Competition+Artifacts

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One subgenre of the reality television program is the competition-based show, in which contestants compete against one another in episodes typically resulting in the elimination of one or more competitors. In some shows viewers contribute to the voting process, helping to determine who is eliminated or chosen a winner. These types of shows use competition as a means to increase the drama of reality tv; viewers develop relationships with contestants that are heightened by the potential for those competitors to lose or be voted out. In those shows with viewer participation, those at home have an even greater relationship with contestants, by voicing their support or distaste and helping to shape the outcomes and future episodes of the very show they are viewing.

Talent Based
Talent-based competitions are one incarnation of the competition reality tv show, focusing on the specific skills of contestants/competitors such as cooking on //Top Chef//, designing on //Project Runway//, and dancing on //Dancing With the Stars//, among others. While not necessarily a new form of television show-Star Search in 1983 featured amateur performers competing against one another, today's talent competitions are unique for their focus on the mundane aspects of competitors' lives in addition to those talents which warrant their place in a show. The interpersonal dealings between competitors outside of periods of direct competition, often heightened by placing competitors in a single house for the duration of taping, are now a key element in most talent competition shows. Issues such as dealing with being away from home and family are often discussed with contestants in interviews filmed for the show, emphasizing how such reality tv is not only compelling for its competitive elements. The following five artifacts present a range of examples of talent-based competitions programs and the types of web 2.0 tools they utilize in order to maximize user interaction and interest.

1. //American Idol//'s Performance mp3s
//American Idol// is perhaps the best known current competition-based reality tv show. Since it's first season in 2002 it has produced contestants like Jennifer Hudson, who has received both a Grammy and an Oscar since appearing on the show, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, and Kelly Clarkson, among others who have gone on to become successful musicians. It represents one aspect of the competition based talent show that appeals to viewers: that competitors can gain longterm notoriety and fame taking them from amateur competitors to industry-accepted mainstays. //American Idol// facilitates the idea that an unknown with a dream can achieve that dream; the dichotomy is that he then becomes a celebrity detached from the "real world" and the real people from which he gained their support and from which viewers may have felt a common identity. Access at [] //American Idol//'s website includes a link to its iTunes store, which exclusively offers viewers the ability to purchase mp3s of its competitors' recorded songs. //American Idol// iTunes store, linked from the //American Idol// website

media type="custom" key="8919040" width="250" height="250" Click play to hear a preview of one mp3 song available to download from the iTunes store. In order to preserve this song and the others offered to viewers in full in a real archival setting, the archive would need to purchase the rights to download them from iTunes.

**2. //RuPaul's Drag Race// Facebook page** //RuPaul's Drag Race// is a show that features aspiring drag queens competing in challenges that test their talents, which include designing outfits and runway walking, and allow contestants to learn more skills such as makeup application and dance from leaders in their field. Despite covering a niche interest and airing on Logo, MTV's gay and lesbian television network, the second season received more than 9.8 million video streams from the Logo website by the end of its second season. The third season opened to a 33 percent increase in viewers from the second season premiere, for a total of 449,000, and saw increased web streams as well. This show exemplifies the power of reality tv to take an obscure and somewhat taboo topic and give it a mainstream voice through the use of competition and reality-tv dramatics that have proven to attract viewers in recent years. Reality tv shows such as this one both demystify a field of interest through the exposure to it, and entertain viewers by displaying something that may otherwise be alien to them. The high number of web streamed videos speaks to the role of the internet in popularizing the show. One of its most interesting web 2.0 tools is the //Drag Race// Facebook page, which as of March 30, 2011 has 349,814 followers. A highly active page, //RuPaul's Drag Race// uses social media not only to expose viewers to extras like behind the scenes videos and remind them of upcoming episodes, but to allow viewers to help choose what cities //Drag Race// winners should tour, inform them of various local viewing parties, participate in forum-like discussions, and view photos taken of fans who've attended various meet and greet events. The localized content of the Facebook page shows the power of the internet in marketing and advertising shows that may not have the budgets for wide scale ad campaigns, television commercials, or other traditional means of spreading awareness of a show's existence. In this sense, reality tv and web 2.0 have both increased the chance of success for such niche interest programming. Access at []

One of the many pages on the //RuPaul's Drag Race// Facebook page, Events gives viewers a local place to watch the show with fellow fans.

The Facebook page also gives viewers opportunities to win prizes related to the show, highlighting the amount of content available through this source.

3. FIDM's //Project Runway// blog
//Project Runway// is a program featuring designers who must create clothing based on weekly challenge themes, which are then judged by professional fashion designers, supermodel host Heidi Klum and a guest judge-typically a celebrity, who then eliminate one or more contestants. The final prize is the opportunity to present a collection during New York Fashion Week, a highly esteemed event in fashion. The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising is a well-known college in Los Angeles that was home to the //Project Runway// competitors' sewing area in its seventh season. Capitalizing on its notoriety from association with the show, the school's website hosts a blog that covers all things related to the show. While the show had from the beginning happened to feature contestants and winners who were either FIDM alumni or instructors, with this formal association, FIDM was able to take greater advantage of its proximity to the popular show in order to heighten its own notoriety. Its blog is updated regularly, important for maintaining an engaged readership, and offers a wealth of information to readers regarding the school itself through links on its sidebar. While the blog content is strictly about the show, this blog shows how reality-based tv can serve as a boon to real world businesses and organizations and how blogs can take advantage of such association for marketing purposes. Reality television programs are now capitalizing on this potential by accepting sponsorships that involve product placements, again blurring the lines between reality and fiction. Such sponsorships are not new, but their placement within reality tv programming is relatively new and continues to expand with the growth of reality tv programming itself. Access at []

The FIDM blog highlights how institutions can use the success of a reality tv show to boost their own image and expose a broader audience to its events and functions.

**4. Design Star winner Emily Henderson's Twitter**
HGTV (Home and Garden TV) recently aired the fourth season of its top-rated //Design Star// program, which pits stylists and interior designers against one another with their own HGTV-aired show at stake as the prize. Two of its three judges are interior designer alumni from another reality tv show, TLC's //Trading Spaces//, suggesting that despite their differences from scripted shows, reality tv creates similar relationships and loyalties between participants and viewers as sitcoms create between characters and viewers. Viewers who enjoy participants in reality tv may follow them to new programming just like casting directors hire A-list celebs looking to capitalize on the same type of big name draw for their films. The season 4 winner, Emily Henderson, is the current host of //Secrets from a Stylist//, her prize for winning, and maintains an active Twitter page that allows readers not just to get information on things like when her current show will air, but also behind the scenes looks at filming locations, where the interior decorator finds the furniture that will later be featured in her designs, and looks at Henderson's personal life. Henderson's Twitter page. In the second tweet from the top readers learn that the bedding used in the first episode of her show was from Dwell Studio and Garnet Hill. Viewers can now click on the link to Dwell Studio or Garnet Hill's Twitter pages to find ordering information or store locations. Below is a more personal Tweet, showing how Twitter blurs the line between private and public-appealing for reality tv personalities who are already balancing the two spheres.


 * 5.//Top Chef//'s Top Chef University videos **
 * //Top Chef// is one show that uses dozens of web tools to share with viewers content that is extraneous to its actual produced shows, from videos to blogs, and from from Facebook to Twitter. One such example is it's Top Chef University. Videos offered exclusively online and advertised during //Top Chef// show airings feature competitors from current and past seasons who create dishes, allowing viewers to follow along. Links to written recipes matching those cooked by competitors are provided on the Top Chef website so that viewers can not only watch a recipe being cooked, but replicate it themselves. While Top Recipe, a similar video series, has a chef recreating a winning dish from the previous week's episode, Top Chef University videos feature content wholly removed from the competition, highlighting how //Top Chef// uses its website to host a wide range of food and chef related content, taking "Top Chef" from simply a show to an entire brand of sorts themed around cooking and food. It's also a good example of how reality tv can offer such extras; not tied to a script in which a strict set of storytelling formulas must be adhered to in order to maintain viewer loyalty and loyalty to individual characters, in such talent-based competition shows success can often be attributed to connecting with viewers who are already engaged and interested in the field specific to the show-contestants are important, but so is the industry in which they work, in this case the food industry. //Top Chef// uses its viewers love of cooking and food to build loyalty for the show by hosting such extras as its video series. **

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A Top Chef University video hosted by Vimeo, accessible here: [] For the Top Chef website access []