The Social Value of Reality TV

As well as being a pioneer of heavy metal, Ossy Osborne was one of the early stars of reality TV. The MTV show The Osbornes, running from 2002 to 2005 and featuring Ossy, Sharon and two of their teenage children, was described as a reality sitcom. Previous fly-on-the-wall programmes had been presented as documentaries, albeit with some dramatic elements, but this one was edited for drama.

Reality TV receives a lot of criticism and disparagement. Some people have commented on the relationship between Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the Victorian engineer who build a system of sewers to pump effluent out of Londoners' homes, and Sir Peter Bazalgette, the creative director of Endemol responsible for Big Brother.

The BBC reports some sociologists as arguing that reality TV can have some social value.

Reality TV ... can be a tool for greater social understanding. Danielle Lindemann

It can potentially offer benefits to viewers and society because it can lead to wider conversations about the world we want to live in. Jacob Johanssen

However, Dr Johanssen has previously expressed criticism of the way participants in reality shows are exploited and shamed, both by the programme makers and by the audience (via social media). He frames reality TV as a neoliberal update on Guy Debord's notion of the spectacle.

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Nathan Briant, The sisters from UK's first fly-on-the-wall series (BBC News, 21 June 2024)

Jacob Johanssen, Immaterial Labour and Reality TV: The Affective Surplus of Excess. (In: Briziarelli, M. and Armano, E. (eds.). The Spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the Context of Digital Capitalism. pp. 197–208. London: University of Westminster Press 2017). https://doi.org/10.16997/book11.l 

Alex Taylor, How reality TV changed the way we think - for the better (BBC News, 26 July 2025)

Caitlin Wilson, Ozzy Osbourne: From Prince of Darkness to reality TV's favourite dad (BBC News, 26 July 2025)

Bigot Brother

The producers of Celebrity Big Brother (Channel Four and Endemol) must be secretly delighted with the latest scandal, in which Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty is apparently being bullied by three white working class females. [BBC News, Shetty Profile] 

 "Is this racism or class warfare? You decide. Viewers can phone a premium rate number to express their preference for multiracial tolerance."  

As if. As if "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" would want to put more money into Endemol's coffers. David Cameron has advised right-minded people to switch off instead [BBC News]. (In the past such advice from a Conservative Party leader would have doubled viewing figures, but those days are long gone.)  

Update: Apparently the phone-in profits have been given to charity. So that's all right then. 

The rest of the media are enjoying the scandal as well, discussing the offensive behaviour at great length. In yesterday's Times, columnist Carol Midgley wrote some sensible things ("Far from 'not tolerating' bullying, the brains at Endemol have deliberately caused it. And it is not just Shetty who is the victim.") but then spoiled her article by using an offensive racial term to describe one of the contestants. (I am shocked, shocked that the Times subeditors permitted this term.)

Carol Midgley Pedigree v pit bull: Big Brother's cynical face (Times, January 17th, 2007)

Today's Times reminds us that "what we see on Big Brother is only one of many possible stories" - in other words, so-called "reality" is selective and ultimately subjective. According to Burhan Wazir, the scenes selected for broadcast by Endemol will have done no harm to Shetty's career, but have probably destroyed the careers of the three Z-list celebrities portrayed as having bullied Shetty.

Burhan Wazir, They're in big bother (Times, January 18th, 2007)

Above all one Jade Goody, a previous winner of Big Brother. Endemol executives must be thinking of the immortal lines of Eminem: "We created a monster, now everyone wants ter see Jade Goody evicted ..." 

One of Shetty's first starring roles was in a film called Main Khiladi Tu Anhari (1994) [Review by Philip Lutgendorf]. I understand this is the Hindi for something like "I'm good-looking and successful, and you are an ignorant slob." Quite so.  

Wikipedia: Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

Big Brother

History repeats: tragedy to farce. The tragedy of the totalitarian police state (as satirized by George Orwell) is echoed in the farce of reality television (as invented by John de Mol and exploited by his company Endemol).

Big Brother is watching you. But who exactly is Big Brother? Perhaps the whole TV audience becomes the oppressor.

Is it not decadent (if not positively offensive) to turn one of the most important political issues of the 20th century into one of the most popular entertainments of the 21st century? I imagine that some people who have experienced the terrors of the police state may find it hard to enjoy a trivialized parody of it.

At one level, the purpose of reality TV is merely to entertain the audience and make money for the TV companies and advertisers. But what is the social and political effect? Do viewers learn something useful about group relations? Do viewers learn something useful about authority, and the range of possible responses to authority?

And what about the relationship between the tragedy and the farce? Even though the farce doesn't openly educate people about the tragedy, it might somehow make a future return of the tragedy less likely. One has to be pretty optimistic to believe this - but I can be optimistic sometimes.

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