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I thought this might be of interest; do the members of this forum agree with editing reality TV programs to make certain participants look better or to increase their popularity?

On the one hand, it's totally biased and unfair to the other contestants, because the shows end up self selecting their winners, and they only really put the program on TV to get some money out of voting, or so it seems.

On the other hand, if the shows didn't do it, then surely it would remove all the entertainment from the program? For example, if they didn't show us the good and bad auditions, would we be interested in them at all?



I think it's, for the most part, a good thing in the early stages of a program, for example the X Factor, they overexpose the contestants that are going to end up getting to the judges homes, although not all of them necessarily will be the final contestants. I think once you've reached the 'final' stage of the program (e.g. top 12 for the X Factor) you can't really big anyone up, because at that point it becomes an unfair disadvantage, but prior to the live shows it's fair enough. I disagree with positive editing when it comes into play on Big Brother, because BB does it when one of their favourite housemates is up for eviction; they want to make their favourite look good or the opponent look bad, and quite often they'll essentially ignore some housemates, for example, look at how little coverage Sara and Lisa got towards the end of Big Brother last year.