Reality Shows: You Sign Your Life Away

Jon Gosselin will face tough legal hurdles if he chooses to stay in the entertainment business.

There will be no “Jon Minus Kate” for the soon-to-be ex-husband -- at least not without a spirited court battle from TLC and its parent company, Discovery Communications.

Like most reality-show players, Gosselin signed his entertainment career away back in 2008, when he affixed his signature to release papers for “Jon & Kate Plus 8.”

As reality has become TV’s dominant programming genre over the last decade, producers and their lawyers have expanded and refined their release forms into voluminous, all-encompassing documents that leave no legal avenue unbarricaded -- for the producers.

“These people in essence sign everything away,” conceded Kent Weed, president of A. Smith & Company, which produces reality series including “Hell’s Kitchen” and “I Survived a Japanese Game Show." 

(All excerpts are from a "Real World" contract; to read the whole contract, click here.)

Concerned that the editing made you come off like a total tool? Tough. Virtually all reality productions make you surrender rights to your “appearance, poses, movements, voice, statements, conversation, sounds and musical compositions,” according to one contract. (To see a general release agreement, click here.)

Want to leave the show for any reason? You probably also signed a long-form release that mandates that you go on camera and deliver an explanation.

Convinced that series producers have conspired to keep you from winning? Well, you legally acknowledged that the producers own the game, and they can make it turn out any way they want.

And sexually transmitted diseases? Dude, they're your problem.

“You want a complete release of liability from anything that could arise on the show,” said Greenberg Traurig LLP attorney Steven Katleman, who represents several reality producers, including A. Smith & Company. “You’re dealing with the public. People come up with all kinds of claims.”

“The agreements are daunting,” agreed J.D. Roth, the producer behind such shows as “The Biggest Loser” and “Beauty and the Geek.” 

But some wonder if the contracts, while protecting producers, are so onerous for contestants as to leave them vulnerable to exploitation. And contestants have precious little leverage.

"I’ve never seen one contract that didn’t include more than the producer ever needed -- and it’s next to impossible to push back, since they can always put someone else on the show,” Rob Rader, an attorney with Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp who has represented several reality show producers, told TheWrap.

Typically, professional talent appearing on reality shows have transactional attorneys to look over their agreements. That's not usually the case, however, with a regular Joe who's just happy to be on TV -- and not thinking about the consequences of legal bondage.

"We wouldn't typically represent some guy off the street who was going to be on 'American Idol,'" says Greenberg Glusker's Matt Galsor, who has repped a number of celebrity clients on reality shows. "Typically, those guys don't have representation."

Ever since the first cycle of “Survivor” kickstarted reality’s ascent to the top of the TV genre food chain back in the summer of 2000, litigation has been a constant.

 

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