The ratings crunch hitting Big Brother has nothing to do with the entertainment possibilities of putting a group of young people in a house and filming them for TV. MTV started doing it back in 1992 with a show called the Real World, and they’re just casting its twentieth series. But MTV is a niche channel.

So where does the future lie for reality entertainment?

First off, there is one. You only to have look stateside to see that. American Idol sits one and two atop the US network charts. The crown has passed to born-again talent shows like X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.

With Big Brother’s decline the reality tag may lose currency, but the genre will remain an important generator of hits. In the States, reality TV has morphed already into “nonscripted” television.

Genres are dismayingly resilient (Westerns notwithstanding). Whilst 1990s hospital drama ER prepares to enter television’s morgue, House and Grey’s Anatomy are gowning up to treat millions of viewers. Hospital-based drama as a genre is healthier by far than any of its fictionalised victims.

For television executives internationally there’s a growing awareness of the importance of the UK market as a place to try-out formats. What does that mean for British viewers? Well, we can look forward to a future as global guinea pigs for cheap to medium cost television for a while to come. It’s as good as it gets.

[For the Scotsman]