When reading both of these articles, I really like the Haralovich article more interesting and entertaining to read more than the Magder article. Both articles talk about Reality TV but with the Haralovich article, you get into a specific reality tv series, such as survivor, and pretty much talk about the background of the show, and the narrative pleasure. In the Ted Magder article, "The End of TV 101", Magder talks mostly about reality TV as a whole and how they came about to television, and why they are so popular...basically the business side of it. Yeah it was interesting to see how the creators of the shows competed with NBC's must see Thursday line up, and how they advertised the hell out of the programs to be successful, but its just all politics and money. So with that being said, I think I'll focus my blog today on the Haralovich article "Expect the Unexpected."
Before I talk about the article, I would like to leave you with a link to a blog that I found that gives us insight as to many reasons reality TV has become so popular. If you happen to want to view it, just click here on this: Blog Link
Survivor is a hybrid genre. It is a game mixed with adventure mixed with drama. Everything is focused all around "chance." Two major taglines are used throughout the Survivor series: you see the tagline "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast" which is the basis for how to play and win the game. Then you have "expect the unexpected" which I find to be really catchy since everyone always seems to be thrown off with the way that the shows evolves throughout not only each episode, but each season. I guess I should start out by saying that I have not watched a single survivor episode. People may think that I am crazy---well i'm not, it just never appealed to me to watch a show like that. Which is kind of ironic because I am currently obsessed now with watching "Lost" which is pretty much like survivor, but its non-reality. People love the unexpected, and always wanting to know what is going to be the next thing that happens. That's what we call narrative pleasure---the desire to know what happens next. Which Survivor is great at doing. In the article Haralovich says that "Rather than anchoring viewers, survivors uses chance to place them in a space of uncertainty" (83). In doing that, the audience is just gushing over what is going to happen next, and just crave more of it, which is what makes survivor so popular. It lets people become involved with these contestants and lets us as viewers follow them throughout each episode, making everything feel so real every situation. Another way of describing Survivor is that it is a "dramality", according to Haralovich, as being a convergence of drama/reality. These hybrid shows are becoming more and more popular as we get further and further into the future of television. I wouldn't be surprised if within the next 10 years, you will be seeing less drama/comedy shows, and more reality based, or mockumentary shows lining up the fall television line up.
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