{"id":51767,"date":"2017-05-08T00:59:32","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T07:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=51767"},"modified":"2017-05-08T01:01:18","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T08:01:18","slug":"harsh-reality-reality-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/harsh-reality-reality-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"The Harsh Reality of “Reality” TV"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following is an article from Uncle John\u2019s Bathroom Reader<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n

\"snooki\"<\/a>AS SEEN ON TELEVISION<\/strong><\/p>\n

The proliferation of reality TV started in the United States with MTV\u2019s The Real World<\/em> in 1992, and spread globally with Survivor<\/em> and Big Brother<\/em> a few years later. The success of these programs proved that nonscripted shows full of nonactors could deliver huge ratings at a fraction of the cost it took to produce scripted shows. Production companies and TV networks took notice, and by the early 2000s, the prime-time schedule was being taken over by so-called reality.<\/p>\n

Today, reality programming consists of two broad categories: the \u201cfly on the wall\u201d show in which cameras document the lives of ordinary people, and reality game shows in which groups of people compete for cash and prizes. In both cases, viewers expect drama, conflict, humor, and a satisfying conclusion, just like scripted television. How do producers accomplish that with an \u201cunscripted\u201d show? By leaving very little to chance. The extent to which many of these shows are rigged might surprise you.<\/p>\n

SHOW: House Hunters, HGTV<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow home buyers as they choose between three properties shown to them by a real-estate agent.<\/p>\n

REALITY: In 2012, after the Jensen family appeared on the show, wife Bobi told the real-estate website Hooked On Houses that just about everything they did on the show was faked:<\/p>\n

“The producers said they found our (true) story\u2014that we were getting a bigger house and turning our other one into a rental\u2014boring and overdone. They didn\u2019t even accept us for the show until we closed on the house we were buying. Then when they decided to film our episode, we had to scramble to find houses to tour and pretend we were considering. The ones we looked at weren\u2019t even for sale\u2026they were just our two friends\u2019 houses who were nice enough to madly clean for days in preparation for the cameras!”<\/p>\n

Only a few months earlier, Slate magazine had quoted HGTV general manager Kathleen Finch as insisting that \u201cwe are a network of journalistic storytelling, not dramatic storytelling. We\u2019re very conscious of not allowing any kind of fake drama.\u201d<\/p>\n

SHOW: Duck Dynasty, A&E<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow the Robertson family of Louisiana, headed by patriarch Phil, who owns a successful business selling duck calls. The show portrays the Robertson men as bearded hillbillies in full camo gear.<\/p>\n

REALITY: Hillbillies? More like yuppies. In 2013 several photos emerged of Phil\u2019s adult sons and their families that were taken before the show started. Not only were the men not bearded, they were dressed in khakis and pressed shirts. And in one photo, the clean-cut sons are armed with\u2026golf clubs. In a Washington Monthly expos\u00e9 about Duck Dynasty, Daniel Luzer wrote, \u201cA&E appears to have taken a large clan of affluent, college-educated, mildly conservative, country-club Republicans, common across the nicer suburbs of the old South, and repackaged them as the Beverly Hillbillies.\u201d<\/p>\n

SHOW: Call of the Wildman, Animal Planet<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow Ernie \u201cTurtleman\u201d Brown as he helps fellow Kentuckians whose properties have been invaded by nuisance wildlife. He catches the critters with his bare hands and then lets them go in the woods.<\/p>\n

REALITY: Call of the Wildman now airs with a disclaimer: \u201cThe preceding program contains some dramatizations.\u201d They\u2019re not kidding. A 2014 article in Mother Jones magazine accused the show of not only faking some of the rescues but also treating animals inhumanely. The article focused on a July 2012 episode in which Brown captures a raccoon (possibly rabid) living in a family\u2019s house. \u201cFluffy doesn\u2019t have rabies,\u201d he yells after catching the animal, \u201cshe\u2019s got babies!\u201d Then Brown uses the mom to help him find her offspring in the crawl space. The Mother Jones investigation discovered that \u201cFluffy\u201d (Turtleman names all the critters he catches) couldn\u2019t have had babies\u2026because Fluffy is male. The baby raccoons, it turned out, were delivered to the house by a trapper. As always, Brown promised to release them into the wild. But when the raccoons were delivered to a wildlife sanctuary a week after filming, they were reportedly \u201cemaciated\u201d and clinging to life. One didn\u2019t survive. Other allegations: the show \u201cused an animal that had been drugged with sedatives in violation of federal rules\u201d; and in one scene where Brown identifies an animal by its droppings, the \u201cdroppings\u201d were made from \u201cNutella, Snickers bars, and rice.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Sharp Entertainment, which produces Call of the Wildman, insisted that \u201cthe humane treatment of our animals is a top priority.\u201d But the spokesperson also explained that Sharp is in the business of \u201cguided reality.\u201d And even though Brown really does catch the critters with his bare hands, an anonymous source from the show said that \u201c99 percent of Turtleman\u2019s lines are scripted.\u201d<\/p>\n

SHOW: Real Housewives, Bravo<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow the exploits of cliques of well-to-do women from various American cities. Episodes feature fights, betrayal, drinking, and sexual situations.<\/p>\n

REALITY: The gossip website RadarOnline posted photos of the cast and crew of Real Housewives of New York City filming a \u201cspontaneous\u201d street scene: \u201cCarole Radziwill and Heather Thompson were taking instructions from producers, shooting multiple takes, and waiting for breaks in dialogue to ensure cameras were set up.\u201d The gossip site also reported that Real Housewives of Atlanta cast member Walter Jackson confessed that\u2014at the behest of producers\u2014he pretended to be Kenya Moore\u2019s boyfriend \u201cto give Kenya a story line.\u201d Contrary to what viewers saw, the two were not a couple.<\/p>\n

SHOW: American Idol, Fox<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: At the beginning of each season, thousands of aspiring singers line up in various cities for a chance to audition in front of the celebrity judges. If the judges deem a singer good enough, he or she gets a \u201cgolden ticket\u201d to compete on the show in Hollywood. Singers not good enough are often ridiculed (on national TV) before being sent home.<\/p>\n

REALITY: By the time most singers get in front of the celebrity judges, their fate has already been determined. In 2011 a former contestant who identified herself by the fake name \u201cMaria Saint\u201d revealed that several of the top singers didn\u2019t even have to audition. They\u2019d been \u201crecruited\u201d for the show by talent scouts. And those huge lines full of hopefuls we see on TV were actually filmed weeks or months before the celebrity judges showed up. The hopefuls sing for the show\u2019s producers, after which, according to Saint, each singer is given a piece of paper with the producer\u2019s name along with a code: \u201cY\u201d means the singer is good enough to move on; \u201cK\u201d means the singer isn\u2019t great but has potential; and \u201cN\u201d means the singer\u2019s not good enough for the show\u2026but still might still get in front of the judges. \u201cTake my advice,\u201d wrote Saint, \u201cif you\u2019re an \u2018N\u2019 and you want to see the process and you\u2019re okay with the fact that you may be humiliated and that\u2019s all right with you, then by all means, take the chance-of-a-lifetime experience.\u201d Saint kept her identity secret, fearing she could be sued for up to $5 million for breaching a confidentiality agreement that all hopefuls must sign.<\/p>\n

SHOW: Kourtney and Kim Take New York, E!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow the exploits of the Kardashian sisters as they navigate the perils of life, love, and family. In one episode in 2011, Kim flew to Dubai to have a heart-to-heart talk with her mom, Kris Jenner, to tell her that she was going to divorce her husband, Kris Humphries.<\/p>\n

REALITY: After the show aired, a photograph of Kim and her mother leaving a soundstage in Los Angeles wearing the exact same outfits, hairstyles, and makeup they had in \u201cDubai\u201d showed up on the Internet. And the photo was taken on December 6, 2011\u2014a full week after news broke that Kim was divorcing Humphries. Not only was the location faked, so was the entire conversation between mother and daughter.<\/p>\n

SHOW: Toddlers & Tiaras, TLC<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow the highly competitive world of child beauty pageants.<\/p>\n

REALITY: When RadarOnline broke the story about the scripted scenes in Real Housewives of New York City, one of the online commenters was former Toddlers & Tiaras pageant mom Darci McHenry, who wrote: \u201cWe had to \u2018re-shoot\u2019 things that started out spontaneously. We were re-fed lines to re-create a \u2018missed\u2019 moment. Plus, you\u2019re mic\u2019d the whole time. You can be addressing one person, and editors can come in and splice it to make it look like you\u2019re addressing someone else because it makes for better television.\u201d She added that one scene of a little girl \u201cspontaneously\u201d singing a song was shot six times.<\/p>\n

In 2012 Maxine Tinnel, who was hired to stage pageants for the show, told the New York Post that everything on Toddlers & Tiaras is preplanned to ensure that the competitive kids and squabbling parents are always at each other\u2019s throats. Capturing this is difficult, says Tinnel, because the pageants aren\u2019t nearly as combative as the show makes them out to be: \u201cWhen we have downtime, the kids are sitting on the floor coloring or playing together.\u201d The real trick to creating a tense atmosphere, she says, is in the casting: \u201cThey find the crazy families first, then find a pageant near them.\u201d<\/p>\n

SHOW: Hell\u2019s Kitchen, Fox<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Twenty contestants compete for a chance to become head chef at one of Gordon Ramsay\u2019s restaurants. Each episode features a dinner service where the British celebrity chef yells bleeped-out profanities at the contestants, smashes poorly cooked meat with his bare hand, and often shuts down the service early. One chef is eliminated each week, at the sole discretion of Ramsay.<\/p>\n

REALITY: Regular viewers often ask, \u201cHow did some of these clueless chefs even get on the show?\u201d In a 2013 interview with Emmy magazine, Ramsay answered that question during a rant about \u201cthe muppets I have to work with.\u201d He said, \u201cThere\u2019s fifty percent cast for character, and there\u2019s fifty percent cast for talent.\u201d That explains why obviously inferior chefs remain on the show after better chefs have been eliminated\u2014it makes for better drama.<\/p>\n

But regardless of how they\u2019re selected, if being lambasted by Ramsay looks tough on the screen, it\u2019s even tougher in real life. For five weeks, the chefs are completely isolated from the outside world\u2014no TV, no Internet, no calls home. There are cameras everywhere, even in the bathrooms. Most of their work days last from dawn until 2:00 a.m., and the contestants must do all of their cooking and cleaning themselves. It\u2019s so stressful, in fact, that after a contestant is eliminated, he or she is immediately sent to a psychiatrist to be evaluated. Why? According to a show insider who spoke to the New York Post<\/em>, the producers \u201cwant to make sure you don\u2019t want to kill yourself\u2014or someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

So is it worth it? Out of the dozen or so winners in the show\u2019s history, only half received the promised job of head chef\u2014some were given lesser positions, and a few didn\u2019t get any job at all. (They got a cash prize instead.)<\/p>\n

SHOW: Mystery Diners, Food Network<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow restaurant \u201cfixer\u201d Charles Stiles as he assists restaurant owners who are losing money and can\u2019t figure out why. Stiles\u2019s company comes in at night and secretly installs hidden cameras. Then company operatives pose as employees and customers while Stiles and the restaurant owner sit in a control room and watch what transpires. In every episode, restaurant employees are caught engaging in some kind of shady activity, which leads to a heated confrontation, dramatic firings, and a grateful owner.<\/p>\n

REALITY: If it seems as if some of the \u201cproblem employees\u201d that Stiles\u2019s company exposes are paid actors (because who would act like that and then allow themselves to be on TV?), it\u2019s because they are. In 2013 a former employee of Big Earl\u2019s Greasy Eats in Cave Creek, Arizona, told the Sonoran News that when the Mystery Diners production crew filmed an episode there, they brought in paid actors. The confrontations were staged, and some required several retakes.<\/p>\n

SHOW: Breaking Amish, TLC<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow five young adults\u2014four Amish and one Mennonite\u2014who decide to leave their rural, technology-free, religious upbringings in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and go to New York City. They live the \u201cEnglish\u201d life for a while before deciding whether or not to go back to their traditional homes.<\/p>\n

REALITY: Almost immediately after TLC aired the first episode in 2012, accusations arose that Breaking Amish is fake. According to London\u2019s Daily Mail<\/em>: \u201cWhile each cast member claims to have grown up in the strict communities, evidence has surfaced suggesting they have decidedly dark pasts\u2014involving divorce, children, and time away from the faith.\u201d In fact, two cast members supposedly met each other for the first time on the show, but a Facebook photo taken a year earlier shows the two of them together. TLC execs say they never implied that cast members lived a completely Amish lifestyle before the show, but Hot Snakes Media, which produces the show for TLC, says on its website that Breaking Amish \u201cfollows the lives of courageous young Amish men and women as they experience life, for the first time, outside of the Amish community.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the allegations of fakery kept coming in, TLC revised the storylines throughout the first season to reflect the fact the young men and women weren\u2019t as \u201cpure\u201d as the show had made them out to be.<\/p>\n

SHOW: Bug Juice, Disney Channel<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow boys and girls at a summer camp.<\/p>\n

REALITY: In an article posted on the Writers\u2019 Guild of America\u2019s website, veteran script writer David Rupel explains how reality TV really works: \u201cThe first thing is that the term \u2018unscripted\u2019 is a fallacy. No, we don\u2019t write pages of dialogue, but we do create formats, cast people based on character traits, and edit scenes to tell a powerful, intriguing tale.\u201d He cited an example from Bug Juice:<\/p>\n

“We faced a major problem with our boy-girl love story. After weaving this story line through nine episodes, we were caught flat-footed when our boy, Connor, had the nerve to dump his girl, Stephanie, off camera! We had enough interview bites to explain what happened, but we needed a good visual to make it work. If you catch a rerun of the show, you will see a happy Stephanie obliviously bounce up to Connor, who solemnly takes her hand and leads her off, as his interview bite explains he needs to end things. With the help of a tender music cue, it turned out to be a touching and bittersweet end to our summer romance. The reality: Steph walked up to Connor, gushed about his Adidas T-shirt, and they headed off to have lunch. We used the interview bites and music cue to shape the otherwise innocuous scene to approximate the reality that we failed to shoot.”<\/p>\n

SHOW: Storage Wars, A&E<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow professional buyers as they bid on the contents of abandoned or unpaid storage units.<\/p>\n

REALITY: Former cast member Dave Hester sued Storage Wars for wrongful termination in 2012. He says the show fired him because he publicly claimed it was rigged: \u201cThe producers staged entire units, planted items in lockers after having them appraised weeks in advance, and funneled cash to weaker teams to buy lockers they could not have otherwise afforded.\u201d A&E\u2019s\u2019s defense: \u201cThe composition of the show is covered by the First Amendment.\u201d A judge agreed and ordered Hester to pay the network\u2019s legal costs. But Hester is sticking to his story. He knows the show is rigged because he helped rig it. According to RadarOnline, \u201cHester planted items that he owned in lockers he bought and was even paid by the production company for \u2018renting\u2019 those items.\u201d<\/p>\n

SHOW: Snooki & JWoww, MTV<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Cameras follow Nicole \u201cSnooki\u201d Polizzi and Jennifer \u201cJWoww\u201d Farley in this Jersey Shore spin-off as they\u2014like Kourtney and Kim (and many other reality shows)\u2014navigate life and love.<\/p>\n

REALITY: In her book Baby Bumps: From Party Girl to Proud Mama<\/em><\/a>, Polizzi confessed that the story lines on Snooki & JWoww are all planned out in advance. In 2012, when she informed the show\u2019s producer that she was pregnant, the first thing he said was, \u201cGet me a rewrite, ASAP!\u201d Then the producers threw out their plans for filming in bars and quickly \u201cconcocted\u201d scenes \u201cin a pet store, in a baby-clothing store, at a psychic\u2019s, and at the doctor\u2019s office.\u201d Critics and viewers complained that the ensuing season felt \u201cpainfully scripted.\u201d<\/p>\n

SHOW: The Voice, NBC<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cREALITY\u201d: Popular music artists mentor up-and-coming singers who are chosen via \u201cblind\u201d auditions. The mentors can only listen to the contestants\u2019 voices before deciding whether to take them on as students. Winners are ultimately determined by a fan-voting system.<\/p>\n

REALITY: NBC Universal is very adamant that its hit show is not rigged in any way. \u201cWe have never manipulated the outcome on this show\u2014NBC and The Voice producers take the fairness and integrity of this competition far too seriously.\u201d But you wouldn\u2019t know that from the 32-page contract every contestant must sign. The New York Daily News<\/em> broke the story in March 2014 after an anonymous Twitter user leaked the \u201cdehumanizing\u201d contract online. Some highlights:<\/p>\n