The current pop culture topic that I have chosen to write my weekly analysis on is the trend of reality TV. Reality television emerged in the late 90’s driven by the hit MTV series, The Real World (Petracca, Sorapure, 2007). From there, popular series such as Survivor and Fear Factor came to light. In an article written by Rebecca Gardyn, titled “The Tribe Has Spoken”, Gardyn presents several relevant tables with important demographic information. One of these tables illustrates the breakdown, by percentages, of top reasons why reality television viewers tune in each week. The top three reasons were; to guess who would win or be eliminated, to see real people face challenging situations, and to imagine how they themselves would react in a similar situation (Petracca, Sorapure, 2007). I believe that these were the most popular reasons to watch these shows because in the first decade of reality TV most were a competition of some sort.
Today, with the emergence of non-competitive reality shows, I do not believe that the reasons for watching reality TV would be the same. Several television channels have surfaced in past years that now mostly air reality shows. These stations inlude E!, Bravo, WE, and TLC. E!’s popularity is booming with their hit series Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ and Bravo is following suit with their many The Real Housewives series. On Gardyn’s poll, Reasons for Watching Reality TV, “Fights among contestants” ranked fifth with 37% stating that this was one reason that they tuned in (multiple answers were allowed in the poll) (Petracca, Sorapure, 2007). I believe that this percentage would definitely be higher if a current poll were taken considering the popularity of non-competitive reality shows that focus mainly on the drama between its cast mates whether they are family, friends or even neighbors!
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