Reality TV is one of the most popular genres on the air today and it's not hard to see why. From dating shows to survival competitions and fly-on-the-wall series that follow peoples' day to day lives, there's so much variety in the genre that it's easy for just about anyone to find a reality TV series that fits their interests.
Whether you started watching reality TV back when Johnny Fairplay pretended his grandmother died on Survivor, you just got into it when Monica Garcia was exposed for running a gossip Instagram account on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, you fall somewhere in the middle, it's easy to see how reality TV can really draw a person in.
Keep reading to find out what the first ever reality TV show was and learn about a few other shows that are credited as being the first to bring something brand new to the genre.
1. Candid Camera
Candid Camera is a hidden camera series that started as a radio show (called Candid Microphone) in 1947 but made the jump to TV in 1948. The series would put ordinary people into bizarre and humorous situations to film their reaction live and unscripted before revealing that they were being filmed by the Candid Camera crew.
2. An American Family
Premiering in 1973, An American Family was the first fly-on-the-wall series to give a prolonged look at a family full of ordinary people in their daily lives. Although Candid Camera aired 25 years earlier, An American Family is known as the first example of what we consider reality TV today as it's most similar to current shows like The Real Housewives and other similar franchises that show people in their everyday lives.
An American Family followed the Loud family -- a mother, a father, and their five children -- who lived in Santa Barbara, California for a total of 12 episodes. The series gave a glimpse into the lives of an ordinary American family, including the highs and lows of their lives as Bill and Pat Loud were visibly on the brink of divorce when the show was filmed.
3. Cops
Cops began airing in 1989 on Fox and was a groundbreaking series at the time because it sent a camera crew out in the field with police officers in order to follow them as they actively did their jobs. With over 1,200 episodes, Cops aired from 1989 through 2020 and was picked back up by Fox Nation, Fox's streaming service, in 2021. The show gained notoreity for the fact that anything could happen while the camera crew was following the officers on the job.
4. The Real World
The Real World aired on MTV from 1992 through 2019. This show would put a group of young strangers together in a house and just film their interactions, from romance to drama as their varying personalities meshed and clashed in interesting ways. The show was notable at the time for putting together groups of average people who were total strangers and just filming whatever happened next.
Several cast members from The Real World have gone on to have successful careers of their own. Some include: San Diego's Jamie Chung who became an actress after her time on MTV; Sean Duffy from Boston who moved to politics and became the Secretary of Transportation under the Trump administration; and Mike "The Miz" Mizanin from Back to New York has become a WWE star.