So, this is reality? They're cheap to produce and feed our appetite for snooping. No wonder reality shows are filling up the television airwaves.

• Author: Smillie, Dirk
• Position: Arts

It was the sort of intimate family conversation that, until recently, would never have been filmed as television entertainment. Aging rocker Ozzy Osbourne was confronting his 18-year-old daughter, Kelly, about her real-life partying ways and alcohol use on his hit MTV show The Osbournes.

"Kelly, we're not in England," the marble-mouthed Osbourne lectured, "we're in the United States of America, and the laws of California say you have to be 21 to drink." The advice--from a man who has taken more than his share of drugs--didn't exactly sink in. That evening, the cameras caught an inebriated Kelly twirling in circles, and falling to the floor. "I'm going to be sick," she said.

It was all just another day in the life of reality TV, the fastest-growing genre of programming on television. A seemingly endless supply of ordinary people--and more recently, faded celebrities--are volunteering to let cameras follow their every move at home, on a deserted island, or during a romantic encounter. It's a bit like the 1998 movie The Truman Show, in which TV producers film the entire life of a man played by Jim Carrey. Only the Carrey character didn't willingly subject himself to the intrusion.

Reality shows--from Boot Camp and Big Brother to Joe Millionaire and The Bachelor--now fill prime time slots on all the major broadcast networks. In fact, 5 of TV's top 20 programs are reality series, and many more are on the way.

There is nothing new, of course, about people's fascination with watching each other. Television has been satisfying society's nosiness since Candid Camera debuted in 1948. The appetite for observing others in unscripted, unrehearsed moments is in our genes, says Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Center for Popular Culture. "There were cave people who peeped into the caves of their neighbors," he says. "We're genetically encoded to wonder what other people are up to."

The modern version of reality TV had its genesis in 1973 when PBS aired An American Family, which chronicled the hardships of a California family. In the 1980s came the debut of MTV's The Real World, which put a group of 20-somethings together in a Manhattan loft apartment, unscripted, with cameras rolling. They heatedly debated abortion and racism, discussed personal problems, and broke down in teary confessional interviews.

But it wasn't until the blockbuster arrival of Survivor on CBS in the summer of 2000 that reality TV proved its mass appeal. Survivor...