Popular Reality TV

X Factor »     by Andy Dehnart / January 30, 2012, 7:40 PM In an unsurprising move, Steve Jones has been fired as host of Fox’s The X Factor , and thus won’t be back to host the second season. “I wont be hosting next seasons XFactor which is a shame but I cant complain as I’ve had a great time. Good luck to everyone on the show,” he wrote on Twitter a few minutes ago. Although he is affable and charming in real life , he wasn’t the best host, though he is far from the worst part of that disaster of a series. But as one of its primary faces, his fall was inevitable. View the original article here

X Factor »     by Andy Dehnart / January 31, 2012, 7:55 AM And the firings continue: Paula Abdul is also out of The X Factor , as her friend Simon Cowell let her go along with Nicole Scherzinger (who left to work on her music , right) and fired host Steve Jones . That leaves just Simon Cowell and L.A. Reid to have fake fights with each other. Deadline reported Paula’s exit, saying “none of the three left on their own accord and that it was cleaning house day at the so-so rated reality series.” While trade publications have been able to confirm with Fox that Jones and Scherzinger are out, there’s no official word yet that Paula is out. Paula’s exit is the biggest surprise among the three, both because she and Simon are close (she first started hinting she’d rejoin him on TV almost two years ago), and because she wasn’t exactly bad. She was saddled with mentoring the awful groups category and its artificially constructed groups but was still somewhat improved from her American Idol se...

Bravo has fired more than half of the cast of The Real Housewives of New York City , including three of its most best-known sources of drama: Jill Zarin, Alex McCord, and Kelly Bensimon. New cast member Cindy Barshop is also leaving, but that’s far less of a surprise. That leaves just Ramona Singer and LuAnn de Lesseps as those who’ve been on the show since season one, and Sonja Morgan will also remain. Alex’s exit also means that her husband Simon won’t be on any more, nor will Jill’s husband Bobby, though he was less of a character than Simon. And it wasn’t exactly a mutual decision. Alex wrote on Twitter that she and Simon were leaving “sadly but amicably,” and Simon went further, revealing that “contracts weren’t offered.” In a statement to the media, reproduced by THR, Bravo said, “We’ve had a fabulous run with all the ladies and appreciate them sharing their lives with our viewers. It is a friendly departure among the other ladies and we continue to have ongoing discussions w...

NBC scheduled a three-hour Celebrity Apprentice episode last night, and while it was actually just two episodes put together, it was full of the kind of crazy entertainment we’ve come to expect from this season. Here are the highlights, such as they are: NeNe Leakes quits. NeNe has provided some of the best TV this season, both because she’s been surprisingly smart and mature, and because she’s brought her Real Housewives self and thrown down with Star Jones. However, some off-camera wrangling resulted in Donald Trump letting Star Jones switch teams to be away from NeNe Leakes after their epic showdown last week. That led NeNe to quit via a phone call—which seemed faked, because there was no camera on NeNe in the cab, and Trump was incredibly stilted/scripted—and leave us stranded. Later, Trump said, “because everyone calls them a loser and quitter” “So to you, NeNe, I say, you’re fired, and you’re a quitter, and Star Jones kicked your ass whether you like it or not.” Trump makes M...

Jersey Shore creator SallyAnn Salsano told me that being fired by HGTV from another popular reality show she created, Design Star , “really hurt my feelings,” but that watching Mark Burnett’s version of the show made her realize that she and her team are “geniuses.” Today, in The Daily Beast, I profile SA, as she’s known, based on a conversation we had in Los Angeles, where she was promoting TV Guide Network’s upcoming series The Nail Files . When writing the story, I realized that the press release announcing she’d been replaced as producer of the HGTV show went out on the same day as the debut of her MTV series; the world is funny that way. I included some of her comments about the HGTV show in the story, but didn’t have space to include them all, and she offers a lot of insight into both the process and the politics. When I asked about the HGTV competition, SA told me, “I loved Design Star. Design Star was my baby. There is no show that I loved more than Design Star. To say that I...