Reality TV News (Page 20)

Fourteen reality television shows received a total of 39 nominations in this week's announcement of the 59th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards nominees - with the number of shows and the amount of total nominations representing the highest ever for both.

Leading the 2006-2007 reality TV Emmy Awards nomination field - and knocking Fox's American Idol from the perch it held last year - is ABC's Dancing with the Stars.

Dancing with the Stars received eight nominations from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the same number Idol received last year.

It received six nominations in its first primetime season last year and won two. While Idol has been nominated a whopping 29 times since it was first eligible in 2003 - including the seven it received this year - the Fox mega-hit does not yet have a single Emmy Award win to its credit.

CBS' The Amazing Race, the most successful reality show at the Emmys with seven statuettes (including three last year), received five nominations, placing it second behind Dancing with the Stars and Idol. Most notably, The Amazing Race was once again nominated in the Outstanding Reality-competition Program category, which it has won ever since the Academy first created the Emmy Awards category four years ago.

Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch received four nominations in its second year of eligibility - up from the three it received last year - followed by Bravo's Project Runway, which received three nods for the second year in a row in its third year of eligibility.

ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (which has won the Outstanding Reality Program award two years in a row and is nominated in the category again this year) received two nominations - as did Fox's So You Think You Can Dance and Bravo's Top Chef, marking the first time that either of the second-year eligible shows received any nominations.

Rounding out the nominations with one apiece are Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs; Fox's Hell's Kitchen; A&E Network's Intervention; Bravo's Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List; Fox's On the Lot; and CBS' Survivor.

ABC has approved a second song-and-dance reality show, with Dancing with the Stars' critics extraordinaire Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba signing on to appear.

Rather than searching for the best happy-footed celeb, however, the competition will seek to assemble a musical troupe of talented unknowns, E! Online reports.

Dance X will, like most reality shows to have hit U.S. shores in recent years, be based on a same named Brtish reality-competition. This time around, however, the show from which they're borrowing is relatively unproven in terms of longevity, having only launched on the U.K. airwaves last month.

However, what the original version lacks in duration, it more than makes up for in viewing figures. The Brit hit, which also stars Tonioli, has built up an audience of more than five million since its premiere just a few weeks ago.

While Dance X will seek out the best dancers, whose rhythm will be tested on everything from breakdancing to disco, would-be contest winners must also be able to carry a tune, with the show's end game focused on building a viable song-and-dance troupe.

As for Tonioli and Inaba, the camera-ready duo won't act as judges, but rather as coach-choreographers, with each selecting a group of contestants for their own dance teams and becoming responsible for teaching them new routines to perform every week.

As reality-competition tradition dictates, at the end of each performance show, viewers will be able to vote for which team they believe out-pranced the other and the burden then falls to the teammates of the losing ensemble to vote out one of their own.

ABC has ordered at least six episodes of the series, which is expected to debut in January, between seasons of Dancing with the Stars.

Snoop Dogg's home and work lives will be on display in a new reality series, E! Entertainment Television said Friday.

The series, scheduled to debut in late 2007 and described by the cable channel as "hilarious and heartwarming," will show the hip-hop heavyweight trying to balance his different worlds.

"The juggling act that Snoop faces day-in, day-out between career and family is certain to resonate with our viewers," said Ted Harbert, president and CEO of Comcast Entertainment Group, which operates the E! channel.

The rapper, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr., has three children, is active in community causes and is involved in a youth football league he founded.

He's also had court-ordered obligations on his plate. In April, he was sentenced to five years' probation and 800 hours of community service after he pleaded no contest to felony gun and drug charges. The charges followed his arrest last year at an airport in Burbank for investigation of transporting marijuana. Police later found a gun at his home.

Also recently, in 2006 Snoop Dogg and five other men were arrested on charges of violent disorder and starting a brawl when some in his party were denied entry to British Airways' first-class lounge at Heathrow Airport.

How to look good naked? Holly Madison doesn't need that advice.

But has Lifetime announced it's ordered How to Look Good Naked, a new reality series that will feature soon-to-be-former Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Fab Five member Carson Kressley educating women of all shapes and sizes on how to flatter their figure without extreme dieting or cosmetic surgery.

The eight-episode series, which Reality TV World says is an American adaptation of the U.K.'s Channel 4 show with the same name, is scheduled to premiere in January 2008 on Lifetime.

How to Look Good Naked is described by Lifetime as both an "internal and external makeover show."

Over the course of five days, different women will be taught on how to embrace themselves despite what they may consider to be their physical shortcomings.

After Kressley guides the participants through various activities that cause minor changes that will cumulatively help the women improve their image in a big way, each How to Look Good Naked episode will end with the women participating in a "glamorous Hollywood-style" photo shoot that will help them accept who they are both inside and out.

"So many women today struggle with their self image and I'm thrilled to now have a show on Lifetime that encourages them to accept, embrace and even flaunt their bodies," said Susanne Daniels, president of entertainment for Lifetime. "With his many years in the fashion industry and his hilarious sense of humor, Carson Kressley is truly the ideal host for this feel good show."

All we know is this: Jessica Alba nude proves that some women DO know how to look quite good naked.

On August 26, FOX will air the Teen Choice Awards. Here are the nominees for various trophies from with the world of reality TV...

Reality/variety show: "American Idol," "America's Next Top Model," "Dancing With the Stars," "The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll," "The Hills."

Choice TV personality: Nick Cannon of "Wild 'N Out," Ryan Seacrest of "American Idol" and E!, Simon Cowell of "American Idol," Tyra Banks of "America's Next Top Model," Bruno Tonioli of "Dancing With the Stars."

Male reality/variety star: Apolo Anton Ohno of "Dancing With the Stars," Flavor Flav of "Flavor of Love," Jojo, Diggy, Russy of "Run's House," Sanjaya of "American Idol," Three 6 Mafia of "Adventures in Hollyhood."

Female reality/variety star: Jaslene Gonzalez of "America's Next Top Model," Jordin Sparks of "American Idol," Lauren Conrad of "The Hills," New York of "I Love New York," Paris Hilton of "The Simple Life."

Love or hate reality TV, you can't deny its popularity.

Last week, the number-one show in all the land was America's Got Talent. Not just reality show, folks. The top-rated show period.

Multiple airings of So You Think You Can Dance were also widely watched. Take a look at the chart below to see where all ranked:

MTV's Two-A-Days, docu-reality series that chronicles Alabama's Hoover high school football team, might be getting called for a penalty.

Two teachers at Hoover High have claim to know of grade changings and other academic improprieties involving former seniors who have also suited-up for the school's Buccaneers football program, The Birmingham News first reported last Friday according to Sports Illustrated.

As a result, former Northern District of Alabama judge Sam C. Pointer Jr., who served in that capacity for 30 years, will lead an investigation into the allegations as well as other concerns.

"I believe they want to get it done quickly and I welcome an investigation," Hoover High football coach Rush Probst told Sports Illustrated.  "It's all a lot ado about nothing.  Are there minor issues?  Yes.  It's just that down here, ours are on the front page because of the success we've enjoyed."

The Buc's success on the field was evident long before MTV descended upon Hoover in the fall of 2005 to film the school's football team, as it had won four straight championships prior to the 2006 season, in which it lost the title game last December.

Only 11 days prior to the start of Hoover's spring football practice, Sports Illustrated reported the school's athletic director Jerry Browning called a meeting with the city's superintendent Andy Craig that apparently had nothing to do with how to regain its winning ways and instead dealt with off-field issues.

"I told Andy of things that were to possibly come out. I felt it was not a matter of if but when and I was not going to cover anything up or hide anything," Browning said and Reality TV World reported. "There was plenty of smoke and conversations that I had held with others voicing concern about misconduct, but there was nothing earth shattering."

While Browning claims he never intended his discussions with Craig to become public, that's exactly what happened when he resigned from his role as Hoover's athletic director on June 18 to take the same position at another school in Montgomery, AL.  Browning told Sports Illustrated he decided to leave Hoover "because of professionally philosophical differences and personal reasons as well, a chance to spend more time with my family."

Since then "grade-changing allegations" have begun to emerge, most notably from Forrest Quattlebaum - an 11-year math teacher at Hoover who claimed the final grade he gave one of his football-playing students was changed without his consent to allegedly assist the player in qualifying for college scholarships.  In addition, a Hoover assistant superintendent confirmed to Sports Illustrated that another teacher at the high school came to her earlier this year with a concern about "losing a job over another senior football player's grade."

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Although it doesn't appear to have a broadcast network yet, Rob Mariano has pulled the wraps off the new reality project he first began teasing in March.

According to Reality TV World, Mariano has announced he will serve as the host of Tontine, a new reality competition show that will award one contestant with "the biggest cash prize in the history of reality television - $10 million."

The oddly named show will follow 15 contestants, each of which is given "a special key" that unlocks a portion of the $10 million grand prize. Over the course of 100 days, the cast will be put through a series of mental and physical challenges with the possession of the keys constantly up for grabs. The series will conclude when only one contestant remains with all 15 keys in his or her possession, allowing him/her to unlock the $10 million prize.

"I can't tell you everything, but I can tell you certain things about it," Mariano said. "It's a competition reality show that will last over 100 days on all seven continents of the world. [It's going to be] bigger than Survivor, bigger than The Amazing Race."

The show's format is based on its namesake - "tontine" - an annuity scheme in which a group of individuals share a common fund, with the money being awarded to the person who survives the longest, or in this case makes it to the end of the competition.

Donald Trump has a natural gift for spinning bad news in his favor. When The Apprentice turned up missing from NBC's fall line-up, he immediately pounced with a statement saying that he wasn't being fired from the show, he was quitting to work on another "major new TV venture."

Trump's Apprentice business partner, reality TV's eminent creative mind Mark Burnett, will have much more trouble untangling himself from the wreckage.

While his biggest franchises - Survivor, The Amazing Race and The Apprentice- effectively revolutionized television and dominated ratings in their early seasons, Burnett's recent endeavors have not yielded the same returns.

This summer, Burnett debuted two new series, On the Lot, on FOX, and Pirate Master, on CBS. The former bowed to an audience of just 8.5 million viewers, which means it lost around 70 percent of the 30 million viewers who were watching the American Idol finale before it.

Meanwhile, Pirate Master, a watered-down Survivor clone, in which greedy gamers stow away at sea for a crack at a million-dollar prize, fared just as badly. Only 7 million viewers tested the waters.

But Burnett's ratings woes aren't the issue as much as what appears to be a dearth of creative ideas. On the Lot started out trying to mimic The Apprentice, then abruptly changed course and started aping American Idol, complete with separate performance-and-results show.

Somewhere in all the confusion, the show's host changed abruptly and one of its judges, director Brett Ratner, vanished without any explanation. Meanwhile, the Pirate Master debut was a confusing muddle. For at least the first 45 minutes, it was impossible to know who was doing what and why. Characters were introduced hastily so they could be rushed through a baffling challenge, then someone whose name you could remember was "cut adrift."

The sad part of Burnett's string of failures is that it suggests that it nails shut the coffin of reality television's golden era. There has always been lots of talk about the negative effect of reality TV and how it has contributed to our fame-obsessed, look-at-me culture. But there hasn't been nearly enough discussion about the fact that at its best, some of the freshest, most exciting television of the past decade has been reality-based.

Who among us can forget where we were the first time we saw Richard Hatch flopping around nude during the first season of Survivor? How many office friendships were irreparably damaged by Jordin Sparks vs. Blake Lewis disagreements during American Idol?

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Forget business school: Donald Trump is apparently ready send some ladies to charm school.

The Donald and Fox are developing Lady or a Tramp, a new reality competition series that would take a group of girls out of their wild and crazy lifestyles and send them to charm school where they'll attempt to become proper women. Sound like Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School?

For good reason, probably. It basically is.

Reportedly, The Apprentice star will serve as Lady or a Tramp's executive producer and could possibly come on air to check on the progress being made by the girls.

Lady or a Tramp is based on Ladette to Lady, a British reailty show in which a group of women are sent to Britain's Eggleston Hall charm school, according to Variety. Trump's American edition will reportedly follow a similar format and test its contestants on how to live like a debutante through a series of challenges, with one girl being "expelled" from the school at the end of each episode.

The show would also show viewers the validity of its contestants' wild and crazy ways by broadcasting "ample footage" of their partying, according to Variety.