How can we determine the public for which a programme caters? This article aims to answer that question by considering a TV genre, reality TV, from the angle of stages in a lifetime. The author shows how some programmes are based on the values of the 'youth'? culture and how others, more federative, such as Temptation Island, owe their success to the fact that they are implicitly structured in relation to a particular age-group, that of 'adolescents'? who have difficulty moving out of childhood, growing up and becoming autonomous adults - even though the actors in the show are all young adults. An analysis of the programme, which deliberately confines the candidates to the status of children, explains a success that statistical data simply record.