Week 12 - The Role of New Media in the Success of Reality Television

Given the enormous financial investments that media corporations must contribute to achieve the high-production values demanded of dramatic television, it seems only logical that the focus on these mainstays of televised entertainment would shift to reality programming, which are often regurgitated concepts of other productions and easily replicated to varying degrees. One example would be talent contests, such as 'American Idol', which has since seen subsequent adaptation by various other networks into copy-cat iterations, like 'The Voice' and 'The X-Factor'. They are often supplied with limited budgets and are usually designed to generate maximum profits, and may be renewed for countless seasons more depending on the success of the formula, which is where new media comes into play.

New media is a major incentive that encourages these public access networks to support reality programming, which covers everything from voting systems that invite viewers to participate with the judging or elimination process (Hill, A, 2005), usually via text messaging paid for by the viewership. Multiply the cost of text messages by the number of viewers, which for 'American Idol' may mean around 15-20 million viewers, and you'll agree that this is a substantial increase in generated capital. This would also serve as an explanation as to why certain telecommunications providers are so eager to ply reality programming with their brands and logos; more viewers of reality shows using their services also serves to generate lucrative business opportunities for themselves in turn.

Compounding this is the revenue generated by advertisements on websites based around popular reality programmes, which are often subjected to millions of hits a day, e-traffic that marketers are keen to capitalise on. You may have noticed something similar to this on 'American Idol', whose judges are careful in assuring big name brands like Coca Cola that their drinking glasses - each emblazoned with Coca Cola's signature labelling - are always directly facing the cameras, insuring that the viewership recognizes the branding. Media corporations are quick to sign exorbitant deals with major brand names, whose marketing campaigns begin to saturate reality television websites with the iconography of respected commercial brands.

As Hill states, reality programming has produced a kind of mass "commercialization" of public network television (Hill, A, 2005), and the faux interactive nature of reality television is devised as a subtle means of buoying the coffers of media corporations and the bank accounts of high-flying network executives. Taking into account that the decisions made by viewers who wish to oust a certain contestant may, in fact, be ignored altogether in favour of the decisions of the programme's manufacturers, and it becomes apparent that the "interactivity" of reality television is merely ornamental.

To boost the public profile of reality programmes, magazines may feature stories of popular contestants who became embroiled in feuds with other contestants starring in the same show, or a burgeoning romance that took place between them that grew in intensity after filming, which are often engineered as a method of encouraging more people to watch for the ensuing drama to come. It is more than likely that these stories are fashioned by the creators of the programme, constructed to appeal to the human tendency to partake in salacious gossip-mongering, and are supplying the magazine in question with hefty financial incentives to run the "story".

An example of this in the form of new media would be websites that specialize in sensationalized gossip-mongering, only now the "story" may be reiterated across many countless different websites at a significantly reduced cost for the networks, thereby effectively eliminating print media as a means of codifying public interest in reality programmes. Though some of these stories may, in fact, be true, most are a part of the process of the artificialization of reality that takes place during the production of reality programmes. Inviting the viewers to partake in the so-called "interactive" nature of any given reality programme is a strategy that compels the viewership to become invested in preferred contestants, whose development during the show endears them to the audience, who may then watch the show on a more regular basis in order to follow the progress of that contestant (Hill, A, 2005).

Although television dramas and sit-coms may inspire loyalty of the same magnitude among their respective fan-bases, commercialization is not as present within these forms of televised entertainment as it is in reality programming, yet may still garner huge returns on revenue generated by the advertisements of elaborate marketing campaigns via new media. 'Lost' is a fine example of a popular television series that utilizes its inherent popularity to generate immense financial returns, and was the subject of a number of websites sponsored by the show's creators that encouraged viewer participation in unravelling the perplexing mysteries that surrounded the Island and its inhabitants.

This was a cunning marketing ploy that enticed many new viewers to become part of 'Lost's' viewership, resulting in increased revenue from advertising executives eager to hop on the bandwagon and market their wares to an expanded audience. In this way, an ardent fan-base making use of new media may prolong the life-span of a television series with a more niche demographic or saddled with an inconvenient time-slot; the creators and networks may recoup any losses through high-traffic websites that act as hubs for fans to gather and discuss the show and its key characters and themes.

Reality television, on the other hand, exploits new media to the Nth degree by pushing brand names down the throats of its audience, the concept of the show itself reduced to little more than window-dressing for subliminal marketing measures that proliferate throughout the genre in an effort to maximise profit margins.

So long as it remains fortuitous to utilize new media as a part of brand recognition and product placement, reality television shall continue to endorse companies and products that agree to bankroll them, and it is unlikely that this trend will see a reduction in the foreseeable future.