Editors' Introduction: Mapping the Field of Popular Communication

Reality TV has become a key site for experiments in "advertainment," or the merging of advertising and entertainment programming, and hence provides insight into current developments in commercial culture. Focusing on the genre's exchange value, this article examines Reality TV's commodification of various aspects of experience from privacy to diversity and, even more pragmatically, its development as a rich advertising vehicle for the digital era. Product placement, sponsorship and co-production are among the techniques examined. A discussion of Reality TV's core brand identity-a special viewing access-underscores its relation to voyeurism, pornography and, to spot advertising, all traditional techniques for attracting an audience. In many instances, the genre's high degree of commercialization signals the triumph of the market in one conspicuous area of popular communication.