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Reality television is a genre of television programming which presents unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and features ordinary people instead of professional actors. more...

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Although the genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television, the current explosion of popularity dates from around 2000.

Reality television covers a wide range of television programming formats, from game or quiz shows which resemble the frantic, often demeaning programmes produced in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (a modern example is Gaki no tsukai), to surveillance- or voyeurism-focused productions such as Big Brother.

Critics say that the term "reality television" is somewhat of a misnomer. Such shows 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 manipulated through editing and other post-production techniques.

Origins of reality television

Precendents for television that portrayed people in unscripted situations began in the 1940s. Debuting in 1948,Allen Funt's Candid Camera,(based on his previous 1947 radio show, Candid Microphone), broadcast unsuspecting ordinary people reacting to pranks. It has been called the "granddaddy of the reality TV genre." Debuting in the 1950s, game shows Beat the Clock and Truth or Consequences, involved contestants in wacky competitions, stunts, and practical jokes. In 1948, talent search shows Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts featured amateur competitors and audience voting. The Miss America Pageant, first broadcast in 1954, was a competition where the winner achieved status as a national celebrity.

First broadcast in the United Kingdom in1964 the BBC/Granada Television series Seven Up!, broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary seven-year olds from a broad cross section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life. Every seven years, a film documented the life of the same individuals in the intervening years, titled Seven Plus Seven, 21 Up, etc. The series was structured simply as a series of interviews with no element of plot. However, it did broadcast individuals' character development over time.

The first reality show in the modern sense was the PBS series An American Family. Twelve parts were broadcast in the United States in 1973. The series dealt with a nuclear family going through a divorce. In 1974 a counterpart program, The Family, was made in the UK, following the working class Wilkins family of Reading. In 1992, Australia saw Sylvania Waters, about the nouveau riche Baker-Donaher family of Sydney. All three shows attracted their share of controversy.

Read more at Wikipedia.org