Most TV reality shows have a competition component

Most TV reality shows have a competition component. For example, on Survivor, the winner gets one million dollars. On American Idol, the winner gets a contract to produce an album. One of my favourite reality television shows is the Bachelor. The Bachelor is about a very successful man whos looking for a wife. The show chronicles his journey to find love. The show starts with 30 single women and the man picks women off until he is left with just one woman. At the end of the show, he gets down on one knee and proposes marriage to the one woman left.

However not all reality television shows have a competition component, some shows simply follow the lives of people for some period of time, then the video footage is edited to create story lines. Some popular reality shows that have no competition component are Keeping up with the Kardashians, The Osbornes or the Real World.

Sometimes the line between reality and television is blurred. For example one extremely popular reality television show on MTV, The Hills revealed that it was not real at all but heavily edited with characters who were told what to say and how to act.