ABSTRACT
Contemporary factual television is constantly on the move. This is a natural state for television to be in, as its ability to survive in a media environment is based on its adaptability and creativity. However, the impact of new broadcasting policies in the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of commercialization and the introduction of new technologies all contributed to speeding up the process. Within these policy, economic and production contexts, factual television has undergone enormous changes. The relationship between representation and reality in genres such as news or documentary has always involved a certain degree of hybridity within the confines of professional practices. Hybridity is now the distinctive feature of factuality, and the boundaries between fact and fiction have been pushed to the limits in various popular factual formats that mix non-fiction and fiction genres. Popular factual genres are not selfcontained, stable and knowable, they migrate, mutate and replicate. Significantly, they cross over into existing factual genres, with the cross-pollination of styles increasing the pace of change in news and current affairs, or documentary programming.
