Reality television, the bane of Hollywood, is also the savior of networks. But it won’t die.
Universally terrible, reality television is extremely cheap to produce and the business loves it. There are few overheads, no sets to build, no unions to negotiate, and no actors to pay. And people, for some reason, watch it. As producers and networks quickly discovered, the profits are high when your costs are low. Of course, your quality is also low and over the past fifteen years our television viewing has deeply suffered.
Let’s take a look at some upcoming, new shows and the oldies that paved the way for crushingly bad TV.
So, this year, you can expect a lot of returns: The Real Housewives series on Bravo is particularly painful — women screeching about idiotic things that they wouldn’t care about if they didn’t have too much money never floats my boat. Bad Girls Club on Oxygen is worse — girls with no sense, no morals, and too much cash get way too drunk and make asses of themselves. And, of course, there’s Jersey Shore, which seems to be the finalized state of reality TV’s terrible evolution. I mean it can’t get worse than that, right?
You know what reality show I didn’t really mind? Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Why? Because it acted more as a documentary and attacked a serious social issue, though it certainly did play upon the adoration of reality shows. 
Still, it did something I think few other shows do these days: it served a purpose. Oliver did not exploit anyone for cash, fame, or enjoyment. Rather, he tried to change lives, and I think that’s admirable. Ace of Cakes is another example of a reality show that’s pretty alright, too; it’s a positive, relatively real-ish look into the baking industry — there’s nothing really negative about it! Doc-reality shows like these (the kind often found on Travel, History, or Discovery Channels) offer the only real glimmer of intellect for reality TV. Unfortunately, this format only takes up a tiny part of the reality TV playing field.
New reality TV is mercifully dwindling, though not dying out entirely. Bravo, for some reason, has really taken a shine to the genre and picked up 11 new series. Eleven! Most of them look like spinoffs or crude copies of other shows that either already exist on Bravo or on another network (coughProjectRunway). Creativity is non-existant in any of these new reality shows. It’s just junk you’ve seen a hundred times. There are rumors surfacing about a reality show that centers on real-life swingers called My Neighbor is a Swinger, which promises to be really awful and really popular because it’s all about a shocking and frankly, confusing, counter-culture, and people can’t get enough of that these days. Can’t be worse than Jersey Shore… ?
Even Funny or Die capitalized on Bravo’s tasteless addiction to the same old format:
American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc, etc — they came, they stank, they still stink, but they’re still around. Just ways to perpetuate a quest for “art” that was never really art at all. And while The Voice offers a slightly less vain, slightly more interesting version of the same – it’s still the same! And somehow there’s room for The X Factor in this ludicrous arena — we already have bad pop music competitions! Also, why is The Bachelor still on? I don’t know. I just don’t know. Thanks a lot, Survivor, for cementing this trend.
In short, reality TV = hard to kill. Is it possible? Sure. There will always be fans of the genre because it’s cheap, easy, and the possibilities are endless. But it’s only when you stop watching — because you realize it’s drivel — that there won’t be any reason for the shows to continue. That’s about as simple as it gets. In a viewer-driven industry, only you can prevent reality TV.
