NBC's new reality series, Stars Earn Stripes, is getting some bad publicity, just a week before the series begins, and the network may actually have itself to blame for some insensitivity toward one of the prospective stars, which has proven costly to another of their shows.
Yahoo! is reporting that Sharon Osbourne has resigned as a judge on America's Got Talent, making her the last of the original four stars to leave the show, but the reason she's leaving has more to do with the perception of discrimination toward her son, Jack, who is currently hosting SyFy's Haunted Highway, and was to participate in Stars Earn Stripes, a collaboration between reality mogul Mark Burnett (Survivor) and veteran producer Dick Wolf (Law & Order and its family of series).
A while back, Jack Osbourne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and, according to Sharon, was looking forward to doing Stripes as a means of showing other MS patients that it's not the end of the world. In an interview with the New York Post, Sharon accused NBC suits of discriminating against Jack because of his condition. I am not sure if it was intentional, considering that Jack already was a part of the NBC-Universal-Comcast family thanks to Highway. No contract was ever signed, though Sharon claims Jack had a verbal agreement with the producers, and was let go 2 days before tapings began.
So, who's at fault? All Jack Osbourne wants to do is be a positive role model for other MS patients, and be as active as possible. There's nothing wrong with that, is there? As far as NBC suits are concerned, apparently, there is, but they're afraid of saying the wrong thing to escalate matters.
Commercials have begun airing for Stars Earn Stripes, and the only celebrity in the ad I've seen is Dean Cain (ex-Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman), who's no stranger to reality TV, having hosted a revival of Ripley's Believe It Or Not for TBS a few years back (and the reruns of which air presently on Chiller, another NBC-Universal network), but it is known that the WWE"s Eve Torres is also taking part, which means WWE would have a bit of difficulty scheduling her to be on Raw for the duration beginning August 13.
I don't know who exactly to assign blame to on this matter, but eventually, someone's headed for the Candyass Cafe.......
A friend watches Haunted Highway and reports that Osbourne quit that show to concentrate on his health -- announced his departure last week. Don't know how that complicates things.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm. What I am not certain of is when Osbourne had started filming Haunted Highway, either before or after he'd been diagnosed with MS. When I'd first heard about it, it was after the diagnosis, and I thought, well, you gotta give the man his props for staying active, especially considering he's so young.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, nothing had been mentioned in the Yahoo! piece about Osbourne's status on "Highway" one way or the other. That's why I'm not sure who's really at fault.