Competition and Money - our main focus

In our world, and specifically America, competition has been becoming more and more important everyday. Looking through the channels on my t.v. trying to find something to watch, i couldn't help but notice how many shows were about competition. Shows like "cupcake wars" "top chef" and "next great baker" all have a prize the contestants are trying to win; and it's usually money. Reading an article about when all these shows became popular, i learned that it began around 2000, when the shows "survivor" and "big brother" premiered. These shows were a huge success, seeing as one of the main focuses in our country is both competition and wealth. In fact, by 2003 the Emmys had created an award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program.

In our world where these two ideas are very prominent, many shows like these become popular because we are interested in these topics. Even with a topic like "Paris Hilton's My New BFF," they still have more than one season of the show, meaning there must have been a fair amount of viewers in order to last longer than one season.

While reading another article dating back to 2001, it stated "Reality TV allows Americans to fantasize about gaining status through automatic fame. Ordinary people can watch the shows, see people like themselves and imagine that they too could become celebrities by being on television. It does not matter as much that the contestants often are shown in an unfavorable light; the fact that millions of Americans are paying attention means that the contestants are important." This is saying that another reason us Americans are hooked on reality shows, is because the contestants, though they are shown in bad light sometimes, whether they have an embarrassing fall in "Wipeout" or make a huge mistake on a cooking show, the t.v. exposure is all they care about.

This idea of competition for money is very exposed in our world today, and it is reflected through the many t.v. shows we have about this topic.