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Reality television is a genre of television programming which, it is claimed, presents unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and features ordinary people instead of professional actors. It could be described as a form of artificial or "heightened" documentary. Although the genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television, the current explosion of popularity dates from around 2000.

Reality television covers a wide range of television programming formats, from game or quiz shows which resemble the frantic, often demeaning programmes produced in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (a modern example is Gaki no tsukai), to surveillance- or voyeurism- focused productions such as Big Brother.

Critics say that the term "reality television" is somewhat of a misnomer and that such shows frequently portray a modified and highly influenced form of reality, with participants put in exotic locations or abnormal situations, sometimes coached to act in certain ways by off-screen handlers, and with events on screen manipulated through editing and other post-production techniques.

Celebrity reality

Another subset of fly-on-the-wall-style shows involves celebrities, usually in the C-Level. Often these show a celebrity going about their everyday life: examples include The Anna Nicole Show, The Osbournes, The Girls Next Door featuring Hugh Hefner, and Newlyweds featuring Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey. In other shows, celebrities are put on location and given a specific task or tasks to do. These include The Simple Life and The Surreal Life. VH1 has created an entire block of shows dedicated to celebrity reality called celebreality.
Origins of reality television

Since reality television is a somewhat nebulous concept, basically encompassing any portrayal of people in unscripted situations, there are a number of precedents for it, starting as far back as the 1940s. Allen Funt's television show Candid Camera, which debuted in 1948 (and itself was based on his previous 1947 radio show, Candid Microphone), pulled pranks on unsuspecting ordinary people and showed their reactions. It has been called the "granddaddy of the reality TV genre." [1] The game shows Beat the Clock and Truth or Consequences, which both debuted on television in 1950, involved contestants in wacky competitions, stunts, and practical jokes. The talent search shows Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, which both made their television debuts in 1948, featured amateur competitors and audience voting.

Another predecessor was the BBC/Granada Television series Seven Up!, which was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964. The series deals with a dozen ordinary seven-year olds from a broad cross of society, and their responses to questions on everyday life (every seven years, a film is made documenting the life of the same individuals in the intervening years, titled Seven Plus Seven, 21 Up, etc.). The series cannot truly be classified as "reality television" because it is structured simply as a series of interviews, with no element of plot; still, it pioneered the concept of making television celebrities out of ordinary individuals.

The first reality show in the modern sense was the PBS series An American Family. Twelve parts were broadcast in the United States in 1973. The series dealt with a nuclear family going through a divorce. In 1974 a counterpart program, The Family, was made in the UK, following the working class Wilkins family of Reading. In 1992, Australia saw Sylvania Waters, about the nouveau riche Baker-Donaher family of Sydney. All three shows attracted their share of controversy.

Some talk shows, most notably The Jerry Springer Show, which debuted in 1991, try to present real-life drama within the talk show format by putting on guests likely to get into fights with one another on the set.
The cast of the first season (1992) of The Real World, The Real World: New York
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The cast of the first season (1992) of The Real World, The Real World: New York

Reality television as it is currently understood, though, can be traced directly to several television shows that began in the late 1980s and 1990s. COPS, which first aired in the spring of 1989, showed police officers on duty apprehending criminals; it introduced the camcorder look and cinéma vérité feel of much of later reality television. MTV's The Real World, which began in 1992, originated the concept of putting strangers together in the same environment for an extended period of time and recording the drama that ensued. It also pioneered many of the stylistic conventions that have since become standard in reality television shows, including a heavy use of soundtrack music and the interspersing of events on screen with after-the-fact "confessionals" recorded by cast members, that serve as narration. Changing Rooms, a British TV show that began in 1996, showed couples redecorating each others' houses, and was the first reality show with a self-improvement or makeover theme. The Swedish TV show Expedition Robinson, which first aired in 1997 (and was later produced in a large number of other countries as Survivor), added to the "Real World" template the idea of competition, in which cast members/contestants battled against each other and were removed from the show until only one winner remained.

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