So You Think You Can Dance has its top 10 and now gives control entirely to viewers, revealing Nigel Lythgoe revealing that there would be no Michael Jackson tribute because the show isn’t allowed to use his music.
60-year-old birthday boy Lythgoe said that the show had its choreographers on board, but “yesterday, we got a note back — whether it’s Sony or the family estate, I don’t know, but they would not clear the music for us. And it’s very sad; for some reason, we can’t do the show.”
The top 10 finalist dancers, whose fates are now in viewers’ hands for the remaining four weeks of the competition, are Kupono Aweau, Brandon Bryant, Randi Evans, Jason Glover, Evan Kasprzak, Janette Manrara, Jeanine Mason, Ade Obayomi, Kayla Radomski, and Melissa Sandvig.
That means Caitlin Kinney and popper Phillip Chbeeb were the last two contestants to be eliminated by the judges, and that probably shouldn’t be a surprise with Phillip because he wasn’t great with much outside of popping, which he does amazingly well. However, both will appear on the tour, as Lythgoe revealed, “I have secured with the producers that you and Caitlin will be on the tour.” And since he’s an executive producer, that’s impressive dealmaking.
For his hosting work on American Idol 8, Ryan Seacrest made $100,000 per episode. That’s a total of “slightly less than $5 million this season,” according to The Hollywood Reporter—significantly less than the $12.5 million a year that the Washington Post reported last year that Seacrest gets per year.
In any case, it’s a lot of cash, and THR says he is working on a three-year deal with 19 Entertainment that “will give Seacrest a major pay raise and make him one of the highest-paid reality hosts on television.” The paper doesn’t mention what that number is, or who makes more than he does (Bergeron? Probst?). But Seacrest’s hosting is just a fraction of the money he makes for his various projects.
Two new web sites are seeking personal stories from people who met online that may be turned into a documentary style series.
The “two new story-driven websites” are “part of a multimedia project which we hope will culminate in a new TV series unlike anything that’s on the air right now,” according to a blog post on Web Lab, the nonprofit think-tank behind the two sites.
Produced by PBS P.O.V. creator Mark N. Weiss and producer Tom Yellin, the show—which has a working title of Stories—“will gather personal stories on a range of issues.”
The two sites that are gathering those personal stories are Meeting Online, which wants “[stories] about the successes and failures of meeting people online,” and How We Die, which “will explore how our most personal experiences have shaped what we believe about death and dying, and about the decisions we make for ourselves, for loved ones, or for patients at the end of life.”
Today is July 9, 2009, and it also happens to be reality blurred’s ninth anniversary—and this is the 9,387th post. (If I’d been less lazy and just posted 612 more times, that would have been pretty amazing.)
What started nine years ago as just me sitting in front of a computer bitching about reality television has evolved into—um, me sitting in front of a computer bitching about reality television. But back then I was 22, so clearly I’m a lot grumpier now. I appreciate everyone from those of you who have been around since the beginning to the ones who’ve made this site part of your lives since then.
It’s celebration enough that Big Brother 11 debuts tonight, and while it’s kind of half-assed to have a pseudo-party a week late, that’s what I’ll be doing: In part to celebrate this milestone and kick off year 10, we’ll have another live blogging/chat event at 11:45 p.m. ET next Thursday, July 16.
Why so late? That’s 15 minutes before the debut of Andy Cohen’s midnight and sure-to-be-awesome chat show on Bravo. After that half-hour of mocking concludes, we’ll stay up to watch Big Brother After Dark and/or the live feeds, at least until I get bored and/or fall asleep. I hope you’ll grab a cocktail, your computer, and your television, or some combination thereof, and join in. More next Thursday, but mark your calendars now. No excuses.
And thanks for reading reality blurred for these nine years.
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The 20th season of Survivor, long rumored to be some kind of all-star season (not again, ugh!) has not yet locked down its twists and creative direction, according to a recent interview with executive producer Mark Burnett.
Regarding the 20th season, which Jeff Probst confirmed to me will shoot immediately after season 19, Burnett told The Hollywood Reporter, “There’s so much being discussed. No decisions have been made. Clearly it’s 10 years (and) 20 seasons. We’ll do something really cool but we certainly won’t be making any big format changes.”
Not made creative decisions yet? With plans for 20 to be in production in August, they’d better hurry up. Then again, they may have already made those decisions. For one, Burnett was known, at least in the early years, to lie about his show to throw people off, but more significantly, the Tuesday article also said he was interviewed in the South Pacific, so the conversation obviously occurred earlier, since he was in Los Angeles Wednesday for his Walk of Fame star ceremony.
Burnett also talked about his upcoming ABC series Shark Tank (“an extremely high-quality (show)” that “feels like (it) belongs up there with great dramas”), and discussed reviving the original Apprentice. While Donald Trump said the celebrity and original editions could air simultaneously, Burnett said “we could alternate seasons with it” but says they’re not really focused on the regular edition: “Celebrity Apprentice has done so well, there’s no way we’re going to move off that right now. Only a fool would chance success.”
By the way, The Hollywood Reporter’s piece says reporter James Hibberd talked to Burnett while Burnett was in “an undisclosed location in the South Pacific where the 19th season of ‘Survivor’ is being filmed.” Besides that being public information since March, and officially revealed in May, there was even a recent press release naming the 19th season’s location, so you’d think it wouldn’t have been easy to avoid such information. Consider yourself warned, people at trade papers, but that super top-secret place is—SPOILER ALERT—Samoa.
NBC » July 9, 2009, 7:17 AM
NBC’s Great American Road Trip debuted Tuesday night, and already the network is moving it away from its highly rated golden child America’s Got Talent, dumping the new reality show on Mondays at 8 p.m.
The premiere of the new series was watched by 4.657 million people, more than the 4.198 who watched ABC’s crap The Superstars, which is definitely the inferior series. But an hour later, 10.434 million tuned in to America’s Got Talent, according to TV By the Numbers.
Great American Road Trip, which features families traveling across the country in RVs while making stops to compete in challenges, made me nostalgic for the amazing USA series The Real Cannonball Run 2001, and even The Amazing Race’s tragic family season, because at least that had stuff to make fun of, in addition to TAR’s production values and Phil. And of course, it borrows most heavily from the original seasons of Road Rules, before they turned into Real World-style stupidity fests. NBC’s new show isn’t terrible, but it just fumbles a format that’s been done before—and better.
The cast of Project Runway 6 finished filming their season almost five months ago, but they’re finally being revealed to the world now, six weeks before the new season debuts late next month.
Of the 16 cast members, nine are in their 20s, four are between 30 and 32, two are in their 40s, and one is 50. Seven are from New York. The AP runs down the cast, noting that “[t]hree of them — Nicolas Putvinksi, Gordana Gehlhausen and Irina Shabeyeva — hail originally from Russia, Bosnia and the Republic of Georgia, respectively.”
Heidi Klum told the AP that the women are contenders and the source of drama. “Look out for the girls. The girls are very strong on season six. There’s a lot of crying, there’s fighting going on, there’s a lot of drama going on — but especially with the girls,” she told the AP. Here are names, ages, and hometowns of the women and men:
Shirin Askari, 25, of Garland, Texas.
Louise Black, 32, of Dallas.
Ra’Mon-Lawrence Coleman, 31, of Milwaukee.
Rodney Epperson, 50, of New York.
Ari Fish, 26, of Kansas City, Mo.
Qristyl Frazier, 42, of New York.
Gordana Gehlhausen, 45, of San Diego.
Mitchell Hall, 26, of Savannah, Ga.
Althea Harper, 25, of New York.
Logan Neitzel, 25, of Seattle.
Nicolas Putvinksi, 27, of New York.
Johnny Sakalis, 30, of Los Angeles.
Irina Shabeyeva, 27, of New York.
Christopher Straub, 30, of Shakopee, Minn.
Malvin Vein, 24, of New York.
Carol Hannah Whitfield, 24, of New York.
Today at 9 a.m. ET, Lifetime is unveiling the show’s new web site to go along with one of the worst promotional ads ever. I guess that ad is designed to draw in Lifetime’s viewers, but it tries so hard to be cool and comes off as so lame.
Meanwhile, before the Project Runway, world even gets a chance to judge what the network and Bunim-Murray has done to save or screw up everyone’s favorite show, the seventh season is currently being filmed. They started production on June 16, according to New York Magazine, which reported that they’re once again staying at Atlas. A few days later, the contestants were awakened at 6:30 a.m. for some kind of trip, but the magazine hasn’t reported on them since.
Perhaps the contestants were kidnapped and hidden in the BravoTV.com server room, or got lost trying to find the show on Lifetime?
Bravo’s Project Runway weak clone The Fashion Show is still airing, which is almost unbelievable because it feels like it’s been on TV forever, and I haven’t even been watching it. After the first couple episodes, I couldn’t keep going, as it was just wholly uninteresting to me, never mind badly produced and conceived—and I loved Project Runway during its prime (and the final Bravo season was not its prime). So what’s wrong with it? Two people who have stuck with the series but also don’t like it have some thoughts.
Project Rungay creators Tom and Lorenzo—who admit they have “been rooting since Day One for Bravo to get this one right”—offer 2,400+ words on how Bravo can fix The Fashion Show, which they say Bravo “rushed … into production too quickly before they could really figure out what they wanted to do.” Here’s a summary of their advice, which is definitely worth a read:
“The runway portion is too derivative of PR; the judges are not suited to their roles; Fern is lost, Kelly is useless, and Isaac is hogging the spotlight; there’s no mentor; and the staging is terrible, not least because the principals are all very bad at getting their points across effectively. […]
Go all in on the retail aspect of the show. Every week, the designers have to produce some garment, bearing in mind that it’s for mass production. […]
Don’t fire Isaac. We realize that some of the readers might not agree with us on this, but when he’s on, he’s really on. So put him in a position where he can really be on. He shouldn’t be a judge. He should be the mentor. […] What we propose is that instead of casting the show with a bunch of designers, cast it with a bunch of newly graduated design students and put them in the role of Junior Designer to Isaac’s Senior Designer. […]
Fern should be the lead judge. She’s a goddamn expert and she’s playing second fiddle to Isaac, which is a travesty. Get rid of the judging audience and get rid of the runway show. […]
Instead of having the models walk a runway, do it salon style and have them walk around right in front of the judges/buyers. Let every judge walk up to the garment and look at the seams and the pattern and the buttons and the zippers and everything that makes up the physical part of the garment. Not just to critique the execution, but to look at it to determine whether it’s worth manufacturing. […]
Unfortunately (for her), there’s no role for Kelly in all this. You’ll pardon us if we fail to shed any tears about that.
[…] And please, do something about the lighting, for god’s sake. If you heed nothing else in this post, please just take care of that.”
Based on what I’ve seen, all of that sounds great because it turns the show into something in the same universe as but still entirely different than Project Runway. A clothes-construction competition is going to always draw comparisons, but by changing it, Bravo might actually end up with the better show, particularly if Lifetime wrecks Runway. And based on the way Lifetime is advertising the new season, that’s a strong possibility.
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