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ENTERTAINMENT INSURANCE
Reality TV coverage
A surge of reality TV shows has pushed people to their physical and psychological limits. How does insurance respond?
HANDBOOK
When Steve Dymond appeared as a guest on Britain’s The Jeremy Kyle Show, he was certain that he would pass a polygraph test proving that he had been faithful to his fiancée.
Then the show’s host, Jeremy Kyle, dropped the bomb: Dymond had failed thelie-detectortest.Dymondpleadedfor forgiveness from his fiancée on-air to no avail. The pair split up and Dymond was found dead four days later, an apparent suicide. The episode was never televised and the show has since been cancelled.
This incident, in addition to a pair of recent suicides by contestants appearing on the reality show Love Island U.K., has sparked a parliamentary inquiry into how reality TV contestants are treated on air and after the show.
Which begs the question: when reality
BY DAVID GAMBRILL, Editor-in-Chief TV imitates life, how do brokers and car-
riers respond?
Reality TV, in which members of the
public are purportedly filmed in un- scripted situations, are not a novel risk, notes Damian Schleifer, executive vice president of Front Row Insurance Bro- kers Inc. A brokerage with offices in Canada and the United States, Front Row specializes in placing entertain- ment insurance for the film, music, the- atre and photography industries – in- cluding Canadian reality TV shows.
“Reality television is actually quite old,” he says. “If you think of The Dating Game and Candid Camera, these were all old shows that were considered ‘reality.’ It’s certainly become a lot more popular since the 1990s, and there’s been an ex- plosion of content.”
Today, reality TV concepts run the gamut, with shows on home renovation (Property Brothers, Holmes on Homes, Love it or List It), housemates (Big Brother), dating games (The Bachelor, The Bache- lorette, Love Island), physical endurance (American Ninja Warrior), psychological and/or physical challenges (Survivor, The Amazing Race), and choosing a new wardrobe (Queer Eye).
Given the diversity of shows, enter- tainment insurance typically features a broad range of different coverages. “It’s very entrepreneurial, and very much an artistic process,” Schleifer says of insur- ing TV shows. “It’s definitely a challenge for us as an industry to adapt to some- thing new and pushing the envelope. It’s a bit of a challenge, but that’s what makes our job interesting.”
canadianunderwriter.ca | September 2019 59