While studying at ANU for my last degree I made a friend who I'd bounce ideas off before writing essays. He's still one of my closest friends and I really value his analysis. I asked him what he thought distinguished reality TV from documentaries and he said it was the prizes.
I've been wondering about this. A documentary like The Good Woman of Bangkok contradicts the idea as the central character, Aoi the prostitute, is sleeping with the film maker Dennis O'Rourke and appearing in the film in order to receive the rice farm he has promised. There isn't the competitive element you find in reality TV but there's the same lure of a substantial return.
Maybe the difference between docos and reality TV is the producers create this kind of a competitive environment? Maybe there's an analogy in the contrast between ethnography and psychological experiment. The way ethnography uses participant observation to pursue some ideal minimally intrusive submersive experience that seems empathatic; while psychology always seemed to me to entail telling people one thing to gauge another and leaving you feel somewhat cheated by the limited scope it was really recording. Makes sense to me anyway.
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