Reality TV Factual Entertainment and Television Audiences

What is the purpose of reality television? Does it provide information and education to the audience, or are the program makers simply exploiting real people's lives for the purposes of entertainment? Can we rely on documentaries to follow the ethics of programme making in terms of truth and accuracy?
"Real TV" offers a wide-ranging, international, contemporary investigation into the field of factual entertainment, combining historical, theoretical, economic, aesthetic and empirical approaches. The book also provides a sustained investigation into ethical issues and public interest in order to show that such concepts are integral to an understanding of the development of factual entertainment.
The current growth rate for "real" TV in factual and fictional television programs, film and websites on both sides of the Atlantic, has given rise to international debate about the function and influence of factual entertainment on audiences and mass media. "Real TV "presents a timely reflection on the development of factual entertainment and audience attraction to increasingly problematic hybrid forms of factual TV.

Reality TV restores a crucial, and often absent, element to the critical debate about reality television: the voices of people who watch reality programmes. From Animal Hospital to Big Brother, Annette Hill argues that much can be learned from listening to audience discussion about this popular and rapidly changing television genre. Viewers' responses to reality TV can provide invaluable information to enhance our understanding of both the reality genre and contemporary television audiences. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative audience research to understand how viewers categorise the reality genre, and how they judge the performance of ordinary people and the representation of authenticity within different types of reality programmes. * Do audiences think reality TV is real? * Can people learn from watching reality TV? * How critical are viewers of reality TV? Reality TV argues that audiences are engaged in a critical examination of the development of popular factual television. The book examines how audiences can learn from watching reality programmes, and how viewers think and talk about the ethics of reality TV.

1. Introduction: Reality TV 2. The Rise of Reality TV 3. The Reality Genre 4. Performance and Authenticity 5. The Idea of Learning 6. Ethics of Care 7. Pet Deaths 8. Conclusion: Critical Viewers

Annette Hill is a Reader in Communication at the University of Westminster. She is the author of (John Libbey, 1997) co-author of (Routledge, 1999) and co-editor of (Routledge, 2003)