Please tell me they will go the way of the Jerry Springer trash talk show craze.
Please tell me it is a fad and the bubble will bust soon.
Or, go ahead and break the news I am going to spend the rest of my life watching sitcoms and dramas get cancelled for yet another, inexpensive-to-produce, blockbuster rating crapfest.
No one can say for certain, of course, but I think that two things will happen over the course of the next few years.
After the really horribly-conceived shows will soon die off in droves (like Forever Eden, which 1) had a ridiculously simple, obvious winning strategy 2) which not one person had the brains to follow), the influx of new shows will drastically slow down. There will be a few more attempts to rip off the established winners, especially Survivor, without success. When it’s all over, we’ll have a handful of good shows that are here to stay. In the meantime, TV producers will gradually…gradually…get turned off to the overused format of putting the biggest nutjobs in the country in a high-pressure enviroment designed to cause conflicts. We may see a resurgence of documentary-style shows a la The Real World.
The rules for The Amazing Race will still make no sense whatsoever. 
As long as ratings are good, as long as Joe Public gobbles up the dreck, the craze will continue. I think the market is saturated, but that doesn’t change the fact that the production companies are looking for “the next survivor”. I’m sure that tv execs are looking for “the next big thing” which we’ll whine about in 3-5 years. What that is - I dunno.
Reality Shows are cheap to produce, so make bigger profits. Of course the networks are going to continue to develop them.
“To stay?” Of course not- everything gets old and dies off eventually.
But reality TV won’t die soon. It’s NOT just a passing fad, as prime time quiz shows were a few years back. It’s going to be around for several more years, at least.
I stradle the fence here. Wheras most people either love or loathe reality tv, i find it very enjoyable when done right (survivor, the mole) and passionately hate it when done in a way that is exploitive and lacking any sort of depth (the swan :mad: ) My prediction is the “fad” aspect will fade and we’ll be left with the the shows that do have some redeeming value. I do recall people claiming that rap music was a fad that would be all but gone in a few years 
The nice thing (for the producers) about Reality TV and talk shows is that your only highly paid talent is the host. There are no writers or actors to pay. You just get a bunch of moronic dipshits (no short supply of those) and set them loose. My cousin is a professional writer and he is not amused.
I imagine it will follow the pattern of talk shows a few years ago. We went from a handfull of them to a plethora in a couple of years. Eventually on a few survived (HA!) and the most popular still remain. It seems like we are just past the peak in the Reality TV cycle. What used to be a sure thing has no had a couple of spectacular flops (Joe Millionaire 2 and the second season of The Restaurant.)
Reality TV is nothing new, of course. The first the first reality documentary (ala Real World) where cameras followed the everyday lives of a family was produced here in Santa Barbara over twenty years ago on IIRC PBS. The first reality show was probably Candid Camera which started out as Candid Mic on radio.
Haj
Eventually some original TV series will become a unexpected huge hit and in the next season will inspire thirty copycat series. Most of these will suck but they will drive the reality shows out of prime time.
Of course it’s a fad, but how “soon” it will burst is a mystery.
Does anyone remember when Westerns dominated TV? Sure it was a “fad” for a few years, but Westerns stayed on for years afterward.
There was the fad of physically challenged detectives (Longstreet-blind; Cannon-fat; Barnaby Jones-old, etc.) that went on for several years.
There used to be variety shows every night of the week. Now, “variety” is pretty much gone from prime time.
Sitcoms were “dead” in the early 1980s. All the networks were going to “dramedies” or hour-long drama or action shows. Then came Cheers, Cosby, Family Ties and the Simpsons, to name a few.
Like TV newsmagazines, reality shows are cheap to produce and the format is flexible. The networks will keep a few around for low-rated timeslots. But 30-minute sitcoms and 60-minute dramas have been the backbone of network Television since 1948. They’ll be back.
Is there any conceivable factor that would cause the cost of producing reality TV to rise? Is there any conceivable way that in the future, reality TV contestants/subjects might get a hold of a bigger piece of the pie?
I think someone’s gotta die on one of those shows before the trend goes away.
Perhaps I haven’t seen any of the “good” ones, but I don’t understand the attraction. If someone wants reality, s/he should go out and talk to some real people.
Sheesh, when did I turn into a crotchety old woman?
Well, first off, last time I checked, Jerry Springer, Ricki Flake and Maury Povich were still on the air. God knows why. They must have good ratings, or the stations wouldn’t air them.
I think reality shows will be around for a few more years, I’ll say five at the outside. Eventually the “creative” types at the networks will run out of ideas for stupid situations to put morons with no self-respect into that will make a show that people will actually want to watch. I think there is starting to be a “been there, done that” attitude for reality shows. Eventually, even Survivor will go the way of the dinosaur. I heard that by Survivor II the contestants were eating rations that the production company provided when the cameras weren’t on them- not sure how true it is, and I really don’t care enough to do a search.
These kinds of shows will always have an audience, but eventually it wil become a limited audience. Reality shows will become “genre programming”.
FTR, the one thing I really miss about having cable is watching the reality programming on the Discover Channel. * American Chopper, Monster Garage, Monster House* had become almost ritual viewing for me. But then, we weren’t watching morons in totally unrealistic situations. We were watching processes of how things get done, how interpersonal conflicts could interfere with the processes…
Sooner or later, the bulk of people will want to watch quality shows written by actual writers, with actual actors, and actual plots unfolding.
It may be later rather than sooner, but eventually it will happen.
I hope.
I think The Swan was the final straw for me.
Someone on the radio the other day pointed out one aspect of Reality shows that is a drawback for the producers: syndication.
A sitcom or drama series (especially sitcom) is only considered really successful if it runs long enough to be syndicated. Even dramas like Law and Order and ER are syndicated forever these days.
Do you think you’re going to be seeing endless reruns of Survivor: Amazon on TNT anytime soon?
It’s true that syndication is used to make up for the exorbitant production costs of series where the stars earn millions per episode, and reality shows cost a lot less, but even on Survivor, the costs have got to be going up. The number of people on the crew is much higher that it was at first, the ratings are not what they were, and the prize money was effectively doubled for the All-Stars edition.
I disagree. I see these voyeuristic shows as an early sign of the demise of civilization. They will only get worse, more violent, more lewd, more of everything, until either public outcry becomes so great they are stopped (unlikely), or until eventually someone is killed on live television.
We can’t seem to get enough of human pain and misery, so like the Romans before us we are doomed to repeat the cycle of birth, growth, greatness and ultimately self destruction.
Or maybe it’s just Friday and I’m overly tired.
One or the other.
Jenny Jones and Ricki Lake both had deaths due to episodes of their show. Even though RL is still on the air, I think these deaths did contribute heavily to the reversal of the trend.
Haj
What I think is hilarious are folks that differentiate “reality TV” from “fake TV”, or whatever the opposite of “reality TV” is.
It’s all the same stuff, man. Sure, most of the reality TV shows are crap, but then, so’s the rest of TV. Every time somebody manages to get it right, you’re gonna get a trillion copycats hoping to get a slice of that tasty, tasty pie.
And besides, they serve as an excellent buyer for the XL-1S and the VX2100…
The stupidly conceived ones will go away. The ‘race’ types will stay a bit longer.
Hold 'em Poker is always good, as only the stakes are expensive; that will stay.
Notice that shows that rely on footage from people outside the network/media business have staying power.
“Reality show” is really a misnomer. People aren’t watching thses shows for the reality of them.
The factors I see in play here are crappy tv programming that most people with functioning brains won’t waste their time on, commercials on tv running rampant, tv seasons getting shorter and shorter, and entertainment from the internet getting within our grasp. How many people would pay for an internet show like Angel that runs 52 weeks a year with no commercials? That you can watch on your current television set? I’m not saying we’re there yet, but I can see the possibilities of a life free from network television.