Reality shows criticized for being manipulative

Stacey Stillman claims that producers of the first "Survivor" so badly wanted to keep curmudgeonly Rudy Boesch on the show that series creator Mark Burnett conspired to have her voted off, instead.

Over at "Big Brother," viewers were so bored that producers figured the only way to save the show was to break their own rules: After forbidding contestants any outside contact, they sent Curtis Kin to the Emmy Awards, they brought back one ousted contestant and even tried to bribe others to leave.

As the "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" special was being taped, groom Rick Rockwell was steered away from one would-be bride.

And all reality series employ selective editing techniques, the kind that sharpened "Survivor "Sean Kenniff’s "character" but painted a one-sided picture, he claims. "I said a lot of smart, fun things, but it was edited out. I guess it was better television to make the neurologist a doofus than a genius."

Reality television has multiplied and morphed into today’s biggest pop-culture phenomenon. But some critics now charge that reality isn’t so real, that such shows are far more manipulative than they pretend.

Confusion often begins with the term reality itself, which suggests an unrehearsed, documentary-style look at a group of people thrust into unfamiliar surroundings. But many of the shows, including "Survivor," "The Mole" and "Temptation Island," are more like unscripted dramas, with soap-opera story lines, swelling music and corny visual touches. "The networks create an assumption that what’s presented is essentially as it happened," said Joseph Turow, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communications. But "the term is ironic. Really, it’s all scripted one way or another."

Many viewers seem to expect and even accept this.

"You essentially see what people’s reactions were and what challenges they have," said Judy Adkins of Grasonville, Md., but "it’s obviously set up. Clearly, they’re not going to let anybody starve to death."

"It just seems so contrived," says Shad Hernandez of Arcadia, Calif. "I don’t see how anything can be real (when) there’s a cameraman with a sandwich sitting next to you."

In a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll last month, 57 percent of the 1,016 adults surveyed agreed that reality producers provide a distorted picture of events, while another 23 percent described the shows as "totally phony."

Networks say these shows must take certain liberties. Unlike sitcom actors paid to read lines, real people - even those playing to the cameras - act in unforeseen ways, requiring some skillful editing or adjustments to supposedly pre-ordained "rules."

But they draw the line at outright deception. "If you’ve created a response beforehand or given them a script of how to respond, that would probably be crossing the line," UPN chief Dean Valentine said. "The fundamental compact with viewers is you’re watching people behaving spontaneously."

But Valentine believes that as competition intensifies and multiplies, even these rules will be stretched, "because the pressure for ratings pushes people to make the stories more interesting." That’s the charge leveled by ex-"Survivor" contestant Stillman in a lawsuit against producer Burnett and CBS.

She says Burnett coerced other contestants to vote her out of "Survivor," essentially manipulating the outcome of the show. CBS and Burnett strongly deny those charges and filed a $5 million countersuit claiming defamation and breach of a confidentiality agreement.

But no one denies several lesser liberties are taken when assembling these shows. Scenes of "challenges" and other physical contests are shown out of sequence, are truncated or eliminated entirely. Conversations or arguments among contestants are edited so that only the most combative, dramatic moments remain, often lacking context.

And the entire record of their experience is necessarily altered, edited into a fast-paced collection of footage that collapses several days into 44 minutes of programming each episode.

"It’s a 24-hour day, and we’re going to represent five or 10 minutes of it," said Chris Cowen, executive producer of Fox’s "Temptation Island," in which 26 singles attempted (unsuccessfully, it turns out) to break up four couples in various stages of commitment.

"As soon as you start pulling those seconds out, you change the context, you change the reality," Cowen said. "Some people on the show, when all is said and done, will say they weren’t fairly represented, and that’s a truth of this format. This is not reality. This is entertainment."

From a legal standpoint, the most risky shows are those that involve big-money prizes.

In the wake of the 1950s scandal over the NBC quiz show "Twenty-One" - after answers were supplied to a contestant - federal restrictions on televised games and contests involving "knowledge, skill or chance" were tightened, forbidding any "scheme for the purpose of prearranging or predetermining" their outcome.

Those rules form the basis for Stillman’s lawsuit over "Survivor," which offers its winner a $1 million prize. But Burnett argues the show is not a game at all, merely a reality-based drama with admittedly high stakes. A judge’s legal determination of what constitutes a game show will affect whether "Survivor" or other reality-based shows are subject to the same scrutiny.

But even series without big payoffs, such as "Temptation Island, "must deal with a dizzying array of contingency plans.

Well before the cameras roll, complicated issues must be sorted out: background checks on contestants, how rules are structured, contact between players and producers, safety, what to do in the event of illness or injury, security against spoilers seeking to learn the outcome.

Just as new sitcoms are accompanied by "bibles," exhaustive documents that detail the histories and motivations of their fictional characters, reality series lay out ground rules and contingencies.

"These things are enormously complicated now," said Mike Darnell, Fox’s alternative programming chief. "Everybody tries their best to figure out every conceivable problem and try to address that" ahead of time. "But what we’ve come to realize is, on all counts, there’s only so much you can do."

But the pressure to grab the next hit before the genre’s appeal inevitably fades forces some to set fewer guidelines in order to make room for conflict or drama.

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