Types of Reality TV Shows Explained

Types of Reality TV Shows:

Competitive/Competition: The subcategories under this genre include talent, game shows, quiz-competitions and tournament elimination. Under this genre, participants are filmed competing to win a prize. Most times competition outcome is decided by audience voting, panel of judges or a combination of both.

Documentary: Reality TV documentary is different from normal television documentary in that reality TV, emphasis is not primarily on information and education, but rather on drama, conflict and entertainment. Under this genre, viewers are given a private look into the lives of subjects. Some of its subcategories include:

·         Professional Activities; which portrays professionals such as fishermen, cops, botanists, etc going about their day to day businesses.

·         Celebrities; which often shows a celebrity going about his/her normal everyday life.

·         Special Living Environment; which places cast members in artificial environments E.g. Big Brother.

·         Soap opera style; in which focus is on a close-knit group of people and their shifting friendships and romantic relationships.

Hoaxes: This genre presents a false premise to some of the series participants. The rest of the cast may contain actors who are in on the joke.

Law Enforcement Shows: This genre follows law enforcement agents – police, fire-fighters, traffic wardens, etc, during their patrols and operations and presents the highpoints of their activities. This genre tends to be shocking as it presents real individuals caught in real criminal acts or situations. One subcategory of this genre is investigation-oriented programming.

Legal Programming: Under the legal programming genre, litigation procedures and shown with casts who are sometimes and sometimes actors playing litigants and lawyers. The judges are pseudo-judges who have had real life experience in justice administration.

Social Experiments: Under this genre, emphasis is one drama, conflict and sometimes transformation in people’s lives. Experiments are carried out with real people on specific social practices and concepts like marital love and fidelity. Another example of this genre are shows which test human patience and endurance by pushing them to the brink.

Hidden Camera: This genre presents hidden cameras rolling when random passers-by encounter a staged situation and react. It is essentially meant to create humour. Some hidden cameras also claim to show upstaged events. E.g., the investigative programme Cheaters, which investigates and proves allegations of cheating in relationships.

Improvement/Makeover: This is an interventionist programme genre which entails renovations. In some cases, it involves experts intervening positively in people’s lives to help them solve problems like obesity, excessive weight loss, poor dentition etc. At other times it entails repairs and complete turn-around renovations on the beneficiaries’ houses, cars, offices and gardens.