The year is 2017. In America, criminals have a choice. They can serve their sentences  in prison or they can take part in The Running Man (1987), a government owned violent game-show where contestants running for freedom are pursued by professional "Stalkers", whose objective is to kill them.

However, The Running Man is just a film, a Reality TV show would not actually televise cold-blooded murder and watch people dying for the sake of increasing its ratings … would it?

Reality TV started out with programmes such as The Family and Real World which were merely social experiments that gave birth to the idea that real people could become stars of their own soap operas. But the genre quickly progressed, showing us sex scenes in Big Brother and repulsive rat eating contests in Survivor.

Now, with the constant media coverage of Reality TV star Jade Goody as we literally watch her die, you may ask just how far is Reality TV prepared to go? Will the horrors of The Running Man become the future of Reality TV shows?

The year is 2009 and it seems that televising death is not beyond Reality TV’s limits if it will succeed in securing larger audiences.

George Orwell introduced us to the idea of Reality TV in 1984. Each person is subjected to 24 hour surveillance under the omnipresent and omnipotent Big Brother. It may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell's vision of a society where cameras and computers spy on every person's movements is now here.

Britain now has well over 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of CCTV cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Daniel Minahan, director of Series 7, The Contenders (2001), a film which imagines what might happen if reality TV arrived at the point in which it seems to be heading. said: “These (reality TV) programmes reflect the conviction that viewers, like heroin addicts, will need an increased dose of whatever it was that got them off last summer if they're going to stay with these formats.” This means more sex, more drama, greater opportunities for ritualized unpleasantness and more psychological torture.

However these are works of fiction, would reality TV really go that far?

Jade Goody lived in the media's spotlight - she took what little talent she had, seized on a medium that would allow her to project herself on the national stage, and then turned herself into an instantly recognizable celebrity. She was always a fiercely polemical public figure - a real love her or hate her personality. But she seemed determined to live her whole life with the nation watching. And now she seems determined to die in exactly the same way - with the nation looking in on her. Amid the swirling confusion of reality, hyper reality and surrealism, it's easy to forget there's an actual person — and a genuine sadness — at the heart of all the activity. Even Goody seems confused. "I have lived my whole adult life talking about my life. The only difference is, I am talking about my death now," Goody told the documentary crew following her final days. "I've lived in front of the cameras and maybe I'll die in front of them."  

This is reality television carried out to its most extreme, grotesque conclusion, one not even envisioned in the film The Truman Show all those years ago. The question of why, exactly, the story is so compelling — how to negotiate the line between poignant and voyeuristic, whether newspapers are exploiting Ms. Goody or she is exploiting them — has twisted the media into knots, even as they provide daily updates on Ms. Goody’s deteriorating condition and state of mind. Scottish newspaper The Herald reported that she knew her willingness to die on camera would get a mixed reception, but that her impending death made her not care about anyone’s opinion.

Her publicist Max Clifford has denied that the public will witness the moment of Goody's death. Sometimes even reality has its limits. However, there is no denying that each day the media is bombarding us with images of Jade's last days – this is Reality TV taken to new heights as we actually watch a woman die.

“We’re all obsessed with it — broadsheet and tabloid audiences are alike in being transfixed,” said Julia Hobsbawm, chief executive of the media analysis firm Editorial Intelligence. “I don’t know who’s doing the exploiting, but it’s very, very compelling.”

In an online poll on MSNBC, the 24-hour cable news channel, asking readers whether they thought Reality TV has gone too far, 77% out of 6,080 responses said: “Yes. Somebody is going to get hurt and the show producers will be responsible.”

After speaking to a variety of Kingston University students, ideas on the future of reality television vary. Frederik Granlien,1st year Journalism and International Relations student thinks that brutality is the future of Reality TV: “I don't think it will go as far as cold-blooded murder but the genre is turning to violence and people think it's fun to see others get hurt”, he said.

When asked about the Reality TV of Jade Goody's death, most of the students I spoke to thought the constant media attention was wrong. First year Pharmaceutical Science student Taiwo Madume said: “It's destiny. She gained popularity but now she's losing her life. She deserves a second chance to live; I don't think it should be shown to the public, it's sad.”

Steve Adubato, Media Analyst for the TODAYShow.com believes that Reality TV show producers, in a frenetic effort to put compelling television on the air and bring in big ratings, are creating scenarios where disaster and tragedy are right around the corner. He said: “More tragedies are going to happen, and when they do, reality TV show producers will ask, “What did you expect us to do? We can’t stop it. We’re just there to witness what happens.” One wonders when reality show producers and network executives who put these programs on the air will say, “Enough is enough. Here’s where the line is and we’re not crossing it — even for ratings!”

The question of how far is too far for a TV show to go for ratings is a highly debated topic. I would argue the networks have gone too far already. We are obviously in a Reality TV craze. The media’s obsession with televising Jade’s final moments epitomize just how far the medium has gone as something as private as dying is sensationalised before the watchful eyes of the public. Whether we even want to witness this type of story is questionable and perhaps more of a case of the media dictating what we want. Until we find our remotes and turn off our sets I fear Reality TV will become more and more about shocking us, the viewer and less about ‘reality’.