www.forbes.com: Reality television is a mainstay and production companies motivated by ratings and eyeballs to develop new, sometimes more dangerous concepts to entice and intrigue viewers. With more risk comes more potential for injuries, both physical and mental, leading to more lawsuits against production companies and distributors. While it is easy to blame the creators of reality programming, reality show participants, as long as they are fully informed about what they might be getting into, and often even when they are not, are assuming the risk for what might happen to them on set.
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The author of this article seems to have a very pessimistic view on the future and current state of reality television, and I don't think they're wrong. Reality TV thrives off of drama and controversy. The saying "any press is good press" very much applies to reality television. In the article, an example is given of a contestant on a show who was bitten by a rat during a challenge. While publicly the show was receiving backlash, behind the scenes I bet that their view count was going way up due to the publicity, meaning that they made more money. While on the surface executives may say they care about the contestants, the truth is that these events make them more money, so they want these things to keep happening. Contestants are going to be continually put in situations that are bad for their mental and physical health, all because that's what gets us to watch. The truth is that we, the viewer, are the issue here. The only way to get them to stop would be to stop watching, but we don't. That just means that as time goes on, things are going to get worse and worse. And with contestants having to sign airtight contracts that make it impossible to sue, they aren't going to have many options to push back.
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