NEW TELEVISION FORMATS 'VOL I': REALITY SHOWS

In not too much occasions the same type of program can be exploited during several seasons, but the case of the 'reality show' is an exception. Its constant success tempts constantly the producers to inventing new ideas to set the next stage but with the same objective: to obtain the more shocking ideas, grotesques and specially controversial.

In its nine years of life, the 'reality show' has evolved up to unsuspected limits. Originally people in mass media was concerned about the lack of ethics in this kind of programs. Now they go too far: extreme proofs of survival and physical resistance, high degrees of capacity, absolute loss of private life ... the moral limit doesn’t exist.

The main characters of these programs are not prominent figures of science fiction. They are common persons who sell their intimacy and exhibit publicly his their human miseries in exchange for a juicy economic share. The television shows the caricature of the weakest, who for example, feels himself ugly or fat and wants to change his image. All those who take part in one 'reality show' they are used as ‘media animals’ inside of a special zoo called Television.

I leave you with a clear example and then all you could extract your own conclusions: the American channel ‘Channel 62’ chooses a marginalized social group, the Latin’s immigrants people of USA to subject them to proofs of humiliating character in exchange for legal help for one year to obtain the official card of residence.
So then… ¿Have everything a price?

NEW TIMES IN TV

Tell the difference between information against entertainment today turns into one intense job of study. The erudites in the subject start always from the same point: the evolution of the mass media. And if there is some way of diffusion that specially has suffered big changes that is the TV. Why? The principal reason is that it has turned into a great company that generates annually enormous quantities for the producers of television and private channels.

But then, those who are the responsibles of the programming in TV? Those who decide the program that will take up the ‘prime time’? Very simple: the own producers and, in the second request the private channels. They base on a premise: the high ratings; spectators eager to consume a certain kind of programs that have beaten in the last decade all prominence. All them dedicated to scatter the impact, not respecting the private life of the celebrities. Even they have created new television formats like the ' talk show ' or ' reality show '.

This type of programs are stealing hours of programming to the information and programs with most cultural character and with a social service. The professional thing is replaced by the morbid. And which is morbid in current, means money in Television.

The producers hide this new aspect of 'journalism' and they get to look professionals in front of an easily vulnerable public, unable to distinguish the journalistic analysis made by a correspondent of war in Iraq, from the other ones use by Jay Leno, Jerry Springer or Oprah Winfrey in their successful 'talks shows', most seen in USA.
However, it would be correct to indicate that if these programs take up many hours of programming, the rating answer them with a positive way. So, probably then, we cannot choose a guilty yet...