Reality Television Shows

To this day I do not understand why people watch reality television shows. Reality tv like the reading talked about does nothing but gloss on issues such as Real Housewives Hurricane Sandy episode and use them to gain more ratings and to paint the characters in the show in a positive light. Reality television uses the technique of stooping down to the lowest common dominator to attract people to watch the show. By turning things into a spectacle such as poverty or natural disaster it diminishes the importance of these things. One thing that I will rant about is the slow death of the History Channel. I will admit though that the History Channel has always been kind of shaky on presenting actual history such as conspiracy theories on Nazis or having a marathon of Nazi documentaries, they have been good at presenting interesting shows about history. With the introduction of Pawn Stars the history has instead started to focus on these low brow shows to draw in a new audience. With a new audience the history shows that used to be the bread and butter have been pushed to the side in favor of shows about truckers in Alaska or lumberjacks. Viewers of these shows are still taught some form of history but it is not the critical perspective that a historian led documentary would be. Instead viewers are shown what Michael Wallace, a public historian, would call hardware history, were the facts of items are shown and the significance of that item is ignored either because it would be deemed controversial or unimportant. In conclusion though I hate reality tv because it killed the History Channel and now I live in fear that one day HGTV's House Hunters will become a reality tv show spectacle that I will not enjoy watching.