http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/reality tv http://io9.com/tag/reality tv Remember when "paranormal reality show" didn't actually exist as a genre on television? And now it's gotten massive — and you can see the genre maturing, as producers find new wrinkles. The latest: The Travel Channel is doing a "buddy cop"-style show called The Dead Files, which pairs a paranormal investigator with an actual police detective, at crime scenes. More »
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There is going to be a Pac-Man reality TV show. Think Wipeout with ghosts and giant cherries. We want in — I would seriously MURDER some ghosts. More »
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Normally we don't cover reality TV nonsense like The Bachelor. BUT, last night's dating TV show really threw us a doozy. A bachelorette showed up with vampire fangs. Now she has to wear them for the rest of the show. More »
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We've followed the Donald Glover 4 Spider-Man campaign since the beginning. The new Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield, came across Glover in real life, and they had a meeting of the minds. More »
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Writer/director Albert Brooks may have predicted reality TV with his 1979 movie Real Life, and now he's got an even more dire prediction. In his first novel, coming next May, he has some nasty visions for the year 2030. More »
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The reality show Wife Swap is total dross. Families exchange matriarchs for two weeks as camera crews record the anarchy. However, last Friday's episode struck comedy gold when a 2012 survivalist forced her new family to train for the apocalypse. More »
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Last night on Bravo's Work of Art, the reality series commissioned a pack of artists to redesign the book covers of a few genre classics, from Frankenstein to the Time Machine. A few interpretations were just brilliant. Take a look! More »
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What's on Syfy's plate for the next year? Cons: a cooking show, a home design program, and a heightened focus on reality TV. Pros: Tracy Morgan back hosting Scare Tactics, yelling whatever he damn well pleases! More »
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Twilight's hometown, Forks, Washington, is getting its own reality TV series, because we can't stop until the last drop of merchandising blood has been suckled from Stephenie Meyer's heaving money maker. Let's hope it includes the Twilight Themed Hotel. More »
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First Virtuality, and now Defying Gravity, predict we'll someday watch the adventures of cloistered astronauts broadcast from space. But why wait? Some suggest the upcoming simulated Mars missions offer the perfect opportunity to introduce the space program to reality television. More »
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Sure, on the surface, the proposed Running Man reboot sounds like a can't-miss proposition, a seamless blending of America's two current favorite pastimes: reality TV and recycling ideas from the '80s. There's just one problem. More »
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In The Truman Show, Jim Carrey played the unwilling star of the world’s most popular reality show, living his life on a giant soundstage with actors playing his friends and family. Now psychiatrists are seeing the rise of a new kind of delusion: People believe they are living out Truman Shows of their own, convinced that their every move is being filmed and every moment contrived by television producers. Researchers fear pop culture may be to blame. More »
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If you've ever watched an episode of reality TV series Big Brother or Survivor or The Pick-Up Artist and wished everybody involved would just get ripped apart by rampaging zombies, then you're about to feel seriously awesome. The UK miniseries Dead Set started airing this week, and it's all about what happens to the cast and crew of Big Brother when a zombie plague hits England. The best part? It's all filmed on the Big Brother set. More »
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VH1's new zombie reality TV show, America's Next Top Zombie Idol, could introduce the world to steamy hot tub zombie make outs, backstabbing undead confessionals about racist zombie roommate, zombies getting in fights at bars, and competitive brain eating. The show's premise is simple: "Eight zombies live together and compete for the winning spot in a reality TV competition." More »
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Reality television, consumed with liberal doses of MySpace and Facebook, will make friendships of the future far more promiscuous. So says a newly-released study about people who invest a lot of time in creating profiles of themselves online (which is increasingly all of us). The authors of the study have discovered an intriguing trend in the way people are re-define "friendship" after hanging out a lot online. The good news is that current trends all point to more casual sex for people who "friend" each other online. More »
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Frank Darabont recently let it slip that he owns the rights to The Long Walk, which was a short story included in Stephen King's The Bachman Books back in 1979. It's an extremely dark tale set in the near future about a new form of entertainment that has the whole country held in rapt attention, and serves as a strangely fitting commentary on the current state of reality television. A pool of 100 "walkers" are selected to participate in a forced walk where they have to maintain at least a four mile-per-hour pace, or else they "buy their ticket," which isn't exactly a prize. The story follows 16-year-old Ray Garraty, and we see the horrific reality of the walk through his eyes. Garabont has been something of a filmmaking dynamo recently. More »
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