It built up to sweepstakes, but most of the time, he was just boring stuff and people were watching it because of that. The focus was things like meeting his new girlfriend.
You mean events that were planned from the get-go? Yes, those were the focus.
They weren't really the focus. The movie implies Truman had two girlfriends in his entire life: his true love who was supposed to be nothing more than extra and his wife, who he was with for more than ten years. In that time they didn't have kids, they didn't have any break-ups (the one big upcoming story was a divorce) and there is no real daily drama. The idea of the Truman Show was giving people an everyday person who does everyday things, and people watch it because they feel comfort in seeing him be okay. It is even implied that he keeps meeting the same people at work like the twins that he keeps trying to sell insurance to. Even something as dramatic as bringing back his 'father' was done as an emergency thing because Truman started finding out the truth. The Truman Show wasn't meant to be a focused soap opera, it was a slice of life show. People watched him sleep, eat, ... there were even no commercial breaks. The monotonous was what people were watching for.
