🔊 Have you seen any reality tv shows made in Japan or Abroad? What were they? If not what is your impression of the genre?  What do you think is the major appeal of Reality Television?

4.🔊 Many speculate that it all started with Survivor. Premiering on May 31, 2000, the series – which host Jeff Probst has dubbed “the first truly competitive reality format” – was a runaway hit for US network CBS, going on to not only produce a whopping 37 seasons, but spawning versions around the world – including a current Australian take on the format. At its height, Survivor has rivaled the ratings of the Superbowl in the US.

5.🔊 “Survivor sort of legitimized the genre,” explains Mike Darnell in new SBS documentary series The 2000s. Darnell was one of the first to wholeheartedly embrace reality TV – his role at FOX as President of Alternative Entertainment [NG2] for nearly 19 years saw him pioneer the unscripted TV movement, starting with another mega-hit American Idol before unleashing series including So You Think You Can Dance, The X Factor, Hell’s Kitchen, The Simple Life and more on the world.

6.🔊 Cheap content

Not only were these series drawing serious eyeballs, but they were also far cheaper to produce than their drama counterparts – many of which had budgets similar to feature films. At a time when an estimated US$14 million was spent to film the two-part pilot episode of 2004’s Lost, unscripted series was easy to cast, cheap to produce (it’s estimated it costs somewhere between US$100,000 and US$500,000 per episode to make a reality series) and it was easy to churn out hours upon hours of content.

7.🔊 “If you have to fill 40 hours of TV with scripted shows it’ll cost you an arm and a leg. You’ll be out of business because those scripted shows will do no better and probably worse than reality shows did,” says Darnell of the gradual – but rapidly growing – shift to unscripted viewing. That hard maths behind Darnell’s theory quickly translated to content produced on Australian shores, where we weren’t far behind America in churning out our own reality formats.

🔊 If it were your responsibility to pitch a new reality tv show to a network, what would be the premise?

8.🔊 Watching every day Australians

Soon we were flooded with competition shows such as Australian Idol (2003), Dancing with the Stars (2004) and My Restaurant Rules (2004), dating franchises including The Farmer Wants a Wife (2007) and makeover series like 2009’s Aussie Ladette to Lady. Viewers just couldn’t get enough of seeing “every day Australians” on their screens, no matter how contrived the situation.

9.🔊 Extending the 15 minutes

And certainly, there were plenty of those looking to try their hand at the format. The 2000s saw the explosion of blogs which celebrated the new stars of the small screen. Tabloids began chronicling the adventures of socialites such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian who both swiftly found themselves cast in their own reality TV series. And as social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook launched, so too did the number of willing reality TV participants. While Andy Warhol predicted back in 1968 that “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” the 2000s is when those looking for their own 15 minutes exploded.

🔊 Let’s look over some of the stranger examples of reality tv in from the past;

https://screenrant.com/insane-reality-shows-forgot-existed/

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManipulativeEditing 

Phonetic Chart