Oh hell no. Cops has been on the air since 1989 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COPS_%28TV_series%29), way before the term "reality show" was even coined.
One thing that separates Cops from modern "reality TV" is the lack of cash and prizes offered to the participants. Unless you consider a free ride in a police car a prize. :-P
There's a book called "The Jump-Out Boys" by one of the producers that talks about how they film and stuff. There's also a show I've caught on Discovery channel called something like "Behind The Scences: COPS" which documents how they shoot the show and stuff. Not fake at all. They just make it a point to not get involved beyond shooting the footage. There have been two incidents where this wasn't the case. Once, two cruisers collided, both carrying crew members. There was a bit of footage of the crew members in the back seat slightly bange up. The other one, I think the sound guy knew CPR, so, put down the boom mike and helped perform CPR on someone. There was a guy on LJ that was a cop with a department that had COPS along. They left after something like a month because they didn't have enough good footage. He deleted his lj quite some time ago, and I don't recall the name.
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Date: 2007-05-29 04:12 pm (UTC)One thing that separates Cops from modern "reality TV" is the lack of cash and prizes offered to the participants. Unless you consider a free ride in a police car a prize. :-P
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Date: 2007-05-29 04:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-29 04:48 pm (UTC)