A reality TV show is defined as a television program where ordinary unscripted people are continuously filmed . It is also stated that they are designed to be made for entertainment rather than being informative, which helps paints a specific picture on what to expect when watching reality TV. It is essentially a non-scripted TV show that doesn’t employ real actors or screenwriters, and instead focuses on real events usually glued together by a host. Now this isn’t fully truthful as reality TV has a habit of feeling incredibly unrealistic in certain shows within their genre (often ones associated with love or competition), but it can feature aspects and elements that aren’t only actually genuine, but can highlight positive representation that wouldn’t often be highlight in other shows at the time. But how effectively do they work in other countries and how are they perceived in countries like Australia nowadays?

The influence that other cultures and foreign shows and movies have over the current age has much more presence than it did in previous years. Now that the current millennial generation is more open to non-English shows and YouTube channels, it opens up more coverage for these types of media. The fact that streaming has become such a popular method of in-taking media and that more of a variety of international options are open to the public, it causes them to be more open-minded to watching something that isn’t linked to their own culture. In terms of popularity in Australia, regular reality TV shows are one of the lesser watched genres for a majority of the population. Even while in lockdown and with four of the 10 top-rating shows of 2020 being reality shows, only 2% of Australians say they watch reality TV more often than other genres. 

Drawing back to the cultural proximity theory presented within the study; Cultural Proximity and Audience; Behavior: The Role of Language in Patterns of Polarization and Multicultural Fluency, by Thomas B. Ksiazek and James G. Webster, it mentions how people are mostly drawn to media usually associated with their own culture and country. This is mostly a pretty loose and discrete concept, as people aren’t only attracted to a media project that is done in their own language or culture, but it does resonate with a select part of the populace who don’t look for anything different or ”difficult’ to watch. Throughout the years in the modern age, more international movies and tv shows are becoming more popular in the mainstream and are being accepted as quality material even if the language is completely different, with examples like several animes and foreign horror films being huge successes without having too rely on knowledge around the culture. Reality shows have been described as guilty pleasures for most of its viewers, watching them knowing they are terrible and have even formed their own identity, with people watching them solely to view the people being awful. Considering this feeling of viewing people being awful is universal in any culture or perspective, the change in culture wouldn’t affect this mindset and therefore, wouldn’t be a piece of why someone would or wouldn’t watch a reality TV show.