Engineering truth into reality

The current trend on television is reality talent hunt shows; where the audience gets the right to vote for the winner. The trend is also to see knowledgable judges on the shows repeatedly advising audiences and explaining the virtue of voting for the right candidate and the right talent. To help audiences take the right decisions, knowledgable people on the shows express their opinions too. However we see some of the best talent getting eliminated earlier than expected and not being able to get their true due. Perhaps, if these shows were judged by "judges" and not by "voting audiences" we may have seen different people wearing the crown? Perhaps. That brings us to the question this article aims to meditate upon - How could one possibly engineer "correctness" into reality outcomes? Could there be a method that helps us to consistantly laud true talent even in reality shows that are based on votes from a large and varied audience?


To do this, let's try to identify why most shows today favor the "audience" vote based evaluation method from a "judge" based evaluation method.


First and foremost, there is no questioning the fact that the ROI in this business model is higher than the judge based evaluation method. The amount of background work that goes into hunting talent across cities and small towns is also possible only due to this added revenue. This ROI reflects clearly in the value of awards the winners receive. So, to start with everything is spot-on - viz. True talent is being identified irrespective of small town, big town, caste, class or creed , being given the opportunity to be showcased and nurtured during the show and being appreciated in the end with the right kind of reward; a reward that fosters the talent on its way to prosperity & iconicity.

It is ironic then, that when the fundametals of the audience-votes-based-reality-show-model are weighed in truth and values; yet, in the end we find truly deserving talent wanting to reach the pedestal, and having to take the harder path.

We lose the game when the ball falls in the hands of the audiences. Favorites emerge and eventually getting audiences to vote for the winner is expected to provide a "pilot-taste" of "audience loyalty" for the showcased talent. It would be interesting to study if the magnitude of audience loyalty for the winners demonstrated in the "pilot" carries itself and multiplies beyond the talent show in cases where the best talent is dropped before the pinnacle.

So is there a technique that could bring sanity into the outcomes of mass voting?
If the regions from where the contestants hail was not known to the audiences we could perhaps reduce regional bias from voting audiences. Further would we be better if the first few rounds of eliminations of purely musical talent shows took place via media like the radio - so that visual bias could be minimized in the first few rounds of elimination at least. Should the number of votes sent through a single device for a single contestant be limited to a predefined maximum - Yes this impacts straight on revenues :-) Perhaps a weighted average should be taken across all elimination rounds for each contestant to decide on the elimination? Perhaps we also need some weight to be associated with the judges views in the calculation for the ultimate winner. Should audiences be asked to "vote out" rather than "vote in" - This could impact revenues too :-) Perhaps there should be a combination of vote outs and vote ins allowed and the combination should be used to eliminate?

Indeed, there is quite a bit of maths, science and statistics that should go into engineering truth into outcomes of reality talent search. Today we have a multitude of voting based talent searches on reality tv; what will set a particular talent hunt apart and help its brand value will be a mechanism that is able to help the best talent forward; because Truly, we all want to laud real talent !