The French reality TV programme landscape and the Star Academy programme

The television landscape has changed years ago with the incredible growth of new programmes. Indeed, reality TV knows a huge development among TV viewers raising key issues around ethics, politics, truth-telling and realist representation. Even if reality television is totally a new genre of TV programmes, it became famous very quickly. The main difference with traditional programmes is that ordinary people are the main characters of emissions instead of famous actors. A reality television programme presents unscripted dramatic or hilarious situations by recording people 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. In France, programmes such as "Perdue de vue" (kind of a talk-show) were the first to give the word to ordinary people. However, the launch of reality TV in France was symbolised by the start of Loft Story in April 2001. Since that date, the French audiovisual landscape radically changed and is now overrun by reality programmes.