Reality News Update, February 10: Cancelled, Renewed, and Fighting It Out

It’s time once again to bring you, the reality TV viewer, up to date on the latest in reality TV news. We already told you about the premise for the second The Simple Life, but now we also have info for you on Anna Nicole Smith, America’s Next Top Model, and ratings data on the Mark Burnett vs. Mark Burnett Thursday night matchup. Let’s take a look.

Despite the fact that insiders on The Anna Nicole Show have previously insisted to RealityNewsOnline that the show would be renewed for a third season, E! finally came to their senses and canceled the series.

However, that doesn’t mean Anna Nicole is gone. Rather than a weekly series, E! will be airing some specials involving her. The first, “Anna Nicole Bares All,” will appear on February 22. In this special, Anna Nicole is heading back to the modeling runway, and viewers will get to watch as the important day approaches. This will also be the first time we’ve seen the new slimmer Anna Nicole outside the commercials for the diet pills she says made her that way.

E!’s executive VP of entertainment noted (in somewhat different words) that there wasn’t enough material in Anna Nicole’s life to warrant a weekly series. Indeed, viewers certainly could tell that, as Anna Nicole and her pals had to find things to do each week, it seemed. With the new format, they might be able to actually make the show have a flicker of interest.

While Anna Nicole was (sort of) canceled, the reverse is true for America’s Next Top Model. UPN has picked up two more seasons of Tyra Banks’ show, though it’s not yet clear if they will be run one right after the other like Survivor or in two completely different years.

The real question is when UPN will do with Top Model what ABC did with The Bachelor, and change the genders. We’ve already seen with Average Joe 2 that if you get a bunch of pretty boys together, they will fight with each other. So when can we expect a male version of Top Model?

The Joe Schmo Show fooled its main character once, but can it do it again? Spike TV thinks so, and they have ordered up a new season of the show. However, this time, they are going after a different genre, which makes some amount of sense since anybody put in a Big Brother-like situation again would be rather suspicious.

But what genre will it be? My guess: Dating shows. They will run a Bachelor-like show and the Schmo will either be the star – picking out dates – or one of the many in the show. If I’m right, it will be interesting to see how they accomplish it without totally smashing the feelings of the Schmo.

On Thursdays, NBC and CBS fight it out with Mark Burnett-produced reality shows. First is Survivor: All-Stars at 8/7 Central on CBS. Then there is The Apprentice at 7:30ish on NBC. How did they fare last week when they went head-to-head with each other and with some of the other top shows?

In both cases, scripted shows won overall, with Friends beating Survivor and CSI beating The Apprentice during the overlap times. However, both networks actually had their best ratings in those timeslots so far this year, so it wasn’t exactly a loss.

Friends had a rating of 11.4 for the target adult audience while Survivor had an 11.2 during the time Friends was on. However, at the end of Friends, it looks like some viewers switched, as Survivor had a 10.0 rating while The Apprentice only had an 8.7.

When Survivor ended, some may have switched back to NBC as The Apprentice had a rating of 9.2, but CSI had a 10.5.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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