“Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” casting controversy brewing

Tonight, the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” debuts for a three-night run. But some reports in the game-show blogosphere are questioning the show’s auditioning and casting process further.

Except for Jeff Foxworthy being cast as the host, almost every casting decision of this show is coming under scrutiny.

It was previously reported on this blog and in BuzzerBlog that “attractive” contestants were specified in the Craigslist casting call ad for the show, making one think that contestants’ intelligence is secondary.

Now, an Gordon Pepper interview with a potential “5th grader” contestant at GameShowNewsNet is alleging shenanigans during her audition process.

More on this and analysis after the jump…

The girl (name kept anonymous, presumably because she is auditioning for other roles) told Pepper that she was rejected because she was not a Screen Actors Guild card-carrying child actor, and that the child actors were paid to show up for trial runs of the show while she was not.

GameShowNewsNet’s Jason Block wrote a piece Monday that lashes the show’s producers, Mark Burnett Productions (the producers of Survivor), for allowing this kind of selectivity, after talking to the mother of this anonymous contestant.

The potential contestant’s mother (anonymous, for the same reasons as the daughter) alleges that producers monitoring the audition test did not care when her daughter complained that another test-taker (who is in the final on-air cast of “5th graders”) got help from his mother.

From Block’s piece:

Now, this bothers on me on many levels. The Communications Act of 1960 was passed to prevent of the rigging of game shows. And what this is maybe not be rigging per se, but it smacks of casting for the sake of casting, rules and intelligence be damned.

If what the parent has told me is true (and I trust this person wholeheartedly), then this is a black eye for Fox and Mark Burnett. This smells really bad. What does it say when a network such as Fox would ignore basic game show casting rules and just cast a kid (who is an actor) based on looks and the child not legitimately obtaining correct answers? What does it say for any casting director? Doesn’t it taint all the shows who do follow the rules?

So, what do we make of all of this?

First, it’s true that Mark Burnett’s shows have been criticized in the past for taking “beautiful” contestants over “normal”-looking people — just look at who is chosen for “Survivor.” At a portly 300 pounds, I’m very unlikely to get on the show, no matter how charming I am … but I’d have a heck of an advantage in the starvation-based challenges.

But from the way the audition process sounded for this new show and the way the show is being marketed in the press, these kids are considered “cast members” and not “contestants” in the usual sense.

Just watch the kids’ video clips on the FOX show site, and you can tell they are child actors, just by the way they gush about “working with Jeff Foxworthy” and how they “attend school” on set — a Screen Actors’ Guild requirement.

Block is right about the 1960 law that was implemented to try to prevent game-show fraud (see Wikipedia’s entry on Twenty One and Charles Van Doren for more info). But it doesn’t apply here.

In this case, with the children being treated as cast-member actors and not “contestants”, this law would not apply for anyone but the adult contestant vying for the top prize of $500,000, as long as the actors are not receiving any help or answers during the game.

However, if they are receiving help from producers during the taping of the show, it has to be revealed in the game show’s rules, credits and to the adult contestants ahead of time. Hollywood Squares did this “scripting,” where celebrity panelists were given the correct answer to questions along with various bluff answers by show writers to throw the contestants off.

What? You thought Whoopi Goldberg came up with those witty one-liners herself?

In the end, this reminds me of the Comedy Central game show “Beat the Geeks“, where contestants faced producer-chosen “experts” in various categories. I’m sure the experts auditioned for the role of “geek” in a similar way that the “5th graders” did for this current FOX show.

I can understand why the auditioning child and parent are upset in this matter. If they were led to believe that the audition was a legitimate contestant-selection process instead of a casting call, that’s a concern.

But it’s not illegal if the children are not, in fact, the “contestants.”

I agree that the family should have been told upfront that only SAG-carded actors would be chosen for the panel. That would have saved time and effort on the daughter’s part. That’s an oversight that should be apologized for by the producers.

But in the same manner, the show needs to stop calling/referring to the “5th Graders” in the cast as ordinary kids, because they are giving the impression to the public that they pulled these kids right out of class out of an everyday school.

This article from the DesertNews is an example of the confusion about the panel of kids:

Foxworthy said they’re not “MENSA kids or some brainiacs. They’re just above-average fifth-graders, but they’re right a lot more than the adults are right.”

Maybe it’s just a misspeak by the host, but that remark would make me think that the kids were tested and chosen based on their intelligence. That would contradict the mother’s account of the audition.

If this show makes it past its four-week debut run, the producers need to address this confusion before more episodes are recorded. Just come out and say the kids are “actors” and were chosen for their screen presence. We’ll understand. It’s not American Idol, after all.

If it’s canceled after this week, oh well…no need. Write it off as child’s play.

[UPDATE: Well, it’s official! America loves watching the stupid!

Here’s the news from MSNBC:

The show was seen by 26.5 million viewers (on Tuesday night), making it the most-watched series debut in Fox network history and the most popular debut of any series since 1998, according to Nielsen Media Research.]

[SECOND UPDATE: I finally got around to putting up a review of the show’s first three episodes here.  Thanks to all those who commented here for ideas.]