My original inspiration for this post was a thought about how it was odd that the scripted television show ever became popular in the first place. I realized soon after I started writing that I was incorrect about this point. A better way to put it was that the scripted show was a temporary solution until the problem of how to make reality TV was solved. Game shows and late night solved this problem first and the success of shows like Survivor, Jersey Shore, and Top Chef imply that the natural pressure in TV is for reality programming to take aim at the scripted.
Of course, not everything looks likely to fall victim to the beat of Pauly D. It’s hard to imagine shows that portray dangerous or sensitive situations (like police or medical dramas) would ever be replaced by reality versions (though a show like Cops does suggest a pathway to niche success while the sheer volume of health-related TV suggests a show might break through just by dumb luck). And there are forms of entertainment – like movies – that have no choice but to be made up by at least one person. I suppose it works just like novels – as the complexity of the story increases, people will start to prefer the scripted and created ahead of the spontaneity favored in simpler entertainments.
One other leftover thought – when I heard ‘the cabs are here’ from Jersey Shore, it didn’t feel dated to me in the same way watching George Costanza hail a cab does. I guess this is one advantage reality TV has over its scripted counterparts. When it comes to reality TV, watching someone do the stuff we used to do feels historically accurate whereas in a sitcom we often laugh at the same scenes and marvel at how the behavior was once consider normal.
