Real Life or Death?

Television is simply not what it used to be. It used to be a medium in which good quality entertainment aired seven days a week. These days, reality television shows are taking over the airwaves. Reality television is a genre of television programming that broadcasts unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors. Every network airs reality television shows.

Since the early 2000s, shows such as these have grown in popularity to the point where most popular programming consists of reality shows. It helps that these shows have generated enormous amounts of publicity and have so many followers that spin-off shows are now spawning spin-off shows. There are many different types of reality shows but some of the most popular are shows following celebrities' lives and or watching professionals in interesting professions.

Celebrity shows tend to be the most intriguing shows, which makes them more popular. These show a celebrity going about his or her everyday life: taking care of their families, eating meals, going to meetings, going shopping; things that everyday people do as well. In a way, seeing celebrities doing "normal" activities makes them more relatable. Everyone for the most part has their favorite celebrities whose movies they love to watch. But finding out what these stars do off camera and on their own time? It can be super cool. . .and well, stalkerish. Shows like this include "The Osbournes," "The Anna Nicole Smith Show," and "Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica."

Some shows are one-hour documentary style portrayals of professionals either going about day-to-day business or performing an entire project over the course of a series. No outside experts are brought in (at least, none appear on screen) to either provide help or to judge results; this includes medical professionals. Shows in this category would be "Deadliest Catch," which is about events that happen on fishing boats in the Bering Sea during Alaskan king crab season, and "Miami Ink," about tattoo artists in Miami who give people tattoos which usually have unique stories behind them. The longest running documentary style show and the longest running reality show ever is "COPS."

Then there are the action-packed reality game shows or reality "real-time" competitions where people get a chance to make fools of themselves while possibly also winning big prizes, such as new cars or large sums of money. These shows are constructed so that competitors are slowly eliminated until there is only one person left; the winner. In some cases, shows like "Survivor" have teams and the teams vote on either the most popular choice to win or by disapproval voting to see who is eliminated. "Dancing with the Stars," "Big Brother," and "The Biggest Loser" fit into this category.

While these shows are interesting and fun, are they primetime entertainment? Should they be overtaking television timeslots for popular sitcoms? Good questions. Maybe the issue is not the popularity of reality television. Maybe it's that television just isn't what it used to be, so producers have altered their formula for trying to draw viewers in. Take Friday nights, for example.

According to CNN, "The top Friday night show on the major networks was the 20-year-old "Law and Order" with 8.4 million viewers. That's almost four million below last week's 20th overall ranked show, "CSI: NY" on CBS. And in the 18-49 target demographic that advertisers crave, no network could reach a 2.0 average in the demographic." The average rating for this past Tuesday however, was at least a 3.0 average on three networks. The weekends of television seem to be slowly sinking into the waters of cheap, reality-style shows or movies for certain demographics. Disney Channel, for instance, has had monumental success premiering its big movie events on Friday nights--the 2007 premiere of ""High School Musical 2" was watched by 17.2 million viewers.

Regardless of whether or not you watch reality television or Friday night television, the content that you are watching is slowly changing to adapt to the current trends of today. Then again, I would hope that people buy a DVR to record these shows while they go out, because after all it is Friday night--and the weekend. Would you really stay home to watch a reality show?