing sponsorship deals and extending their 15 minutes of fame on American talk shows.

Treasure Island spawned a minor media celebrity for women's magazines in the form of Pieta Keating but we have come nowhere near the hysteria of Big Brother in Holland and Britain, Survivor, or the circus that was Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?

But there is time, with more reality TV coming to a television near you.

Next month TV3 screens a special on the Hamilton radio competition which matched and married two strangers, and TV2 has Single Girls starting soon, a series where four professional women have six weeks to find their perfect man.

Andrew Shaw, head of content at TVNZ, points out the batch of reality shows in other countries requires higher degrees of risk and reward.

Some of these will find their way to our screens, although it is more likely the formats would provide an outline to be filled in by local talent.

In Britain, Big Brother has given way to Jailbreak, where a number of people are put in a made-for-television prison and have to escape.

"What we're looking at are more extreme versions of challenge shows, utilising members of the public who become stars, for a higher risk and higher reward,"says Shaw.

Where will it end?

"It's a bubble, isn't it?" Shaw says. "It gets to a point where it bursts and then suddenly we'll be wanting to move back to heavily scripted drama and comedy.

"Our job is to make popular television that people want to watch and at the moment, this is the most popular form."