All About Reality Television – “Reel or Real”

All about Reality Television – “Reel or Real”
The Inception of Television:
Television has always been a medium for educating, spreading awareness and mainly entertaining for over four decades now and will go on for decades to come. But the question faced today by the audience is whether television has lost its authenticity and innocence that it once had when it came to India. When television came into India in the early 1900s, the only broadcasted channel was doordarshan that showcased shows in coherence with the Government and still follows the same suite even today, but with the emergence of various other channels such as Zee network, Star network, colors and other many more channels like MTV, channel V, UTV Bindass have given the audience a variety of choices to choose from. Now the question arises that with the choice given to the public do the channels have a certain responsibility towards the content they showcase.
The Advent of Reality Shows:
Soap operas have always been the highest grossing point whereas television in India is concerned, until recently when it was sweeped over by reality television shows that got the audience hooked on to the shows like a bee to a jar of honey. Reality shows in India started in the late 1900s and since then have been very popular among the audience. The search for a musical band was the 1st reality show broadcasted on channel V called Viva. It was then followed by Kaun Banega Crorepati, Nach Baliye, Is Jungle se Mujhe Bachao, Sach ka Samna, Rakhi Ka swayamvar and the latest being Satyamev Jayate etc. Reality shows broadcasted on various channels today cannot be generlised saying that they disturb and disregard the values of the citizens of India or the audience in any way or form, because there are certain reality shows that do stand up to the standards of their show and provide pure entertainment and at the same time impart knowledge in the process simultaneously, the reality show is called Kaun Banega Crorepati hosted by Amitabh Bachan and which ran for 3 to 4 seasons continuously due to the popularity of the show and Satyamev Jayate that make the audience aware of certain social issues that have been hidden or swept under the rug. This show brings those issues into limelight and finds a solution to avoid it , but on the other hand there are shows that are highly overrated and exaggerated to an extent of luring the audience to voyeuristic shows such as Roadies broadcasted by MTV. This particular show is known for their foul mouthed auditions to test the participants for their threshold of being under pressure.
The Truth Behind the popularity of Reality shows:
Reality shows work mainly on the basis of TRPs as in Television Rating Points. The higher the TRPs the more the seasons and the more the money they gain. Thus in orders to attain these TRPs, the producers of the shows go to the extent of manipulating real emotions to attract more audience. The few insights brought in to attract the audience are the way the media publicizes their show by broadcasting the most entertaining snippets of the show repeatedly. The whole point behind the truth of the reality show is a myth because even though the show is real and the contestants participating in it are real, including the emotions. It all depends on the edited version and the situation they are faced with and how the end result is being broadcasted to the audience that lures them to watch shows such as these. Thus it is the audience that decides to encourage the rise of reality shows, once the audience takes up a stand to regulate what they watch, the reality shows would then come to a standstill. But in this context it also refers to the channels responsibility to tone down the content of their show on humanitarian grounds and for the welfare of the audience.