Save this page | Close this page | Word list

Spotlight
Radio programs in 'Specialized English'

Script Title: Reality TV

(Program number: 672)

Hello, I’m Peter Laverock

And I’m Rebecca Schipper. Welcome to Spotlight. This programme uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.

The year is nineteen seventy one. The place: Palo Alto, California. Young men are fighting in the Stanford County Prison. Prisoners have blocked the way to their rooms. The guards are breaking through. There is hand to hand fighting. One prisoner cries out; this is not for real, it is not for real!  And he is right. It was not real. It was an experiment. An experiment under the control of a famous social scientist, a psychologist called Phillip Zimbardo

The Stanford Prison Experiment was designed to see how people change when they are put into a difficult situation. All the young men were studying at Stanford University. They had earlier agreed to take part in the experiment. Some were to be guards and some prisoners. The trouble was that after a few days in the prison they were taking their parts very seriously. They had almost forgotten that it was an experiment. If the experiment went on much longer, there would be some serious fights. People would get hurt. The psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, stopped the experiment early.

The experiment happened more than thirty years ago. But it has had a long lasting effect on our culture. Psychologists no longer do this kind of test. They do not think it is right to put people under such pressure just for an experiment. But it has been brought back to life in a new way. It is the model for a very popular kind of television programme. It is the model for what we now call, ‘Reality TV’. It gets this name because it claims to show real people in real situations.

The television programme Big Brother is now popular all over the world. It is one of the best-known ‘Reality TV’ programmes. In Big Brother, a group of young people live together in a house for about twelve weeks. Cameras are everywhere in the house. Each week the people watching the programme can vote to decide who is thrown out of the house. There is a big prize for the person who stays to the very end.

The company that invented Big Brother studied the Stanford Prison experiment to get their ideas. The company’s name is Endemol. It is based in the Netherlands. The television industry calls the idea behind a programme the ‘format’. A well-liked format such as Big Brother can be sold to broadcasters all over the world. Endemol needed to be very careful to make sure the format worked. It is a high-risk business.

An earlier ‘reality TV’ format by another company had a tragic result. The format was called Expedition Robinson. A Swedish television station, SVT, made the programme. Eight people took part in the game, hoping to win a lot of money. They were filmed on a small island. One of the men who did not win suffered from depression. The man felt that the programme had made him look like a fool. A month later he killed himself by jumping in front of a train.

The Swedish authorities investigated his death. The investigation decided that the Swedish television station SVT was not directly to blame. SVT made a few changes to Expedition Robinson and then broadcast the programme. It became very popular. Reality TV as we know it today was born.

Research in the United Kingdom shows us why people enjoy ‘Reality TV’ so much. The people watching television like to see a normal person being tested in an unusual situation.  The people watching Big Brother enjoy the conflict. They also enjoy the parts where the the people in the house go to a private room and admit their true feelings. They do not like anyone who is false or who acts strangely just because television cameras are on them. A ‘Reality TV’ programme will fail if it cannot show real people behaving naturally.

Today there are many ‘Reality TV’ formats. Survivor puts people in difficult situations, such as having to stay awake for a long time. Temptation Island is about the conflict between sexual desire and being faithful. Fear Factor is about bravery in the face of danger. In all these programmes the people who take part are normal members of the public. They offer themselves for a chance to be famous or to win some money. There is always a risk that they will get hurt --either physically or mentally.

Sam Brenton and Reuben Cohen are social scientists. They have raised a number of questions about the dangers of ‘Reality TV’. One is the question of consent. To give consent is to permit another person to do something. For example, a person gives consent to a doctor to carry out a particular kind of treatment. The people who take part in Reality TV all give their consent. But they do it at the start, before they know the details of the game. After several weeks on a desert island -- or in a house full of cameras -- they may be under great pressure. They may do things that they would not normally do. Brenton and Cohen say that we should think about this as a simple human rights issue. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that no-one should be the subject of torture or any inhuman treatment.

One of the surprising things which we learn from Reality TV is the popularity of honesty and good living. The public -- in Britain at least -- usually vote for the nice people! The public do not usually vote for the liars, the cheats, and the plotters. In one of the British editions of Big Brother, there was a winner called Cameron Stout. He is serious about his Christian faith. He read his Bible while living in the Big Brother house. He talked about his faith. He said that he disagreed with sex before marriage. This was a courageous thing to say in modern Britain. It could have made him very unpopular. But he won the game anyway.

This goes against the views of John de Mol, from the television company which invented Big Brother, Endemol. He said that young people these days care about nothing but having lots of fun. He said they only want to know, ‘what is in it for me?’ But it could be that there is more love and kindness around than these television producers think!

Christians in Britain were encouraged when Cameron Stout won Big Brother. One Christian minister, Peter Crumpler, made this comment on the reasons why Cameron won the game. He said that Cameron came across as ‘normal’. He showed that it is possible to live out the faith even with cameras following you twenty-four hours a day.

The writer of today’s programme was Peter Laverock. The voices you heard were from Great Britain. Computer users can hear our programmes, read our scripts and see our wordbook on our website. It is www.radio.english.net. This programme is called, ‘Reality TV’. Goodbye.

Save this page | Close this page | Word list

Website: http://www.specialized.english.net/home.htm