reality TV

Traditionally, television programs, apart from the news, were scripted versions of theatre-like productions, made up and acted out in front of a television camera. The recent emergence of reality television shows, such as ‘Survivor’ and ‘Big Brother’, represents a shift to shows based upon ‘real’ information as compared to ‘scripted’ information.
This acknowledges a shift from creating ‘content’ to creating ‘structure’.
Traditional ‘sitcoms’ require writers to create ‘quality’ content with trained actors performing according to the script. In contrast, Reality TV shows merely set up a structured context inside which the ‘actors’ (usually untrained) generate lots of random content. The task for the producers is to capture the content and then structure it into a format suitable for viewing.