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Richard M. Huff
Book Code: C8170
ISBN: 0-275-98170-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-98170-9
200 pages, n/a
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 6/30/2006
List Price: $39.95 (UK Sterling Price: £22.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • Recognizing that there is nothing "real" about these programs, the industry uses the term "unscripted" for them. US audiences do not seem to care that they are watching artificial environments in which strangers are brought together in fabricated competitions with multiple cameras recording their every movement....Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.
    —Choice     March 2007
  • Demonstrating that television's reputed decline may actually be a permanent conditions, Huff, the television editor and writer for the New York Daily News, discusses early examples of that genre, such as Queen for a Day and Try and Do It, as well as its current permutations. He uses interviews with network insiders, reality television producers and other experts to explain the transformations of reality programming and to provide insights into its past and future.
    —Reference & Research Book News     November 2006
  • Reality-show fans are likely to enjoy reading Huff for his encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, including overall development of the genre and scores of particular factoids and anecdotes associated with individual programs, including both hits and failures. The book should serve as a reality check for those who believe that the castaways on Survivor are in actual danger of starving, as well as for those who are convinced that every moment of MTV's The Real World is scripted.
    —Television Quarterly     2007
Description: Reality programming--a broad title for unscripted shows that involve non-actors--is really an updated version of a classic television genre that had its first successes decades before The Real World or Survivor made their premieres. NBC launched Try and Do It, a show in which audience members attempted to complete tasks such as whistling with a mouthful of crackers, in 1949. In the 1950s Queen for a Day crowned the most down-trodden of its four contestants at the end of each show, draping her in a sable-trimmed robe and granting a previously declared wish. The wild success reality television has achieved of late has pushed the envelope of such programming ever further away--from the genre's innocuous beginnings. The time is now ripe for a look back on how this genre has developed, what it reveals about us, and what has transformed it into one of the most powerful forms of entertainment on television today. Using interviews with network insiders, reality producers, and other experts, Richard Huff supplies fascinating insights into the diverse content and often erratic development of reality television programming, augmenting this information with illuminating general connections between the past and present forms these shows assume. From Queen for a Day through Extreme Makeover, from Cops to Fear Factor, the genre is placed before us in this exhaustive and many-sided account, an account that uncovers the foundations and the future potential of the compelling and dominating phenomenon that is reality television.
Table of Contents:
  • Surviror: The Start of It All
  • Where Does This Stuff Come From
  • Casting, Finding the Freaks, the Geeks, and the Stars
  • Celebrities Sing, Dance, and Claw Their Way Into Reality
  • Altered Reality: The Makeover Craze
  • All Is Not What It Seems: Reversed Reality
  • This Show Seems Awfully Familiar
  • Love is in the Air
  • Singing for Fame, Fortune, or Just Attention
  • Liars, Cheaters, and Scandals
  • Working for a Living
  • There is a Life After Reality
  • Real or Not, Who Cares?
PDF Catalogs:
Praeger Public Library Spring 2008.pdf
Pop Culture Spring 2008.pdf
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