According to the Writer's Guild of America, reality television got its start in the 1948 with Candid Camera, a program that used hidden cameras to secretly record people's reactions to pranks. In 1973, PBS premiered An American Family, the first reality program that filmed a family's daily life.
One of the main types of reality television shows are competition-based shows. According to the Writer's Guild of America, talent competition shows and game shows are classified as reality television.
Another genre of reality television is candid reality shows that record people's actions in an artificial setting or simply their daily activities. Time Magazine credits MTV's The Real World, a show that premiered in 1992 and filmed a group of strangers in a house, as the first mainstream candid reality show.
Dating reality shows are a hybrid of competition and candid reality shows. They often focus on a group of people competing for a date with one person or celebrity.
The Emmy Awards, which the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awards for creative excellence in the television industry, unveiled the first official industry award categories for reality television in 2008: best host of a reality television program and best reality program.