ABSTRACT
Beginning in the late 1980s, a new trend appeared on television that has continued to the present: reality programs. This chapter discusses why the TV reality crime programs have become so popular. The programs have a history of their own: they draw upon other kinds of crime shows and other tabloid-type productions that have been a part of popular culture for years. After discussing this history, the chapter shows how, notwithstanding reality claims, these programs differ markedly from the sort of journalism that characterizes the news. It examines changes in technology that facilitated the rise of TV reality crime programs. Although television reality crime programs claim to present a newslike reality, they violate journalistic traditions, and, in many ways, resemble crime fiction. These TV reality crime programs also resemble another media trend that blurs the distinction between informational and entertainment programming: infotainment.
