From Social Experiment to Fan Favorite: Reality TV Yesterday and Today

synopsis

It all began in 1999, when the Big Brother format emerged in the Netherlands, introducing the concept of round-the-clock surveillance and isolation. A year later, Survivor (2000) – the American version of Swedish public television’s Expedition Robinson – added strategic gameplay, intrigue and ruthless elimination. Audiences were fascinated by how “real people” behaved in extreme situations. This period also saw the meteoric rise of talent shows such as Pop Idol and American Idol (2001/2002). Reality television’s successful run continued until the arrival of a new wave of scripted programming, associated primarily with streaming services. Around the turn of the 2010s, reality formats seemed exhausted, and audiences appeared to be losing interest. Streaming brought another major shift from roughly the mid-2010s onwards. Netflix, followed by other services, discovered that reality formats were relatively inexpensive, travelled well across markets and were ideally suited to binge-watching. Over a quarter of a century, reality television evolved from a conspicuous television genre built around watching “ordinary people” into one of the fundamental ways contemporary audiovisual culture produces stories, personalities and audience participation. Reality shows may seem less dominant today than in the heyday of Big Brother, but the principles of reality television are more pervasive across audiovisual media than ever before.

biography

Milan Kruml, a Czech Television specialist in the field of formats, will show how quickly the range of non-fiction programming is changing, and not just in terms of food and cooking shows. The combination of different genres and approaches, new ideas based in part on existing concepts, but also surprisingly simple yet successful programmes, and the versatility of certain formats will all be accompanied by numerous examples from programmes created over the past two years.