No high-paid stars are needed. Yet the shows often do not present the truth. It's really pseudo voyeurism. The chance to observe real people as they face their moments of reckoning may be another point of appeal of some varieties of video voyeurism on television. This mediated voyeurism also thrives because we're so used to having cameras all around us today.
Cameras capture our images at the automated bank machine.
They record us blowing through red lights. And, in a growing number of cities, they serve as surrogate police officers recording movements of everyone and anyone walking on the streets. All of this shreds our sense of privacy. In turn, it makes us more willing to watch others, more willing to be mediated voyeurs. If we can be watched, then we should be able to do some watching of our own.