Reality television shows have become the new thing now on our television and it is not surprising that every new show is branded as a reality show.

Reality TV is a genre of television programming which presents unscripted dramatic, humorous situations, actual events and features ordinary people instead of professional actors. It covers a wide range of formats from game or quiz shows, elimination shows, dating competition, dance, job-search and sports.

With respect to script, the many reality shows pervading our television don’t qualify as reality shows because they are scripted with participants put in nice locations, coached to act in certain ways by off-screen handlers and events on screen manipulated through editing and other post-production techniques.

Such reality shows become popular due to the massive viewer-participationand the controversies that emanate out of elimination of participants.

Reality shows such as ‘It takes Two’, ‘Game TV’, ‘Mentor’ ‘Stars of the Future’, ‘Dance Fever and others can be appropriately be called reality shows because of the reality-competition conventions of removing just one or more contestants per episode by allowing the public to vote on who is evicted.

Interestingly, almost all the reality shows running in Ghana are a copy of shows that aired or are airing in foreign countries. It’s not bad to copy but most of these organizers are copying wrongly by not doing research to find out how such shows are run and how best they can fit into our system.

‘Stars of the future’ and ‘Mentor’ are a copy of UK’s ‘Pop Idol’ and ‘American Idol’ competitions, ‘Dance Fever’ is a copy of the reality shows ‘Strictly Dance Fever’ and ‘Dancing with the Stars’ that are airing on BBC1, ‘Looking For Love’, which is a dating-based competition which shows a participant choosing one out of a group of suitors is a copy of ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette’ that aired in the US.’ Top Model Ghana’ is also a copy of Tyra Banks’ ‘America’s Next Top Model’ and the new series ‘Star Search’ which aims to select a budding actor is a direct copy of ‘Star
Search’ that airs abroad.

In sports, Metro TV’s ‘Sports Academy’ is a replica of the show ‘The Club’ which aired in Australia where viewers helped to choose best players out of a lot of competitors and the new reality boxing show on TV3,’The Last Warrior’ is a copy of the show ‘The Contender’ that airs in US.

So, whatever we are seeing on Ghanaian television is nothing new and most of the organizers of such reality shows go through challenges because they copy for the sake of copying without proper research and planning and are always in a haste to make money out of viewers who send daily SMS to keep or evict contestants.

The sustenance of such shows hinges on the involvement of viewers who vote to keep the show going and most feel aggrieved at the end of such shows because changes and amendments are made on the show that are oblivious to viewers.

It is therefore imperative that viewers are made aware of the rules of the show from start to finish.

The essence and objective of such shows are defeated when winners fail to a make an impact in their field of reality, like a winner of a talent competition not getting a good record deal and promotion, the winner of a model show not getting the opportunity to grace international catwalks and the contestants of a fashion competition not getting sewing machines to work.

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