More about life on the "Surviving Nugent" set --

Having never worked on the set of a reallity-television show, I have no peer to which I can compare the experience of working on "Nugent". It was fairly similar to other forms of TV production, I suppose. There were the network execs, producers, PAs and such, in addition to the camera crews and their attendant technicians.

Bear in mind that reality television has been a godsend to network programmers, who can now take the money that they once had to spend on screenwriters and actors to spend on smart new haircuts. Of course, even with the snappy coifs, network execs still want more from their cut-rate programming. And so, they continue to want for more, say in the way of subscriptions to the New Yorker and the freshest of sushi. This leads them to offer the production assistants the very lowest of pay in the industry. I can recall working a gig for Court-TV in Austin, Texas for which I was offered $250/day for a ten-hour day, with $35 per diem. The job was offered to me here in Waco because the production supervisor was unable to find anyone to work for so little in the Austin area. While I would have been delighted to work for that rate for the VH1 folks, the pay was a flat $100/day, so I was not quite so thrilled to take the punishment that all PAs are required to suffer. I would strongly suggest that any PAs reading this stick to their guns and hold out for a higher rate, for future productions that land in the area. The worst thing that will happen is that the production company will have to deal with totally incompetent PAs, instead of us moderately incompetent ones...