Reality Shows – at its all time high popularity!

Reality Shows are the new craze amongst Indian audience. Their appetite for Reality based shows seems to be growing monstrously. Keep giving them shows and they keep watching them. It doesn’t matter even if there are ten different shows exploiting the same Singing / Dancing format. They just stay glued to the television.

Now what is it that is causing such an addiction? It’s the thrill of watching another person. We all like to judge others. And these shows do just that. They give us the ability to decide the fate of the contestants who plead desperately for our love in the form of SMSes. We like this feeling so much that we actually spend thousands of rupees without flinching an eyelid.

While Antakshri and SaReGaMa were amongst the first reality based shows, it was Indian Idol that popularized the concept of Reality Shows. Since then, every channel on air has started hosting Reality Shows.

Amongst such Shows Singing based show has been considered as the safest bet by the Channel houses. Almost every channel as one Singing based reality show, may it be Hindi or other regional languages. Next to Singing, comes Dancing based shows. While Boogie Woogie focused on encouraging new aspiring talents, Channel Houses played it safe by making the Celebrities dance to their tunes. The audiences loved the latter even more.

Then there are other shows that ventured into different areas. We had MTV Roadies that almost became a cult amongst teenagers. MTV known to be your-centric channel, had couple of other popular shows, like Gehre Pyaar pe Laath (GPL) and Splitsville. The latest of their offering is the On The Job, which offers talented youngsters an open chance to claim their stake on their favorite Careers.

Even Channel V is catching up with his new show Get Gorgeous for desi glams to realize their dream of becoming models.

But the best till date in terms of audience response is the Big Boss. It literally paralyzed all the channels when it was being aired. It has been the best and most enticing of all reality shows India as seen till date.

The list is too big and will continue to grow, till one day we will not find any difference between reality shows and the typical “saas-bahu” soaps. As it is manipulation has steered in to the show format. Some of the new shows openly manipulate the contestants, the judges and even the audience in order to spice up the show and boost its TRP.

At this rate, soon will come a time when the term “Reality” will become a misnomer.