Perceptions on Reality Dating Shows

Ferris, Amber L., Sandi W. Smith, Bradley S. Greenberg, and Stacy L. Smith. "The Content of Reality Dating Shows and Viewer Perceptions of Dating." N.p., n.d. Web.

            For this blog, I picked and article based on my topic to review. Since my topic is about “The Bachelor and Bachelorette” suicides, I picked an article about reality TV dating shows. I feel like this article will help me a lot with this topic because I can get deeper into the reality show world. The article I picked is called, “The Content of Reality Dating Shows and Viewer Perceptions of Dating”.  This article talks about reality dating shows and how we take on the characteristics of males and females on the show. Just because the show is reality, doesn’t mean that all mean and woman act while dating, and that’s explained in the article because of how the younger viewers see it. “The Bachelor”, is actually mentioned in this article. “ ABC’s The Bachelor, a show where 25 woman compete for one man’s hand in marriage, is now in its eighth season, and it still attracting a large audience. In January 2006, The Bachelor beat out such popular shows as The West Wing, Will & Grace, and ER with nearly 8 million viewers.” (Ferris 490). This particular reality show has very high ratings and is watched millions of people, including me. It also mentions that, “ The Bachelor is one of the many reality dating shows in the United States geared toward young adults.” (Ferris 490). This is one of the reasons why most of the younger generations have their perceptions on dating, because they’ll see shows like “The Bachelor” and think that that’s how couples date in “actual” reality.  Another thing the author mentions is that, “Singles on dating shows also may be seen as a peer group (Strasburger, 1995), if the participants on dating shows are seen as “real people”, not celebrities or actors. Therefore, viewers may identify more with reality dating show characters then fictional drama characters.” (Ferris 491).  This example explains that, the participants on the show are not celebrities. They are normal people who happened to be filmed without acting or following a scripted, so everything you see and how they act is reality. Another thing the article mentions is that researchers results show that the males see woman as sexual objects whose value is based on physical appearance. This may cause the younger viewers to focus more on looks and how they may be attractive to a persons physical, then focusing more on the personality aspect or a person. Looks aren’t everything! Researchers also say that men are sex-driven on most reality dating shows, so dating is portrayed as a game or competition. This can cause younger males to think competing for a girl is “cool” just so they feel like a winner, when that’s the wrong thing to do because its not fair to the girl. This article did include methods such as, content analysis, sampling procedures, and training and reliability. Content analysis basically talked about samples of 64 hour taped reality dating shows of U.S. produced and broadcasted. Sampling procedures talks about the first 33 hours of reality dating shows coming from a large program sample were shows were randomly selected from 18 different channels between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. to build a composite week of television content. Training and reliability talked about, training sessions being conducted over a 15 hour span using a variety of episodes of shows from the same series as in the constructed sample.

Results:

Content Analysis: “Four coders determined the presence or absence of the dating attitudes (Ward 200), the characteristics with which people might choose dates (Hestroni, 200), as well as behaviors that might be included in first-date scripts” (Rose & Frieze, 1989).

Sampling Procedures: “Thirty-three hours of reality dating shows were found on seven channels (CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, UPN, WB, MTV) in the first sampling. To increase the database, all reality dating shows were taped on randomly selected dates between July 1 and November 13, 2003. The total sample consisted 64 hours of reality dating shows from 18 different series” (Ferris 496).

Training and Reliability: “ Using Potter and Levine-Donnersyain’s (1999) formula for multiple coders that corrects agreement by chance, the ranges of final reliability coefficients were as follows: attitudes (.82-1.0), reward/punishment (.86-.94), behaviors (1.0), and dating characteristics (.76-.85). After these reliability results were obtained, the 64 sample shows were analyzed” (Ferris 496).

            This article is very useful and credible. Even though it wasn’t about “The Bachelor and Bachelorette” suicides, this article gave me a better understanding on reality dating shows and people’s perspectives on dating. This article will help me a lot, there are a lot of facts and information I can use from this article in my essay. I agree with a lot of what was mentioned in the article and how people view reality shows, and what they this is “actual reality” in the shows.