Reality Television is a genre of television programming which presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and features ordinary people instead of professional actors.[citation needed] Although the genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television, the term reality television is most commonly used to describe programs produced since 2000. Documentaries and nonfictional programming such as news and sports shows are usually not classified as reality shows.
Reality television covers a wide range of programming formats, from game or quiz shows which resemble the frantic, often demeaning shows produced in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (a modern example is Gaki no tsukai), to surveillance- or voyeurism-focused productions such as Big Brother (TV series).
Such shows frequently portray a modified and highly influenced form of reality, with participants put in exotic locations or abnormal situations, sometimes coached to act in certain ways by off-screen handlers, and with events on screen sometimes manipulated through editing and other post-production techniques.
