It was one of those uneventful afternoons on the set of the ‘live’ Reality TV show I was interning for. Everyone went about their usual business. Stationed next to the Camera Director in the front-end of the panel room, I sat quietly staring at the dozens of monitors that observed the Reality TV show contestants around the clock in Big Brother style. Five metres behind me, the censor on duty watched the ‘live’ broadcast conscientiously on a separate monitor for anything that needed immediate censoring. A woman in her early twenties, she was one of the dozens of part-timers who were hired on an hourly rate to act as censors for the ‘live’ programme. The instructions given to her when she was hired were simple: blur or mute what you deem problematic; and record what you censored in a logbook. Outside the panel room, the Production Manager monitored our work by watching what the audiences would see – the post-censored ‘live’ broadcast on television.

The mood in the panel room was relaxed, almost sleepy. This was one of those afternoons when the contestants had no designated activities and were free to rest. With nothing in particular to focus our attention on, the Camera Director switched around the different cameras to capture what the different contestants were doing.