Reality of Reality TV
... Reality shows have become all the rage in programming over the past couple of years. ... All is revealed in her expose if an essay entitled Tales from the Cutting Room Floor: the Reality of “Reality-based” television. ... The reality of down time and unexciting footage was magically removed from America’s television sets. Seagal’s essay can be applied to almost any of today’s barrage of reality shows. Survivor, which is most often referred to as the best of the reality shows, is no different than American Detective, it too goes through some heavy editing to captivate their audiences. The reality of Survivor is only as real as what survives the editing room. ... Viewers seem to choose the reality show plot lines over those in “non-reality” shows. ... This is an editing technique that is popular in all reality shows. ... The events on Survivor appear in an order that may not have been the order they appeared in during the shooting, allowing the producers to bend reality. Another way that television executive can play with reality is controlling who is on the show. ... These dramatic and sometimes gruesome moments were also the highlights of Seagal’s work on American Detective, but only she knew the actual reality of what made it to the screen.