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Headline, Industry News
Why Canadians love reality TV
Monday April 14th 2014Reports of reality TV’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Not so long ago, industry insiders predicted the craze would soon fade. There are only so many TV talent competitions and fly-on-the-wall camera shows audiences will watch before tiring, they said.
But from Survivor to Naked and Afraid, The Voice to The Amazing Race, reality TV is still going strong.
No one can claim reality TV is more popular today than during the years Survivor and American Idol broke the ratings barrier in 2002, but the reality is that people are still watching it in droves.
Survivor and The Amazing Race regularly place in the Top 10 most-watched programs across Canada in any given week.
When Survivor, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and Big Brother shot to the top of the ratings — more than a decade ago — Syracuse University communications professor and culture expert Robert Thompson said the audience was fed up with tired, stale sitcoms of the day.
Reality TV engaged the audience because it was immediate, unpredictable and lively, Thompson said.
That’s still true. But today’s audience has splintered.
Viewers are scattered among increasingly specialized cable channels, each serving a specific niche.
The mass audience today is drawn to traditional network TV almost solely by major events — sports, urgent national news and award shows.
The bigger, better-known reality programs qualify as major events, especially as they near their final reveals.
Even American Idol, which has tumbled in the ratings, continues to draw a crowd, particularly among younger viewers 18 to 34.
The Voice debuted in 2011, nearly a decade after American Idol.
The Voice’s growing success is a reminder there’s still a wide audience for a TV singing competition that feels fresh and new, even if it has been nearly 10 years since Carrie Underwood won Idol in 2005.
The Canadian version of Big Brother airs during the crowded, competitive winter-spring TV season.
The U.S. edition airs in summer when audiences are less engaged.
For whatever reason, reality TV speaks to more people in Canada than in the U.S., relative to the size of our two populations.
More than three million viewers watched the Amazing Race Canada finale last September. During its summer-long run, the audience never dipped below 2.7 million, in a population of 35 million.
The U.S. Amazing Race peaked at 13 million U.S. viewers in 2005, in a nation of 317 million.
The current all-star U.S. edition of Amazing Race stumbled out of the gate. The most recent episode managed just nine million U.S. viewers, even as that same episode drew 2.5 million viewers across Canada.
Why reality TV appeals to Canadian viewers more than U.S. ones is for social scientists to figure out. But it’s a reality.
There’s a growing worry that, as the TV landscape grows more crowded and competitive, some reality shows are upping the stakes, driving more conflict and confrontation in their chase for ever more viewers.
The pressure cooker of a reality show like Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen has grown more heated in recent season, as contestants appear to be cast for their volatility and inability to get along as much as for their cooking ability.
Programs like Hell’s Kitchen and Big Brother, particularly popular among younger viewers, have been accused fairly or unfairly of contributing to a general coarsening of society and social discourse.
That’s unlikely to change soon.
“The madness of TV is the madness of human life,” the futurist and social critic Camille Paglia has said. “Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books.”
That may not be entirely true – most book readers might disagree – but it does help explain the audience’s continuing fascination with a genre often dismissed as pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Source: Vancouver Sun
Headline, Industry News
Why Canadians love reality TV
Monday April 14th 2014Reports of reality TV’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Not so long ago, industry insiders predicted the craze would soon fade. There are only so many TV talent competitions and fly-on-the-wall camera shows audiences will watch before tiring, they said.
But from Survivor to Naked and Afraid, The Voice to The Amazing Race, reality TV is still going strong.
No one can claim reality TV is more popular today than during the years Survivor and American Idol broke the ratings barrier in 2002, but the reality is that people are still watching it in droves.
Survivor and The Amazing Race regularly place in the Top 10 most-watched programs across Canada in any given week.
When Survivor, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and Big Brother shot to the top of the ratings — more than a decade ago — Syracuse University communications professor and culture expert Robert Thompson said the audience was fed up with tired, stale sitcoms of the day.
Reality TV engaged the audience because it was immediate, unpredictable and lively, Thompson said.
That’s still true. But today’s audience has splintered.
Viewers are scattered among increasingly specialized cable channels, each serving a specific niche.
The mass audience today is drawn to traditional network TV almost solely by major events — sports, urgent national news and award shows.
The bigger, better-known reality programs qualify as major events, especially as they near their final reveals.
Even American Idol, which has tumbled in the ratings, continues to draw a crowd, particularly among younger viewers 18 to 34.
The Voice debuted in 2011, nearly a decade after American Idol.
The Voice’s growing success is a reminder there’s still a wide audience for a TV singing competition that feels fresh and new, even if it has been nearly 10 years since Carrie Underwood won Idol in 2005.
The Canadian version of Big Brother airs during the crowded, competitive winter-spring TV season.
The U.S. edition airs in summer when audiences are less engaged.
For whatever reason, reality TV speaks to more people in Canada than in the U.S., relative to the size of our two populations.
More than three million viewers watched the Amazing Race Canada finale last September. During its summer-long run, the audience never dipped below 2.7 million, in a population of 35 million.
The U.S. Amazing Race peaked at 13 million U.S. viewers in 2005, in a nation of 317 million.
The current all-star U.S. edition of Amazing Race stumbled out of the gate. The most recent episode managed just nine million U.S. viewers, even as that same episode drew 2.5 million viewers across Canada.
Why reality TV appeals to Canadian viewers more than U.S. ones is for social scientists to figure out. But it’s a reality.
There’s a growing worry that, as the TV landscape grows more crowded and competitive, some reality shows are upping the stakes, driving more conflict and confrontation in their chase for ever more viewers.
The pressure cooker of a reality show like Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen has grown more heated in recent season, as contestants appear to be cast for their volatility and inability to get along as much as for their cooking ability.
Programs like Hell’s Kitchen and Big Brother, particularly popular among younger viewers, have been accused fairly or unfairly of contributing to a general coarsening of society and social discourse.
That’s unlikely to change soon.
“The madness of TV is the madness of human life,” the futurist and social critic Camille Paglia has said. “Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books.”
That may not be entirely true – most book readers might disagree – but it does help explain the audience’s continuing fascination with a genre often dismissed as pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Source: Vancouver Sun
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Headline, Industry News
Why Canadians love reality TV
Monday April 14th 2014Reports of reality TV’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Not so long ago, industry insiders predicted the craze would soon fade. There are only so many TV talent competitions and fly-on-the-wall camera shows audiences will watch before tiring, they said.
But from Survivor to Naked and Afraid, The Voice to The Amazing Race, reality TV is still going strong.
No one can claim reality TV is more popular today than during the years Survivor and American Idol broke the ratings barrier in 2002, but the reality is that people are still watching it in droves.
Survivor and The Amazing Race regularly place in the Top 10 most-watched programs across Canada in any given week.
When Survivor, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and Big Brother shot to the top of the ratings — more than a decade ago — Syracuse University communications professor and culture expert Robert Thompson said the audience was fed up with tired, stale sitcoms of the day.
Reality TV engaged the audience because it was immediate, unpredictable and lively, Thompson said.
That’s still true. But today’s audience has splintered.
Viewers are scattered among increasingly specialized cable channels, each serving a specific niche.
The mass audience today is drawn to traditional network TV almost solely by major events — sports, urgent national news and award shows.
The bigger, better-known reality programs qualify as major events, especially as they near their final reveals.
Even American Idol, which has tumbled in the ratings, continues to draw a crowd, particularly among younger viewers 18 to 34.
The Voice debuted in 2011, nearly a decade after American Idol.
The Voice’s growing success is a reminder there’s still a wide audience for a TV singing competition that feels fresh and new, even if it has been nearly 10 years since Carrie Underwood won Idol in 2005.
The Canadian version of Big Brother airs during the crowded, competitive winter-spring TV season.
The U.S. edition airs in summer when audiences are less engaged.
For whatever reason, reality TV speaks to more people in Canada than in the U.S., relative to the size of our two populations.
More than three million viewers watched the Amazing Race Canada finale last September. During its summer-long run, the audience never dipped below 2.7 million, in a population of 35 million.
The U.S. Amazing Race peaked at 13 million U.S. viewers in 2005, in a nation of 317 million.
The current all-star U.S. edition of Amazing Race stumbled out of the gate. The most recent episode managed just nine million U.S. viewers, even as that same episode drew 2.5 million viewers across Canada.
Why reality TV appeals to Canadian viewers more than U.S. ones is for social scientists to figure out. But it’s a reality.
There’s a growing worry that, as the TV landscape grows more crowded and competitive, some reality shows are upping the stakes, driving more conflict and confrontation in their chase for ever more viewers.
The pressure cooker of a reality show like Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen has grown more heated in recent season, as contestants appear to be cast for their volatility and inability to get along as much as for their cooking ability.
Programs like Hell’s Kitchen and Big Brother, particularly popular among younger viewers, have been accused fairly or unfairly of contributing to a general coarsening of society and social discourse.
That’s unlikely to change soon.
“The madness of TV is the madness of human life,” the futurist and social critic Camille Paglia has said. “Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books.”
That may not be entirely true – most book readers might disagree – but it does help explain the audience’s continuing fascination with a genre often dismissed as pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Source: Vancouver Sun
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