My favorite line in this entire article was “Reality television is the television of television.” While the author precedes this by explaining it as the idea that the people who brag about having seen every episode of “Friday Night Lights” will also brag about never having seen “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”, I think this statement can also be applied in a different way. (Also, I’ve seen every single episode of “Friday Night Lights”, and I’m definitely guilty of watching “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”, so I don’t really agree.)

In most of my Communications classes, we learned about the history of all forms of media, and one class in particular was focused on television and how it changed the peoples lives when it became a staple in households across the country. Watching television was seen as an activity done to relax, and I don’t think much has changed about idea that since then. So when I think about reality TV shows becoming “the television of television”, I think of them as a “break” from all the other shows available for viewing. We all have certain TV shows that we follow and wouldn’t dare miss an episode for fear of falling behind the story line, but reality shows work a little differently. We can watch them without really thinking, and they don’t require us to focus on what is happening or think back to past episode in order to enjoy the show.