Assignment 2.2

In this weekly analysis I want to discuss the "reality TV" craze that has come over the nation. When I was a child, I can remember watching weekly television shows such as, Dukes of Hazard, Knight Rider and Hee-Haw. I was always taught to beleive that television was an escape from the day-to-day messes in life and let the veiwer have a vacation from the ordinary. I mean who would have thought of a trucker and his pet monkey fighting injustice would have been a everyday occurrence.(B.J. and the Bear for those who may not remember) But I digress, Now our weekly viewings are of those unscripted dramas or comedies that flood the time slots.

These shows span the gauntlet from everything from survival of the fittest to the beauty in us all. You can watch ordinarily "pretty" girls transform in to vuluptous runway models and watch strangers move into one house and vote each other off in order to win thousands of dollars. You can spend your evenings watching people submit themselves to plastic surgery in order to better themselves, or watch individuals submit themselves to their own fears all for cash prizes. Pretty much anything can be found in reality form somewhere on you your television. I can see the draw in it all, it would be hard to find enough programming to fill the hundreds of available channels we can subscribe to these days. In my childhood, we had local television and very few cable channels available for our area. Rural America relied on those three story tall antena towers or theose obnoxious satellite dishes that took up the entire yard in order to gain more channels. My family used both.

In conclusion, reality television may open the eyes of our youth, and may even educate in some fashion. The truth of the matter is, the generate large amounts of advertising dollars for multi-billion dollar compnaies by playing on our human instintincts, we are nosey as people go. We like to see the daily drama, hoping that someone has a worse day then we do. The only problem of that is, those people are being paid better to have that bad day. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of these shows, but the best form of reality television for me is the nightly news.