Reality TV has been in the news
again lately. From the underage diva of
American white trash culture in Here Comes
Honey Boo Boo, to catfights amongst
the musical glitterati on international
talent programmes, to New Zealand's own
paroxysms of outrage over The GC and
The Ridges, reality TV has once again been
feeding press stories, editorials and tweet
wars. The problem, as before, seems to be the
trashiness of reality TV. Or, as Mike Hoskings
put it about The GC, 'Congratulations to
TV3 for providing this country with the
most appalling, low rent, pointless piece of
televisual crap I have ever seen in my life'
(and, as a TV veteran, one presumes he's seen
a lot). But does reality TV really sound the
death knell of Western civilization, or even of
New Zealand television culture?
Though it's hard to remember that far
back, in the late 1990s / early 2000s, New
Zealand was a good testing ground for reality
TV programmes. In this small country with
limited production budgets and a hunger for
local content, reality TV shows about police
patrols, emergency services and property
makeovers took early root and became a
staple of TVNZ's primetime. In fact, shows
like Flatmates (1997) and Treasure Island
(2000) appeared on our screens before the
international trendsetters Big Brother and
Survivor, while a few programmes were
invented here and then exported to the
world (most notably Popstars in 1999, which
became a runaway global success). Now,
however, it seems that local broadcasters
must either copycat anodyne international
reality formats (watch out for this year's The
X Factor NZ) or risk a backlash for dragging
us into the mire of love-to-hate-it TV.
TV3, who had traditionally left local
reality TV production to TVNZ, entered the
fray in 2012 with the funding scandal over
The GC, a show about young Maori living it
up on the Gold Coast which received nearly
$420,000 from NZ on Air. The fact that NZ
on Air thought it was funding a documentary
about seven Maori families in Australia
led to angry charges about 'our' misspent
taxes. Funding local content is certainly a
good idea, but there's a case to be made for
supporting a diverse range of programmes.
The GC, after all, averaged 300,000 viewers
per episode, consistently rating in the top
five shows. Perhaps not all of those viewers
are blessed with Mike Hoskings' taste, but I
dare say they're not all stupid either (I'm one
of them, by the way). Rather than accusing
The GC of being the worst television ever
made, one could say that it's a welcome
change to see shows devoted to Maori who
aren't automatically synonymous with marae
protocols or crime statistics. Local lives, after
all, consist of diverse realities. Taika Waititi
would know a thing or two about the value
of that kind of production.
Misha Kavka
Department of Film, Television and
Media Studies
www.auckland.ac.nz
www.h e rmagaz in e .co.n z | 83
