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Glass House

Glass House voting is now live as CBS fights hard to shut down the ABC show

by Andy Dehnart 9 Jun. 2012 | 12:46 pm

Live voting began today for ABC’s The Glass House, but CBS is still fighting to stop the show in court because of its similarities to Big Brother, and more importantly, that the new series is produced by people who used to work on the CBS show.

Voting is live on ABC’s site, and includes questions such as “What type of party drinks should the players receive?”, “Which party game would you like to see the players enjoy?”, and “match the players with the rooms in which you want them to sleep.” Voting requires signing in via an ABC.com account, though you can also expedite that by signing in via Twitter or Facebook.

As to the legal battle, the latest update is that a judge may decide whether to give CBS a temporary restraining order this week, after ordering ABC to respond by Monday at 5 p.m., Variety reports.

Redacted court documents revealed that Glass House executive producer Kenny Rosen “acknowledged in a recent deposition that he deleted emails after ABC had been warned by CBS that it would be sued, court documents said. It also alleges that Rosen directed a staffer to copy manuals he obtained while working on ‘Big Brother,'” the AP reports.

CBS said that “further demonstrates the brazen lengths that former ‘Big Brother’ producers have gone to use confidential material, obtained while under our employment, to develop this new show.” In that seven hour deposition (!), he also revealed that about half of the new show’s crew, 25 to 30 people, used to work on Big Brother, more than CBS claimed initially.

ABC said in a filing that what “CBS does not tell this Court is that Mr. Rosen also testified that the vast majority of these people worked with Mr. Rosen more recently on a different reality show, Hell’s Kitchen, that has nothing to do with Big Brother. It is true that Mr. Rosen hires people with whom he has experience working on reality shows; there is nothing improper about that.”

Separately, ABC also said the manual is “not a trade secret, but instead common sense items that anyone with reality show experience (or real life experience, for that matter) could compile.” In a statement, Rosen said,

“CBS first tried to intimidate me and then sued me for agreeing to work for a competing network. What CBS is doing is wrong on many levels and I look forward to our day in court.”

In a separate statement, ABC said,

“This is a naked attempt by CBS to stifle competition and creativity by claiming that reality techniques that have been developed over many years, on many shows by countless producers, are somehow exclusive to CBS.”

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about Andy Dehnart

Andy Dehnart’s writing and criticism about television, culture, and media has appeared on NPR and in Vulture, Pacific Standard, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications. He has covered reality television for more than 18 years, and created reality blurred in 2000.

A member of the Television Critics Association who serves on its board of directors, Andy, 41, also directs the journalism program at Stetson University in Florida, where he teaches creative nonfiction and journalism. He has an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing and literature from Bennington College. Learn more about reality blurred and Andy.

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about reality blurred

reality blurred is your guide to the world of reality TV and unscripted entertainment, with reality show reviews, news, and analysis. It was created in 2000 by Andy Dehnart. He's still writing and publishing it today.

reality blurred is regularly updated with highlights from the world of reality TV: news and analysis; behind-the-scenes reports; interviews with reality TV show cast members and producers; and recaps and reviews of these reality TV shows, including Survivor, Big Brother, The Great British Baking Show, Shark Tank, The Amazing Race, The Bachelor, Project Runway, Dancing with the Stars, Top Chef, and many more.

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