ABSTRACT
Sometimes it seems as if everything on television tells a story.Commercials are filled with miniature narratives. Nightly newscasts and news magazine programs such as 60 Minutes (1968-) contain segments called “stories,” which should, according to one news executive, “display the attributes of fiction, of drama. [They] should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising and falling action, a beginning, a middle, and an end.”1 Survivor (2000-), The Bachelor (2002-), The Jersey Shore (2009-), and other reality-TV series are sold like soap operas-empha sizing dramatic conflict. As the executive vice president of programming at the Fox network said about one reality program, “We need to market the characters and the stories like you would market a good quality drama.”2 All these stories, all this narrative, cannot help but make us wonder if there truly is anything real on TV, or if it is just one big fiction.
