Audience Attitude and Impact of TV Reality Shows

Running head: MARKET RESEARCH ON REALITY TV SHOWS
1
Audience Attitude and Impact of TV Reality Shows
Student’s name
Institution affiliation

MARKET RESEARCH ON REALITY TV SHOWS 2
Audience Attitude and Impact of TV Reality Shows
This paper aims at evaluating the attitude of the audience towards reality TV shows and
the subsequent impact; these shows have on the society based on authenticity aspect. The paper
evaluates this by analyzing qualitative data from an online transcript and quantitative data of 300
participants done using an SPSS program.
1. Qualitative data analysis
There are two factors to be analyzed from the transcript which include;
a. The attitude of audience towards reality TV shows
b. The impact of reality TV shows on society
1.1 Attitude of audience
From the transcript it is clear that most of the participants in the online transcript brought
about the aspect of attitude as a factor towards the reality TV shows. Many of the participants in
the online discussion express different levels of doubt concerning whether the reality shows are
mere scripts, a product of manipulation or are not authentic. To most of them, these shows
appear as having been selected carefully or as a set up just from the word go and thus cannot be
termed as being authentic (Evans, 2011). As is common knowledge, reality shows are supposed
to involve the real life of the participants, however, based on the outlook of these shows, the
producers design the scripts with the idea in mind that they should be as interesting to the
audience as possible. In this case, they include a lot of manipulation towards achieving this
outcome.
The best example is the aspect of the pretty faces of the participants whose level of
prettiness is too good to be real. The manipulation seems to take away the aspect of real life from

MARKET RESEARCH ON REALITY TV SHOWS 3
the much make up they put that makes them look extraordinary beings. This process makes the
whole thing appear as mere acting and not the show it is meant to be. On the other hand, besides
this aspect of manipulation and inauthenticity, the transcript shows that the audience sometimes
gets attracted to view the shows as a way of recognizing the design skills, and techniques applied
to make them awesome (Godlewski, & Perse, 2010). They accept the fact that these shows do
not have to have high levels of truthfulness or seriousness but have to be entertaining, enjoyable
and attracting to the eyes of the audience. In this case they seem to accept this fact that no matter
the level of authenticity, what matters is the level of adventure the audience finds in these shows.
1.2 Impact of reality TV shows
Besides the aspect of attitude noted from the transcript and depicted from the data, reality
shows have in them another element of negative effect on people and society. From the analysis
it is quite clear that people are concerned with the negative impact the shows have which comes
out in two ways. The shows negatively influence the audience and also the have negative impact
on the people participating. From the discussion in the transcript, the impact is depicted
differently on people based on demographic factor of age (Callanan, & Rosenberger, 2011).
Sometimes minors watch these shows and they learn various things which cannot be deemed
healthy on their lives based on the fact that their minds cannot determine good and bad content.
This ends up affecting them emotionally, socially and in terms of behavior. According to them,
shows such as Temptation Island contain more negative values when compared to the positive
ones. From this point, people and especially the young minds get confused regarding what life
really is and what they see from the shows since the shows tend to show the ugly and bad side of
nature (Hill, 2014). The shows seem to intrude more on the privacy part of the participants with
the aim of creating pleasure and enjoyment to the onlookers. The end result is violation on the

MARKET RESEARCH ON REALITY TV SHOWS 4
privacy of the participants especially when immature people try making contacts with them
based on the shows. According to study of impact of reality shows, they have a negative
influence on the participants and audience in general based on behavior that is against the ethics
and morals the society puts forth for its people. The young minds get influenced negatively since
people tend to copy the negative elements they learn from the content (Hill, 2014). As is the case
with any shows on TVs, the young people get early exposure to the content and by the time
parents realize on this the impact cannot be reversed. In this case the shows need to be deemed
authentic and healthy to all people before they get aired regardless of age so that morals and
ethics can be upheld among people
Structural framework model