Reality Of Reality Is Reality

When you ask yourself if art imitates life or if life imitates art, the answer can most likely be found in Reality Television. Reality Television isn’t really a new concept. My parents used to watch “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” back in the 1950s. That was the beginning of reality television just as much as variety TV shows like “The Perry Como Show,” Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Benny Goodman Show,” The Lawrence Welk Show,” “The Andy Williams Show” and many others….

Next came sports broadcasts – from the Olympic Games to every major sport you could imagine. And reality television was indeed REAL, wonderful and entertaining.

Back then, ‘Reality TV’ had a pretty good name, so much so that more variety television was developed – talk shows with Dick Cavett, Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin followed. More variety music shows with Bob Hope, Sonny and Cher, Donny and Marie and others took to the airwaves featuring comedy bits, dancing, acting, singing and guests and the ‘celebrity’ reality shows featured real talent for promotion.

Dick Clark’s American Bandstand brought a whole new twist to reality television, letting the public become part of a show, just as much as one of the hottest music acts.

Then came the celebrity variety show – “Battle of the Network Stars,” “Circus of the Stars,” and competition shows, game shows like “Hollywood Squares” and “Match Game.” And those shows were entertaining because you could enjoy watching your favorite actor, singer, dancer, host or comedian actually perform skillful acts utilizing either brain power or physical ability, kind of like “Dancing With The Stars” and Allen Ludden’s, “Password .”

When MTV’s “Real World” hit the scene – suddenly reality television took on a slightly different twist and the “Road Rules” challenges became a fusion of the 70s “Battle of the Network Stars” merged with “Real World.” As audiences enjoyed the ‘gross-out’ components of the show “Fear Factor” and all the copycats came onto the scene.

When Reality TV changed from light and happy to dramatic lab rat experiments, ideas started thinning and it started to show. TV development execs got desperate to capitalize off of the successful ratings train and we ended up with train-wreck TV with people becoming human petri dishes while starting fake, scripted arguments, performing drunken acts and a number of other expletives you really don’t want to see here.

It saddens me to think that we went from quality entertainment shows with legendary, educated, trained and crafted iconic talent, to today’s shows featuring “Speidi,” Tila Tequila and so many NON-talents, who tout themselves worthy of more than 15 minutes of fame.

It kind of makes you yearn for the days Milton Berle put on makeup and a dress and the only plastic surgery you saw involved Milton Bradley’s Operation Game on kids TV commercials.

The reality is that reality TV is the reality of programming today and that, in reality brings in real ratings.... and that's a sad reality.

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