[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'192460\' date=\'Jul 28 2008, 04:38 PM\']
Let me go on record as saying I'm not defending the practice (personally, I'm thinking more along the lines of "if your format can be played out in such a way as to be utterly uninteresting no matter how good your contestant is, there's something wrong with your format"), but I'm not going to pound any drums about the contestants being screwed, either. The only SLIGHT eyebrow-raise might be that poorly-informed contestants won't know about the Blowout Rule policy and therefore have the expectation that they were gonna get on TV yanked out from under them, but I suspect this will be made clear as part of the contestant selection process going forward. Or if it isn't, it should be.
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7 years ago, when I was on WLink, NBC would fly in 12 contestants for every 8-contestant show. The 12 would go in front of producers one final time so that they could determine just who would make the best 'tv' possible.
Two shows were taped in one day; the 4 that didn't make the cut on the first show, were thrown into the mix for the second.
I always thought that teasing a potential contestant by flying them in (and putting them up for 2 nights in the Sheraton, all on NBC's dime), whereas wasn't illegal, still sucked. To get 'that' close to playing a game on television for a lot of money, and then being denied, well, that to me wasn't right...but perfectly legal.
This, to me, is worse. Still not illegal, but worse.