Coaching-shows: Analysis of a new television genre

Abstract

This article explores one of the descendants of the docudrama television genres, growing presence on schedules: the coaching shows, a subset of reality show in which one or more experts teach participants to redirect unwanted situations. Such situations can be the most diverse types, generally, conduct problems, financial problems or problems of dissatisfaction with physical appearance and body image. Under the advisory or pseudoeducative function, privacy and homes are invaded and helped people appear like persons unable to solve their own problems. It also avoids the analysis and reflection on the underlying causes leading to such situations, priority is given to individual case on the collective situation and submit personal stories of participants in the plots of television narrative, forcing in any case a happy ending. In an analysis of their presence in the schedule, this text deepens in its characteristics, structure and main narrative formats. It offers a x-ray of this new television gender on that which academic thinkings have not yet emerged nor it has been object of research work, despite the fact that it goes a step beyond formats of telereality to which we are accustomed from principles of century.