TVSquad

Question: What do the following TV shows have in common? Joe Millionaire, The Bachelor, Are You Hot?, Trading Spouses, The Will, and My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance.

If you answered "they all destroy the human soul a little bit when you watch them," you're absolutely correct. But that's not what this post is about.

Actually, they're all shows whose workers filed a class-action suit in California three years ago. A settlement has been reached and the workers will be sharing a $4 million settlement. The suit accused the shows of violating state wage and work rules. Workers on those shows worked 80 hours a week and were denied lunches and breaks. They were also asked to fake their time cards. Worst of all, the workers were asked to actually watch the shows they were working on, which violating human rights laws in the United States.

Of course, I kid. It violated human rights laws around the world.

Poor Stuart Frankel. He set-up a website satirizing friendly purple dinosaur Barney, and all he got was grief - grief in the form of intimidating letters from Barney's copyright holders, the Lyons Partnership. Lyons threatened to file a lawsuit if doctored images of said dinosaur were not promptly removed from Frankel's site. Fortunately for satirists everywhere, Frankel fought back. An out-of-court settlement has been reached. Lyons must cease all threats against Frankel and pay him $5,000.00 for his trouble.

The parody in question depicted Barney's off-stage persona -- the evil, punky one (pictured). Under the legal doctrine of fair use, anyone can use copyrighted work in a parody so long as it's for "noncommercial purposes, limited to conjuring up the subject of the satire and does not replace the market for the original." So, go to town, people. Mock away. Kick a dinosaur while he's down. Think Barney parodies have been done to death? There's a world of saccharine children's programming just waiting for your comedic intervention.

The family of John Ritter has reached a tentative agreement in a wrongful death lawsuit with Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California. Ritter collapsed on the set of the sitcom, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, on September 11, 2003. When he arrived at the hospital, he was suffering from chest pain, nausea, vomiting and dizziness. In the lawsuit, Ritter's family claimed that doctors misdiagnosed him twice and he "underwent improper and unnecessary procedures." Ritter died that night of an aortic aneurysm. He was 54. Ritter's wife, Amy Yasbeck, claimed damages of $25 million. The terms of the settlement are not being released.