Week 11: How does Hill define reality TV?

Hills (2005) defines reality TV based on three main perspectives: television industry, television scholars and television audience. In the ever changing television industry, hybridisation is the main approach for producers to create new genres from old shows settings. For instance, reality game show is one of the typical programs that corporate reality and documentation. Hills (2005) also state: “The term reality TV is so flexible that it can be applied to any type of popular factual programming the industry wants to sell to channels and viewers at home or aboard” (p. 44-45). However, the view of scholars is somewhat more ‘realistic’ as they think of how fact and fiction relate to each other in popular factual television e.g. Corner (as cited in Hills, 2006) claims that we should think outside the box of documentary genre in order to understand the ‘reality’ in the type of show mentioned above. Finally, the audience of reality television also have various ways to define then term. Some people understand the term as “real life documentaries” and see the show as ‘real’. Hills (2006) also argues on how scheduled programs attract a large amount of occasional viewers as the shows often are a serial with strong character in and out each episodes so people don’t have to get too into it. In the end, the term 'reality TV' can be defined as an series of fact and fiction stories ranged from the continuous soaps documentary to game shows but yet to be stabled.

Reference:

Hill, A. (2005) The reality genre. In A. Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. (pp. 14 – 40). Oxon: Routledge.