In spring of ’09, I won Liberty High School’s most likely to become the next American Idol. Receiving the award-winning T-Shirt in front of the whole graduating class was a great honor. However, I never envisioned reality television in my future; especially not a show with Judge Simon Cowel’s vain insults. Fox’s American Idol phenomenon still soars high a decade after its initial premiere in 2002. The remains popular even with Cowel retired. 29.3 million viewers, 21% more than the previous season, tuned in to hear Ryan Seacrest announce the winner of the tenth and latest season of American Idol. The viewers of the show wax and wane year to year, but for eight straight seasons it remains America’s favorite evening entertainment (Bauder par 3, 10). Viewers never seem to tire of the audition episodes aired at the beginning of each season. Through learning of a contestant’s life story and hometown viewers connect with their future American Idol. Besides showing contestants with amazing talents and touching stories, they also feature an assortment of crazies, oddballs, and just plain weirdoes. It is easy to be amused by these people when watching from afar. However, if one stops to think about these exploited contestants as real human beings, one can imagine how embarrassing being portrayed as a nut job on national television must be. The owners and producers of the American Idol brand exploit and control their contestants, finalists, and winners in order to increase viewers and therefore increase profits.
The Idol brand’s owners increase in wealth each year. Simon Fuller, British talent scout and manager of the Spice Girls, and Simon Cowel, director of the recording studio BMG, founded UK’s Pop Idol in 2001. Together the two Simon...
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Reality shows sent a much-needed lifeline to the television networks industry. These shows have found a new way to bring much needed viewers, and even more important they brought in much needed money. The money came rolling into CBS after premiering Survivor, which brought in a profit of around $30,000,000 to the network. Even though Survivor is the must costly reality show, costing close to one million dollars to produce and hour of programming. In comparison to other shows, which cost far more like CBS’s series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” which cost over 1.6 million to produce per hour. With the amount of money coming in such large sums to networks have had to close monitor how much is being spent. Clearly’ the reality shows have brought in much needed assets to the flattering television networks.
The majority of romance-based reality television programming is geared towards the individuals under thirty- five years old. It is important to note, some reality shows like Survivor and Celebrity Apprentice target a wider demographic. These shows typically target eighteen to forty-nine year olds. The re...
For many Americans, country isn’t just a type of music. It’s a lifestyle. From sippin’ sweet tea on the porch, drinking beer at a tailgate or driving a pick up down the backroads, country music has made its way into the hearts and minds of many Americans. It is one of the only truly home grown American art forms. Its relatability and wide appeal has made country music one of the most commercially successful and popular genres in the United States. Using the work of scholars Tichi, Pecknold, and Ellison, I will show how country music grew from its rural southern roots into an integral part of American culture.
By 1958, no one was laughing anymore. Grabbing the attention of the public even more than the shows themselves were the scandals which emerged around them. The public's naive trust had evolved into suspicious cynicism because it had learned that many of the shows were rigged. As can be imagined, this caused great disgust among viewers. The supposed winners, for whom Americans had ro...
Reality based television has a broad landscape ranging from competitive game-like shows to programs following the daily lives of a group of people. Every major network now has some form of reality programming because the genre’s shows are high in viewership and require low costs for production. The genre is appealing to viewers because it provides them with a first-hand look into the lives of everyday people, which allows them to observe social behavior that helps them determine what is appropriate or not (Tyree, 2011, p. 397). Since the majority of modern reality stars start out as unknowns, frequent viewers of reality programming believed that fame is obtainable if they appear on a popular show (Mendible, 2004). According to Mendible’s evaluation of the genre in the article Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV, people enjoy reality programs beca...
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If T.V. news or radio have morphed into reality shows, then it is only a reflection of the viewers. As a former news reporter, the author should understand that the success
...curately portrays personality was compressed into nuggets of reality that the producers wished to convey. This truth however has no effect on the awareness of the audience who for the most part accept the edidt performance as full reality and base their perceptions of the contestants on that. According to Charles Fairchild (2007) “ ‘Idol’ relationships are not limited to familiar musician-fan binaries, but grow and evolve into a series of intimate, active relationships that stretch well beyond the life of the show” (p.355). In his research he examined Australian Idol, a singing completion similar to X-Factor, and how by using the interactive selection build an affective investment in contestants that last past the conclusion of the series. This can be applied to explain their continued success after the show concluded despite they fact they that they came in third.
Do you know the guiltiest pleasure of the American public? Two simple words reveal all—reality TV. This new segment of the TV industry began with pioneering shows like MTV’s The Real World and CBS’s Survivor. Switch on primetime television nowadays, and you will become bombarded by and addicted to numerous shows all based on “real” life. There are the heartwarming tales of childbirth on TLC, melodramas of second-rate celebrities on Celebrity Mole, and a look into a completely dysfunctional family on The Osbornes. Yet, out of all these entertaining reality shows arises the newest low for popular culture, a program based on the idea of a rich man or woman in search of the perfect marriage partner. The Bachelor, and its spin-off The Bachelorette, exemplify capitalist ideology founded on the Marxist base-superstructure model and establish the role of an active American audience.
The celebrity gossip industry has affected our assumptions about entertainment. Usually, we assume that entertainment is just for fun, entertainment is only a reflection of our culture, and entertainment is a personal choice. Nowadays, entertainment is not just for fun. Celebrities entertain us in many ways, but sometimes we do not enjoy what they do yet we still watch them. For instance, many teen idols have had meltdowns. Although it is not fun to...
Sit, Jane. "How K-pop Cashes in on Image." CNN. Cable News Network, 11 Dec. 2013. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.
Reality Television has changed television in a way that no one could have imagined. Being the one of the most talked about genre in history, it is seen by millions of viewers. It has more ratings than any other kind of show (Breyer 16). From its start, there have been many Reality Television shows. Shows like The Real World, Survivor, Big Brother, and Jersey Shore. All of these give off a negative portrayal of reality. While Americans watch these shows, it seems that the show is real life, but in reality, no pun intended, before the show is even filmed, it’s written, edited, and produced (Breyer 21). Writers humiliate and degrade people just for the plot of the show, making their private lives public (Breyer 16).
Marcel Duchamp, arguably the most influential and iconoclastic artist of the 20th Century, once said `Success is just a brush fire, you have to keep finding wood to feed it.' Never is this more true than with the Hollywood celebrity. The hundreds of celebrity successes, burning like brush-fires of variable intensity throughout the Hollywood Hills, are ultimately meaningless and palpably destructive to the film industry. In most cases, it just seems to be a matter of keeping up with the Jones's.
Lehmann, Carolin. “Reality TV: A Blessing or a Curse? An Analysis of the Influence of Reality TV on U.S. Society.” Academia. Edu 5 Nov. 2012. 29 Nov. 2013.