Marketing "Reality" to the World Article Summary

Survivor is a popular reality TV show that exemplifies how advertising is taking over reality shows on TV to market products to a broad audience of people. Intensifying concentration of ownership in the television industry, the worldwide proliferation of commercial television, the fragmentation of the global television audience, and the design of Survivor, as a thinly veiled advertisement, account for the success of the show. The article touches on the fordist system of manufacturing and marketing, which strove to maximize profits by making one commodity appeal to as many consumers as possible for as long as possible. The article proposes that advertisers use this method to advertise products on reality television to reach a broad audience of people.

Today's production of reality TV relies on advertisement because of how advertisers value the potential audience they can reach through the shows. Advertisers readily sponsored Survivor because of its design as a virtual commercial for their products. Companies like General Motors, Target, Visa, Frito-Lay, and Reebok paid approximately 4 million dollars each for advertising time. And although survivor is one of the most expensive shows to produce, it still was profitable because 30 second advertising spots were going for $445,000 during the 2001-2002 season. Advertisements were found both within the show and between breaks in the show. During Survivor, the host Jeff Probst would reward winners of the show’s challenges with Doritos and Mountain Dew.

The design of Survivor as a virtual advertisement raises the issue of how television’s goal of selling audiences to advertisers shapes the program. Television programs must be able to attract large numbers of people, the “right” kind of people, and people in the right state of mind. They have to reflect this targeting, excluding demographic groups that lack the spending power to satisfy advertisers. Survivor accomplishes all of these goals. Broadcast during a prime time, it attracts a teen demographic sought by advertisers as well as a huge national audience composed of other age groups. Survivor also boasts high quality production values that associate products woven into its text with adventure, heroism, and escape. Survivor appeals to networks and advertisers because it combines high ratings with relatively low cost in comparison to comedies and dramas. High quality production values and exotic locations became means through which survivor targeted the prime time audience sought by advertisers, distinguished itself from cheaper crime based reality shows, and blurred the line between prime time drama and reality shows. Reality shows have thus proliferated on prime time television in recent years because they pose little financial risk for networks, yet offer prime-time friendly production values and generate huge ratings. The use of internet and cable TV networks also attracts a young audience prized by advertisers. On this basis, Survivor became a valuable addition to Viacom’s cradle to the grave programming spectrum by enabling CBS, known for its primarily elderly audience, to capture a huge mass audience, as well as a slice of the highly coveted youth audience