After giving it some thought...

In my previous post I was able to sit down and speak with Brandon Williams, an Associate Producer over at VH1. Brandon and I both broke into the Reality TV scene together a few years ago, and where I have taken a different path, Brandon still works in Reality, so I thought his keen perspective on the matter would bring some insight to my blog. Brandon had a lot of interesting things to say pertaining to Reality TV, but I wanted to focus on what he said about moving forward and the future of Reality TV. I asked Brandon where he thought Reality TV would be down the road... I for one think and am hoping that the Reality TV bug will have died down a bit, but Brandon offered a different perspective. He said "Reality will have a place on TV for a long time due to several reasons, People like to imagine themselves in situations and reality TV offers that. The poker boom (I classify it as sports and reality TV) of the early 2000s is an example of that. poker can be played by anyone. People can imagine themselves winning all that money, how they were play a hand, how they would react."

I would have to disagree with that... respectfully of course, I feel that Reality TV is just a fad, and like all fads Reality TV will disappear into the fog. For one, Reality really picked up steam during the writers strike a few years back, I think that with more and more up and coming writers looking for work we may end up turning back toward the sitcom as our major form of television entertainment, just as we did in the early 90s with such successes as Seinfeild and Friends. The problem with reality TV is that I don't think it can sustain longevity because a lot of it has the same premise, it cannot continue to re invent itself. Even now I see a lot of redundancy withing the Reality TV realm, there's 20 different real housewives shows, tons of competition shows whether it be cooking ones like Chopped or Top Cher, or designer ones like Project Runway, Mad Fashion etc... At some point viewers will say enough is enough and want a change.

Brandon did bring up a good point when he said  " I think society has a major impact on TV." But that impact will eventually do away with Reality...maybe not entirely but I think there will be a significant decrease in the amount of reality shows that are put out there. Reality TV will always be around in some way shape or form, shows like Cops or even Game shows are a type of Reality Television that will last, but all of these others will eventually meet their demise, at some point, the question is when?

All in all for the time being we will have to put up with the "Jersey Shores" of the world and hope that a sort of Renaissance happens where the glory days of television like 90210, Melrose Place, Saved by the Bell, Fresh Prince of Bell Air, Friends and Seinfeld come back to us.