"It's absolutely spectacular the way in which reality TV took over time slots on television," says Robert J. Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University. "It changed the balance of forces within the television industry."
That has turned celebrity culture upside down, turning nobodies into chart-toppers (American Idol) and chefs into rock stars (Iron Chef America), creating a host of one-named celebs (Paris, Jon & Kate, Snooki), and reviving D-list careers (Bobby Brown, Tawny Kitaen). Some people will do anything - pretend their kid's on a runaway balloon, crash a White House party - to get on a show.
Beyond the small screen, reality TV has pervaded popular culture and lifestyle. From dance to fashion, home-buying to cooking, dog-training to plastic surgery, it has gone beyond watercooler talk to influence lives.
What's reality
As Thompson defines it, reality TV drops real people into artificial situations and leaves them to react. That approach, he says, became "the universal blood donor" that can be transfused to any genre.
The reality era began on cable, with MTV's The Real World in 1992. Survivor, though, was the prime-time broadcast breakthrough. Today it still wins its time slot, with an average of 13.5 million people watching.
Forget watchers - there are thousands of people in these shows. Producer Michael Hirschorn (VH1's Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew) has estimated that at any one time reality shows feature more than 1,000 first-timers. And many more want to join them. When Idol held Philadelphia auditions in 2007, within eight hours 13,000 people signed up at the Wachovia Center.
