They're not real

[bartl]

Grant:

I think it was from you that I first learned about using the far more accurate "unscripted shows" vs. the wildly inaccurate "reality shows."

[Steven Grant]

Even "unscripted shows" isn't really very accurate, since most of them operate off some sort of scripts, even if it's in the editing room. And quite a few of them obviously have at least general scripts laid out beforehand. Producers are rarely keen on not getting the elements they think they need to draw an audience.

But reality show is just the name of the shop now...

- Grant

[badMike]

Of course there's the two types of reality shows: the game shows (The Amazing Race) and the slice-of-life shows (Dog the Bounty Hunter). But both generally operate the same way: They're heavily plotted by producers ahead of time and, yes, they employ writers post-shooting and pre-editing.

I know one of the game shows (Top Chef) shows a disclaimer at the end that says that sometimes the producers pick who gets eliminated, not the show judges. And The Amazing Race has been accused of holding back plane tickets on certain competing teams. They clearly know who they want, maybe not always to win, but which teams they want to succeed until the final episode.

But I think after a lifetime of calling comic books "comic books," when they're neither comical nor books, using the term "reality show" doesn't bother me at all.

[Steven Grant]

That's a regular rumor about THE AMAZING RACE, but, since they are clearly a game show, rules regulating game shows apply to them, and the producers purposely rigging the show in favor of one team or another would land all of CBS in very expensive hot water. So it's unlikely. I should think that if producers were rigging the show, Alison/Wassisname and Rob/Amber (2nd time around) wouldn't have been eliminated so early on their respective seasons.

- Grant

[badMike]

That's a good point about the game show aspect, but from living in Hollywood and knowing folks in "the biz," I'm at the point now believing that things are never what they seem, especially on these kinds of shows. There may be a way of crafting "rules" ahead of time that let producers get away with stuff. And I don't think the show is "rigged" that lets people win, but "rigged" so teams compete in more exciting ways.

Example: the final task of the last season seemed "rigged" only in the way that the task was virtually impossible to solve and all teams only had a short time limit to spend on it, which created a scenario where the end came down to a mad foot race with teams separated only by a few minutes. There was no way for a team, say, to show up hours ahead of time and stroll across the finish line with the other teams pathetically behind by half a day. It just seems that over the seasons, the producers have gotten more savvy about getting the show right down to that "mad dash," which makes for an exciting finale.

Which is all fine for me whatever the heck they do because I love that damn show.

[bartl]

Example: the final task of the last season seemed "rigged" only in the way that the task was virtually impossible to solve and all teams only had a short time limit to spend on it, which created a scenario where the end came down to a mad foot race with teams separated only by a few minutes.
I recall something like that on Jeopardy. It was a teenage version, but one kid (who won a couple of tournaments of champions later, IIRC) was able to get pretty much every question right. He would also break the tradition, and always choose the highest scoring questions first. Well, in one daily double, the question (which I remember QUITE clearly) was, "What is the total number of days in the months ending in B - E - R?" Well, at the time I was doing date arithmetic in my head on a VERY regular basis (things like, "What date is 133 days after October 18 when it's not a leap year?"), and >I< barely got the right answer in time. The question had nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with speed. I still believe that the question was planted to take the kid down a peg.

[Gilda Dent]

bartl: 122. It took me about fifteen seconds; the thirty seconds the Jeopardy contestants get should have been plenty. It's a quick calculation: September-December is four months. 4*30=120. Add two days for October and December, and you get 122. I'd have done it quicker as a teenager, when I was actively taking math classes and did math puzzles for fun.

Most "reality" shows are action-oriented/social game shows, the Survivor clones, anyway. Game shows have traditionally been arranged so as to eliminate or at least reduce as much as possible the chance of an early runaway. This is why we have Final Jeopardy--the person in the lead has to have more than twice as much as the second place finisher for it to be a runaway. This is why point values go up in later rounds for most game shows. Family Feud, for example, is structured so that 9/10 times, whoever wins the last round wins the game.

The Amazing Race does try to keep contestants bunched to ensure excitement. They do this by bottlenecking at least once per leg, with airport schedules that leave the contestants stranded for hours, allowing those behind to catch up, needle in a haystack challenges, and departure times that leave teams waiting hours for a tourist attraction to open. This makes for an interesting, close finale. Sure it prevents the best teams from opening up an insurmountable lead early, but that's the nature of game shows.

Survivor regularly tries to find ways to break up the early formation of alliances--one alliance forming early and then picking off the rest of the contestants, as with the first season, gets boring quickly.

[badMike]

The Amazing Race does try to keep contestants bunched to ensure excitement. They do this by bottlenecking at least once per leg, with airport schedules that leave the contestants stranded for hours, allowing those behind to catch up, needle in a haystack challenges, and departure times that leave teams waiting hours for a tourist attraction to open. This makes for an interesting, close finale. Sure it prevents the best teams from opening up an insurmountable lead early, but that's the nature of game shows.Your post also reminded me of something else Race does that's opposite of what we've been discussing.

Sometimes it's very clear during a leg of it that when it appears the last two teams are neck-and-neck to the finish line, they're actually wide apart time-wise. It's like an Ed Wood movie. Two teams seem to be very close to the end, yet it's bright daylight for one of the racing teams, while it's obvious the sun is already setting on the losing team -- and I mean that literally, not figuratively.

[bartl]

bartl: 122. It took me about fifteen seconds; the thirty seconds the Jeopardy contestants get should have been plenty. It's a quick calculation: September-December is four months. 4*30=120. Add two days for October and December, and you get 122. I'd have done it quicker as a teenager, when I was actively taking math classes and did math puzzles for fun.
It's hard to compare reading it to hearing it verbally.