The SCORE Theory Of Reality TV Shows

Reality TV is a genre of nonfictional television programming that presentsunscripted dramatic, records the actual events, and usually features ordinary personinstead of professional actors and shows people’s personality.This genre is very popular in the late1990s of the West, in that period, a largenumber of high standard reality TV shows such as Survivor, Big Brother and Loft Storyhave made ratings miracles. Then the trend of reality shows has spread to China’s TVindustry, after years of development and various trials, reality TV programs becomemuch more mature, themes ranging from the early field survival, indoor experience,quiz show, singing competition series to the recent dating game show, role replacement,job selection, etc. Various types of reality shows hit the TV screen and can be often seen,some China’s reality TV shows such as Super Girl, You Are the One, Chinese PeopleGot Talent, The Voice of China and Where Are We Going, Dad? have gained not onlyhigh audience ratings but also popularity and good social reputations.Under the guidance of TV theories, this study adopted case study, interviews, focusgroup, text analysis. After reading much literature, watched many types of reality TVshows of different countries as well as interviews of TV producers and directors,communicated with a number of reality TV audiences, thus find the commonalities ofreality TV shows which owned high audience ratings, popularity and good socialreputations, summed up five decisive factors which lead those reality TV shows tosuccess, that’s forms the SCORE theory (evaluation system) of reality TV shows:In general, a successful reality TV show should contain the following5majorelements: an attractive Story, impressive Characters, an innovative orsuccessfully-practiced Operation system, get people Re-talked, touching Emotions. Putthe first letter of each element together to get the English word “SCORE”, which canbe used to score a reality TV show. This SCORE theory (evaluation system) can beapplied to different types of reality TV shows.With the increase in the quantity, the quality of reality TV shows varies. The factthat lots of inferior reality TV shows broadcast on television could bring short-termbenefits, but at the expense of the reputation of this genre. This SCORE evaluationsystem of reality TV shows can help the audiences to distinguish the excellent realityTV shows from the inferiors, thus those excellent reality TV shows can get more audience and market returns, those inferiors can be eliminated from our TV screen,while the SCORE evaluation system can also help professionals of TV industry toproduce better reality TV shows based on this5aspects.