New York TIMES / August 2, 2009 TV Contestants: Tired, Tipsy and Pushed to Brink By EDWARD WYATT
LOS ANGELES — In the first episode of this season’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” the 16 aspiring chefs clamber out of a bus and canter into the kitchen of Gordon Ramsay’s reality show restaurant like convicts on a jailbreak. If the current season is like earlier ones, that is not so far from the truth. “They locked me in a hotel room for three or four days” before production started, said Jen Yemola, a Pennsylvania pastry chef who was on the 2007 season of “Hell’s Kitchen,” a cooking competition. “They took all my books, my CDs, my phone, any newspapers. I was allowed to leave the room only with an escort. It was like I was in prison.” Long workdays and communication blackouts are largely the rule for contestants on reality shows, a highly lucrative genre that has evolved arguably into Hollywood’s sweatshop. Unscripted series now account for more than one-quarter of all primetime broadcast programming — and essentially the entire day on cable channels like Discovery, Bravo and A&E. The most popular reality series, “American Idol,” has commanded advertising rates as high as $1 million for a 30-second spot. But with no union representation, participants on reality series are not covered by Hollywood workplace rules governing meal breaks, minimum time off between shoots or even minimum wages. Most of them, in fact, receive little to no pay for their work. It can make for a miserable experience but compelling entertainment, creating a sort of televised psychological experiment that keeps contestants off-balance and vulnerable. Most reality series have contestants sign nondisclosure agreements that include million-dollar penalties if they reveal what happened on set. But interviews with two dozen former contestants — most of whose agreements expired after three years — from half a dozen reality series suggest that the programs routinely use isolation, sleeplessness and alcohol to encourage wild behavior. During the 2006 season of the popular ABC dating show “The Bachelor,” the contestants waited in vans for several hours while the crew set up for a 12-hour “arrival” party where, two contestants said, there was little food but bottomless glasses of wine. When producers judged the proceedings too boring, they sent out a production assistant with a tray of shots. “If you combine no sleep with alcohol and no food, emotions are going to run high and people are going to be acting crazy,” said Erica Rose, a contestant that year. <clip> continued at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/business/media/02reality.html -- Jim Devine / "All science would be superfluous if the form of appearance of things directly coincided with their essence." -- KM _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
