ABSTRACT
The first ‘people shows’ or Reality TV formats in the USA were driven by institutional concerns about audiences. In the US in the 1980s, the competition between four networks, cable channels, and the attractions of home video led to smaller sectors, or ‘niches’, of the audience being targeted by programme makers and schedulers, defined either by age-group, interest (such as sport), or social class. This was when MTV began, the channel that introduced the Reality TV format in its series The Real World. The same problems and opportunities that enabled Reality TV to come to prominence in the USA emerged in Britain during the 1990s as new channels, cable and satellite began to erode and segment traditional audiences. In Britain, the term Reality TV was first applied to the combination of surveillance footage, reconstruction, studio presentation by presenters, and actuality footage in programmes such as Crimewatch UK (BBC) and Police, Camera, Action (ITV). Both series represent recent crimes in realistic ways, and also, as John Sears (1995: 51) has argued, Crimewatch performs ‘a social function by helping to solve crime, and drawing on the collective responsibilities, experiences and knowledge of the viewing audience in order to do so’.
