Reality TV first reared it's head with Candid Camera in the 1960's. Pranks were played on viewers and the results were broadcast by Allan Funt. The next incarnations of reality TV were game shows like the Gong Show. With advances in video cameras, show like COPS, then Survivor and Big Brother came along. The greatest of all reality TV is American Idol with audiences in the tens of millions around the world.Television networks like reality shows because they are much cheaper to produce than scripted television shows, and they garner huge audiences because it satisfies the voyeur in us. We all like to peek into other peoples windows and lives and see how they live.
Reality shows, like gambling and prostitution is not going away anytime soon. With the advent of youtube, folks can upload there own slices of reality for all of the world to see. The proverbial fifteen minutes of fame is now fifteen seconds.
So where will reality TV end up in the future? I predict that there will be a website or several dedicated to webcams of ordinary people where one can surf and watch their lives. And these people will be paid for the time spent by the browsing public. Everyone will have a chance to be a reality TV star for a few minutes per day.
Search engines will get smart enough to search real time for web cam images. Peeping Toms will search for women undressing before bed. Advertising agencies will watch to see what a youngster eats for breakfast. It will be market research.
In a previous entry, I said that people will not have long term jobs, but will be able to generate income by their connectivity. This is one aspect of it. If a family can earn money by changing Junior's diaper in front of a web cam so that marketeers can see what brand of disposable diaper they are using, they will do it. Instead of kids singing songs for grandma, they will sing songs for some lonely grandma surfing the web, and she will pay them for it.
I can just see it now. Women will be getting breast augmentation and collagen injection in the lips and tell their husbands that they need it for their jobs. Their jobs will consist of being a tease in front of a web cam. Oh Brave New World.
