This was a season in which Jason Mesnick ceremoniously chose Melissa Rycroft to be his future bride, and then six weeks later, unceremoniously broke off the engagement. Moments after that, Mesnick turned to ask the previously rejected Molly Malaney out for coffee.
It was, at the very least, a far cry from the romantic spectacle the show is painted out to be, where 25 women vie for the attention of one bachelor, who falls in love and chooses his final mate, professing love and presenting a sparkling, diamond ring. The intention of course, that the happy couple lives happily every after.
Sofar, for the past 12 seasons of the show, not a Bachelor couple has quite made it, but ABC keeps making shows, and viewers keep watching.
Why We Watch The Bachelor and Reality Television
A 2007 study published in the Southwestern Mass Communication Journal, "Motivations for Viewing Reality Television: A Uses and Gratifications Analysis," by Samuel Ebersole and Robert Woods, postulates the top five reasons for watching reality TV are: personal identification with real characters, entertainment, mood change, to pass time, and vicarious participation. In the study, The Bachelor/The Bachelorette was the second most popular reality TV series.
This information suggests Bachelor viewers have a connection with the bachelor and/or the bachelorettes, enjoy the show and find it entertaining, and feel they are participating in the show from a distance.
Some might point out that The Bachelor is just a show among many reality television series out there, and the reasons for watching are the same across all genres and individual programming. But candlelight, roses and bubble baths tell us otherwise.
Romance and Reality TV
The Ebersole/Woods study also tells us that women are watching more reality TV, comprising 64 percent of viewers, in the age range of 18 to 24. Perhaps young female viewers are dialing into the idea of falling in love, and at the same time are not yet capable maintaining love. The Bachelor gives its audience all of the romance that leads up to a proposal, and none of the messy relationship maintenance afterwards.
Women further tie into the show's romantic premise, as shown in a 2006 article in the North American Journal of Psychology, which featured a study about love in television, conducted by Dr. Narissa Punyanunt-Carter. The women participating in the study were reported to "strongly agree with the realism of love portrayed on television," compared to male participants.
At the same time, the idea that someone can not only fall in love with someone in a few weeks time, but with The One, seems a bit preposterous.
In a 2003 Journal of Communication article, Alice Hall explained in "Reading Realism: Audiences' Evaluations of the Reality of Media Texts," that viewers of reality television are aware that the shows are not strictly "realistic," because these shows do not present situations most people would experience. This suggests that although female viewers tune are connected to the idea of love on The Bachelor, they are capable of separating real-life reality from television-based reality.
The Future Bachelor Audience
Despite the let-down endings The Bachelor delivers time and time again, it is possible that the show's female-based audience is both engaging with the characters of the show, while simultaneously separating themselves from the contestants. If the final couple does not work out, the long-shot of finding a "real" relationship on television supersedes the viewer's disappointment.
No doubts that the audience will be back again for the next attempt, their champagne glasses raised, hoping for the big romantic, happy ending.
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