Paula Abdul

Abdul—often charmingly dippy on camera—critiqued a contestant on two songs when he had performed just one, befuddling fellow judges and quickly ballooning into scandal territory among viewers.

The questions over Idol's authenticity have invited comparisons to the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s, when it came to light that producers rigged the outcomes of popular television game shows. The genre was devastated.

Ratings for Fox's American Idol are at a five-year low, and it's treated as a foregone conclusion that concerns about the show's authenticity could do irreversible damage to the franchise.

But is it really true that viewers stop watching reality shows if they see them as fake?

There are two separate issues at play when it comes to the variety show's veracity: whether it's staged, and whether it's rigged.

Ever since Idol's first season, cynics have speculated about irregularities in vote counting (an issue debated and examined in the blogosphere with greater gusto, I think, than the 2000 election), but no foul play was ever found.

Paula's brain spasm doesn't raise uncertainty about whether the outcome is fixed by producers, it draws into question to what extent the contents of the program are spontaneous versus preplanned.

Idol attributes Abdul's mistake to the fact that judges sometimes watch dress rehearsals, suggesting that (gasp!) the judging doesn't halt when the cameras stop rolling.

When it comes to reality shows peeling back the veneer of unfettered live action to reveal directorial influence, viewers aren't nearly as turned off as their opinions on the subject would suggest.

Ever-mounting evidence that MTV's reality show The Hills is more scripted drama than documentary hasn't tarnished the show's appeal. On the contrary, when the show returned for the second half of its third season in March, it drew a series-record 4.7 million viewers.

Gordon Ramsay's cooking show on Fox, Hell's Kitchen, has been widely panned for a number of elements that seem staged and disingenuous, but that program also has been steadily climbing the ratings ranks: this spring the fourth season premiered to a series-high 12.6 million viewers.

Man vs. Wild, a Discovery Channel series in which host Bear Grylls supposedly survives unaided in the wilderness, made headlines in the middle of its second season when the adventurer's stunts turned out to be staged and aided by a large team. But the show is about to enter its fourth season, and according to Nielsen ratings data, it's still one of Discovery's most popular programs.

Brad Adgate, a senior vice president of research at Horizon Media, said he believes the damage to American Idol will likewise be minimal.

"I don't even know that this is a bad thing for American Idol, because it gives them some press," Adgate says. "The show kind of benefits from that a little bit."

Maybe ultimately the speculation, the blogging, and the complaining on the part of the audience has become in itself a piece of the reality viewing experience—gossip about what's real and fake is all just part of the entertainment.

Tom Weeks, senior vice president and director at Starcom Entertainment, thinks the viewing public is in the end far less concerned with veracity than pure and simple entertainment value.

"Consumers don't want to be mired in disclaimers," says Weeks. "They want to sit back and immerse themselves in escapism."