I have written earlier about the undeniable fact that all so-called "reality TV" shows are staged. It's not a question of whether the show is staged, the only question is how extensively.
Even in the absolutely least offending cases, where something like 90% of the show could be considered genuine "reality TV" (in other words, real everyday people, no paid professional actors, acting in completely unscripted ways, reacting naturally and spontaneously without being coached or induced to do so, making decisions 100% on their own without any influence from the show producers), there will still be at least that 10% that's fake, artificially created for the sake of drama and viewer engagement. Editing will often be used to give the wrong impression to the viewers about things having happened that didn't, or that happened in a different way, producers will induce drama by instructing participants to do something, or in some way affect their behavior, and so on.
However, those "almost-real" shows are so rare as to be pretty much non-existent. There might have been a couple of them during the history of "reality TV".
This kind of deception by show producers is often used even in shows that one wouldn't even expect, shows that aren't really considered your typical "reality TV" per se. The most typical example of this are the various talent audition TV shows. One wouldn't expect for there to be motivation or even the possibility of deception by show producers. After all, thousands of people come to the auditions, present their thing, and the judges pass or reject them. What deception could there even be here?
Yet, it happens all the time. There have been many demonstrable cases where the show producers have decided in advance whether someone can pass or not, based on their submission videos or act, and have instructed the judges to reject it no matter what, and either don't show that act at all on TV, show it for a few seconds in one of those compilation-of-rejected-acts segments or, what's worst, show the entire act but use editing trickery to make it look worse than it really was (many participants have attested to this). Even some world-class professional acts have been rejected in this manner without even giving them a chance.
Then there's, of course, your typical "participant starts with a decent but not-brilliant song, the head judge stops the audition midway to the disappointment and gasps of the audience, then asks the participant to sing something else, and the new song is absolutely stunning and astonishing", which has happened a suspicious amount of times. This, of course, is in no way spontaneous and is fully staged, prearranged by the show producers with the head judge and the participant. The singing might be genuine, but that entire charade is nothing but artificial stageplay.
And then, of course, there's the other extreme, where the entire "reality TV" show is completely staged, such as the infamous show "Pawn Stars", which alleges to depict the daily events happening at a real pawn shop, with real customers trying to sell their real artifacts, with the shop owners and workers being really charismatic and engaging, always having interesting and funny things to say, always throwing interesting tidbits of information, and overall having a really likeable and charismatic attitude. While the pawn shop itself is real and exists, the show itself is 100% fake: It's filmed in a studio (the real shop is much smaller than what's shown in the show), which of course means that all the people shown "visiting" this fake "shop" are fake, and pretty much all of the objects that these fake customers are selling have been acquired by the show producers. In most shots there are a bunch of "customers" inside the "shop" browsing around, but rather obviously since it's all just a studio, they are nothing but paid extras.
Anyway, it's quite clear that pretty much all "reality TV" shows are staged to one extent or other. It's not even a question of whether such a show is staged, but how much.
And, perhaps, a more interesting phenomenon is how well the show creators have succeeded in making us not want to believe that the show is staged.
"Pawn Stars" is perhaps the perfect example of this: The shop owners and workers are so charismatic and so likeable that it really gives the viewers an instinct that wants to reject the idea that the show is fake. It really makes them want to believe that the show is real. Sure, maybe a few lines of dialogue and a few interactions with the experts have been staged for the sake of convenience and to keep the show flowing, but other than that surely it must be completely real? Surely even those few things are more like when documentaries re-enact events that weren't filmed, just for the benefit of the viewers, to show what actually happened? We really, really want to believe the show is real and not so utterly staged.
And that's, perhaps, what makes the show so brilliant.
Sometimes such "reality TV" shows can get away with astonishing amounts of fakery, while still having most viewers wanting to believe that it's all genuine, not wanting to believe that it's all staged.
The show "Storage Wars" may be the perfect examples of that: It should be obvious to anybody that random storage lockers out there are not just full of junk with an incredibly valuable object among the junk. If the show were real, then 99.9% of the time when the participants buy the contents of such a storage locker, there would be just that inside, in other words, worthless junk. Nothing of any value. Yet, suspiciously often there is something valuable in there.
And, indeed: While the storage lockers are real storage lockers in those cities, and yes, they most often are actual ones owned by random people who failed to pay the rent and thus forfeited all the contents (although I wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of them are 100% rented and filled with junk by the producers themselves), the show producers always review the contents beforehand and, egregiously, go and add the valuable object in there themselves, just to keep the show interesting.
There are also credible reports that the show producers outright give the participants money for bidding on the lockers.
And the participants themselves? Effectively semi-professional actors. Pretty much all the drama that's happening in the show is fully acted and fake. (Funnily, season by season the show has only amped up the drama, because it sells. So much so that the contents of the storage lockers have actually become a rather secondary thing in the latest seasons.)
It should be pretty obvious to pretty much anybody that the number of valuable items found in these storage lockers is suspiciously high, and suspiciously valuable. Yet, for some reason, most viewers still want to believe it's all genuine. They don't want to believe that it's staged, no matter how obviously it is.
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