All Types of Entertainment

All Types Of Entertainment
In today’s society everyone seems to be trying to find the best form of entertainment. Most people now days seem to find this entertainment fix with television. So many people seem to watch TV for the simple fact that it offers such a wide variety of choices. The different kinds of series can be broken down into four major groups: situation comedies, serial shows, reality television, and sports.
A major category of TV shows is the situation comedy. In situation comedies the characters remain in the same situation from episode to episode. The situation usually focuses on family, workplace, or a group of friends. It was the first of the categories to come about, starting in black and white in the 1940’s. Shows such as “Leave It To Beaver” and “I Love Lucy” were shows based on the stereotypes of their time, which pulled in its viewers because they could relate to the storylines of the shows. Most sitcoms are a half-hour in length and aired weekly. Many of the earliest sitcoms were direct adaptations of existing radio shows. Eventually, sitcoms began to divide themselves into two distinct groups: the domestic comedy, which focused on a family or a married couple in their home, and the workplace comedy, which focused on the employees at a workplace. Another major TV show category is something called a serial show. Serials in television are often in a weekly prime time slot, which relies on a continuing plot that unfolds in a serial fashion, episode by episode. Serials typically follow main plot arcs that span entire seasons or even the full run of the series, which sets them apart from regular sitcoms. The biggest tool used in serials is the use of cliffhangers which is still prevalent in adventure shows, it is just that they are now typically used just before a commercial break and the viewer need only wait a few minutes to see its resolution. Shows such as “Lost” and “24” exemplify this scenario the best because they always involve suspense at the end of each week’s episode. This type of suspense almost forces the viewer to watch week in and week out. Reality television, the most recent and arguably the most popular genre, is television programming that presents unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and features ordinary people instead of professional actors. Although the genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television, the term “reality television” is most commonly used to describe programs produced since 2000. Probably the most popular show of this new era was “Survivor” which had rating through the roof. It became so popular that the show has had 16 seasons to date. These “reality” shows are frequently portray a modified and highly influenced form of reality, with participants put in exotic locations or abnormal situations, sometimes coached to act in certain ways by off-screen handlers, and with events on screen sometimes manipulated through editing and other post-production techniques. There are several different styles within the genre of Reality TV such as documentary style, elimination/game shows, self-improvement, dating, talk shows, hidden cameras, and hoaxes. The last and probably the most overlooked as a particular category are sports programming. Sports play a vital role in the entertainment industry and is probably the oldest form of entertainment. The first televised sporting event was a college baseball game between Columbia and Princeton in 1939, covered by one camera providing a point of view along the third base line. But the first network sports broadcast was NBC's Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, which premiered in 1944 with the Willie Pep vs. Chalky White Featherweight Championship bout. Sports soon became a fixture on prime-time network programming, often accounting for one third of the networks' total evening fare. And that trend continues today with the best example being the Super Bowl, which is usually the most viewed program on television all year. The most popular form of entertainment in today’s society comes in several different genres. All these different types of shows are immensely popular and have impacted the American lifestyle. The different decades have brought all different types of television shows and showing a clear example of how times really do change. But one thing is for sure: we all will keep watching.