The Tale of Dirty Dan: Quiet on Set
The Dark Side of Making a Docuseries on Children's Entertainment.
My original intentions when it came to penning this piece was to have it serve as the definitive conclusion to the sordid saga of disgraced Nickelodeon child star, Drake Bell. However, the remaining information there was to cover pertaining to Bell’s story was not substantial enough to warrant an article unto itself. Really, it can be summed up thusly -
Drake moved to Mexico City and is currently cashing in all of his chips on his fandom south of the border to keep his career afloat. Some people think he’s dodgin’ the feds. The reality is that he has nothing to dodge1 and, really, it’s just because it’s the only place his music career is getting any attention. That’s really the long and short of it.
More pertinently, the last chapters of Drake’s tale - at least currently - segue cleanly into the next, current, and perhaps final major chapter of the Bakeryverse. Despite going effectively defunct circa 2018, the larger drama playing out around the Bakery itself did not end with the shuttering of its doors.
Come 2024, after years of legal, personal, and professional turmoil the likes of which should have put the final kibosh on his faltering career, Bell once again found himself thrust into international headlines. For the first time in well over a decade, the news surrounding him was not being shared at his expense, and public’s opinion of him, it seemed, would make an abrupt about-face.
In 2022, a production company under the simple name of Maxine would be established by a woman named Mary Robertson.
Robertson began work in the entertainment industry in the early 2000’s as both a director and producer of largely nonfiction and documentary works. Around the time that she founded Maxine, she was riding high on winning a pair of Emmy awards in both 2021 and 2022 for her work on the series, The New York Times Presents. Though it’s laughable to make the claim that a shameless propaganda rag like The New York Times is still capable of genuine investigative journalism, that was, ostensibly, what the series was, with a number of episodes detailing investigations into a wide variety of topics, including the often obscured and deleterious effects of vaping, the devastating Australian bushfires of 2020, and the the roll-out of Tesla’s self-driving cars, which resulted in thirty-two crashes - thirteen of them being fatal. Apparently, it’s all Elon Musk’s fault. Or so I’m told.
The two highest rated and most watched episodes of the series, which currently boasts a rather unimpressive nineteen episodes over the course of four years, are two episodes focusing on the highly controversial and tempestuous conservatorship of Britney Spears. Both of these episodes were directed by Robertson, and both of these secured her the Emmy awards that I’m sure she has proudly displayed in a case in her living room. Her success on The New York Times Presents and the good will her wins accrued her in the industry no doubt emboldened her to strike out on her own and found Maxine.
The day she embarked on the endeavor, she already knew what she was going to do. According to interviews with The Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair, Robertson said that she had seen viral compilations of scenes taken from a variety of Bakeryverse series that were, in her words, arguably sexual. In the interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she states the following:
Like most that saw these clips, she began to wonder - what were the circumstances behind the scenes when such material was filmed? How did the actresses being made to perform them feel? Were they comfortable? Being so young, were they even aware of the sexual undertones in what they were doing?
Robertson’s interest was further piqued when, on August 30th of 2022, journalist Kate Taylor published the article Inside Dan Schneider's 'Disgusting' Nickelodeon Empire with the publication, Business Insider. In the article, Taylor interviewed Alexa Nikolas - one of the former stars of Bakeryverse staple, Zoey 101, who’s grievances with Dan and his Bakery can be found in this article - as well as other actors, writers, and staff that worked on other series ranging from The Amanda Show to Sam and Cat. Most chose to stay anonymous in order to avoid jeopardizing their active careers.
It was around this time that Robertson was certain she had found her first project under the Maxine label. Partnering with co-producer Emma Schwartz, the two reached out to Taylor to assist in connecting them with both the named and anonymous sources cited in her article. Taylor, naturally, consented, and the three worked together to bring about what would go on to be known as Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
The first four episodes of Quiet on Set would premier on the True Crime television network Investigation Discovery on March 17th, 2024, and were available to stream on streaming services Max and Discovery+. In Episode 3, The Darkest Secret, Drake Bell and his father, Joe, would sit down on camera to discuss the sexual abuse that Bell suffered at the hands of Brian Peck.
Now, several points of criticism have been leveled at Quiet on Set and its producers since its release. I don’t think they’re without merit. We’ll get to them in a moment, but, before we do, I must stress that, despite it all, I do think that Robertson, Schwarz, and Taylor deserve credit for bringing many of the stories presented in Quiet on Set to light - especially that of Drake Bell.
Keep in mind that, prior to the series release, the name Brian Peck was veritably unknown to the public, and the details of Bell’s legal case was known only to a select few insiders in the entertainment industry. Though Peck’s presence and sexual abuse charges were uncovered and brought to light after Nickelodeon’s investigation into Schneider’s Bakery circa 2018, it was not until Quiet on Set aired that it became public knowledge that the minor abused by him was Drake Bell. That information had been sealed by the court. The character witness letters submitted in Peck’s defense were only released to the public due to efforts made by Taylor and Robertson to have them unsealed, and we only know that idiots like Will Friedle and Rider Strong were among those that knowingly vouched for a self-professed pedophile because of it. It’s a rare sight in today’s day and age, but this is legitimate investigative journalism, and credit goes where credit is due.
The release of Quiet on Set hit the news cycle with all the subtlety of a Category 5 hurricane. Within hours of release, the internet was awash with headlines pertaining to the new and disturbing information that was revealed, and continued to linger in popular news aggregator feeds for months afterwards.
Since his termination from Nickelodeon in 2018, Dan Schneider had been a difficult man to find. He had wisely kept a low profile. Come the release of Quiet on Set, he would be unable to stay out of the spotlight.
Robertson and crew did offer to interview him for the series, but Schneider declined to appear. Instead, he offered written statements that were periodically displayed during the run of the series. This, in my opinion, was a mistake on Schneider’s part.
As I’ve said many times during this series of articles, I do not think Dan Schneider is the singular antagonist in the larger story of abuse and misconduct at Nickelodeon Studios. He is, of course, undeniably part and parcel of it. His behavior towards children was, in my opinion, at times intolerable. He undoubtedly facilitated much of it, if not out of collusion than gross negligence. With his name attached to the production company in which much of the misconduct took place, it was only natural that he was going to receive the brunt of the public backlash. And don’t misunderstand me - for the extent that he is culpable in what happened there, he deserves to be held responsible and pay the corresponding price.
However, as I’ve also stated, Schneider was far from the only one at fault for what happened. The horrible assault and abuse weathered by Drake Bell was enabled and covered up by a multitude of individuals in Nickelodeon’s top brass, most of whom we do not know and will likely never know. Everything that went wrong on those sets was the result of chronic and persistent systematic failures of a great many people on their payroll, and, again, I cannot stress enough that Schneider was only the most visible among them. Pinning the blame solely on him is to, in essence, allow the others who shoulder just as much if not more responsibility in what happened to the likes of Bell, Nikolas, McCurdy, and many others, to escape justice unmolested.
This isn’t to say that Dan Schneider didn’t open up to anyone. With a magnifying glass once again placed over his head and public scrutiny at the highest levels it had ever been, he saw fit to respond to the allegations and sit down for an interview. This interview was conducted not by a journalist, but rather by the actor BooG!E2.
No, I’m not making that up.
If the above image didn’t already tip you off, Boog!E was played the recurring role of T-Bo, the beleaguered manager of a Seattle area smoothie bar, in iCarly, and cameo’d regularly in other Bakeryverse series.
Below is the interview, should you wish to watch it in full.
You might notice that the Baker himself is looking a big… drained. As is to be expected of anyone who experienced a fall from grace as total and violent as Schneider. And I don’t mean that solely because he clearly hit the gym (or the semiglutide) in the intervening years.
Though the interview is pitched by Mister, er… !E, I suppose, as his own idea, it is clearly a machination that was planned and produced by Schneider himself. This is plain to see for anyone with even an elementary school level of deductive reasoning from the fact that, not only does the interview come off as highly staged and extremely generous to Schneider, but that it was also exclusively posted to his proprietary YouTube page, DanWarp.
Throughout the interview, Schneider is profusely apologetic of his previous behaviors and actions and, to his credit, he doesn’t deny any of it. Not the creepy massages, not the inappropriate jokes, not making a hostile work environment, none of it. He does explain the questionable humor away as material that aged poorly or was not well thought out. While that is partially true, given some of the questionable content - especially pertaining to the feet of underage girls - I’m not sure if that’s an excuse that passes the smell test.
I’m of two minds about this interview. On one hand, much of it comes off as rehearsed. I have little doubt that BooG!E and Schneider went over the questions well in advance. I wouldn’t be surprised if Schneider himself wrote them. At the very least, I’m confident that he knew he would be receiving no curve balls or difficult questions from BooG!E.
On the other hand, there are moments where he seems not only genuinely apologetic, but sincerely emotional. When recounting the moment Drake Bell’s mother asked him to testify on her son’s behalf, he begins to choke up. It seems as if what happened between Peck and Bell weighs heavily on him. It’s easy to assume that Schneider - who, keep in mind, was a professional actor for a stint - is faking it and turning on the waterworks for drama… I just don’t know. It’s tough to watch.
I’ve said it many times before on this publication, but I don’t know Schneider. I don’t know what’s in his heart. Perhaps he is truly repentant of the crimes that were perpetrated on his watch. Maybe he’s only apologetic because he got caught.
What you choose to believe on the matter is entirely up to your own discretion.
Needless to say, regardless of his true emotions on the topic, the public was not ready to accept an apology from Schneider. The interview failed to change public opinion on him.
It did, however, completely reverse the course of Drake Bell’s continued decline.
Despite featuring interviews with a number of actors and personnel who worked on various Bakeryverse projects, it seemed as if Bell’s interview was the only piece of Quiet on Set anyone wanted to discuss. Understandably so. After watching the man circle the metaphorical drain in a very public flame-out for over a decade, many were eager to hear what he had to say. I think even more were hoping for him to say something that would, in effect, justify, or at least explain, the nose-dive direction his life and career had taken post-Drake and Josh.
As I’ve explained in my article on the show, Drake and Josh had tangible impact on the generation that grew up with it. Many young children who watched the show looked up to both Drake and Josh. Just as many had wanted to believe that the two were bosom buddies off-camera, and were angry when it became apparent that they weren’t, many were not just hoping that Drake would offer some explanation that would clear his once sterling name - they were ready to accept it before he even opened his mouth.
Reading through public reactions to the interview, it’s safe to say that Drake’s public image was rehabilitated within hours of the series going live. The once fallen icon was now vindicated. It turns out that he wasn’t just some spoiled child star that had bumbled his way to middle age through a series of disastrous decisions. He was a victim. He was a troubled man who had suffered greatly, and was still very clearly wrestling with the long-term effects of the abuse he endured.
It’s not difficult to feel for Drake Bell when you listen to him recount the abuse Brian Peck subjected him to. Anyone with a shred of empathy is going to feel a stirring of something when he begins to tear up discussing his past trauma, which is of a sort that is near unimaginable to many. The kind I would not wish on my worst enemies.
Part of the impetus for writing this series was, in part, spurred by the public reaction to Bell’s interview. To me, it was troublesome. Let’s not mince words - Drake Bell is a victim of an abhorrent crime. And for that, he should be extended grace. But the moment this interview was released, most seemed to forget the fact that Drake himself is also responsible for crimes of his own.
Again, as I’ve written about before, we do not know the true extent to which Drake’s involvement with the minor who accused him of sexual assault. He was never found guilty of that crime in a court of law, and, per the presumption of innocence, he is not guilty of them until proven so. I’m not here to speculate on that. But, as I detailed in my previous article, he was demonstrably guilty of exchanging sexual messages with a minor. This, too, is a crime. And often a prelude to a much greater crime.
Simply put, the fact that Bell suffered abuse himself does not absolve him of his own misdeeds. Perhaps it might go some way to explain why he did what he did, or acted the way he acted - abuse is often cyclical - but it does not, in any way, justify what he was proven in a court of law to have done. If anything, it should beg the question why he would even put himself in a position, wittingly or unwittingly, where he might inflict the same damage that was done to him upon someone else.
I’m not saying that Drake Bell deserves no sympathy for what happened to him. He does. But that sympathy should not absolve him of his own bad behavior.
And, really… I think that’s exactly what happened when Quiet on Set released. Drake Bell was shown in a wholly positive light. There is one brief mention of his legal woes, to which Drake simply responds, There’s a lot of misinformation. Outside of that, it isn’t touched on. And, on one hand - I get it. That’s not really what Quiet on Set was there to talk about. But, at the same time, not touching on it more or less allowed Drake to make out as a faultless victim who had never done any wrong.
We all know that the public, as a cohesive mass, do not have a terribly broad bandwidth to process controversy with. Nuance is something the hivemind does not comprehend. Matters are often good or bad with no in-between. There’s no gray. Just a binary black and white. Just as Dan Schneider went from Nickelodeon’s Golden Boy to the Worst Man in Television, so too did the public perception of Drake violently and abruptly change from Drake the Burn-Out changed to Drake the Heroic Survivor with no notes of nuance or ambiguity to be found.
And, like I said… it just sits with me the wrong way. I hope I’ve sufficiently explained why.
I’m not the only one to have reservations about the impact of Quiet on Set, though. Far from it.
In a piece for The Vulture, Ben Rosentstock echoes my own thoughts on the omission of Drake Bell’s own dirty laundry thusly:
I will say that Rosenstock also says that he takes umbrage with the fact that no one who supported Brian Peck’s perspective was taken to account, which, while I see his point, there are people who have, and, if I didn’t make it clear in the article in which I covered it, their tears mean dick to me for reasons I elucidated here.
It wasn’t just media critics and journalists that had some less than pleasant words for the production team, or the network that facilitated them.
Alexa Nikolas, who’s testimony proved crucial in exposing the troublesome goings-on in the Bakery, later claimed that she was not informed of the nature of the project when she was interviewed for Quiet on Set, nor the productions affiliation with the network Investigation Discovery. She said the following:
A similar perspective was offered by Christy Carlson Romano during a podcast she appeared on shortly after the series aired. You might remember her as the voice of Kim Possible from… well, Kim Possible, but she also played the older sister on the sitcom, Even Stevens, where she garnered the boyhood crushes of many a young lad.
No? Just me? Okay.
Romano revealed that she was approached by the production team behind Quiet on Set for her assistance. Now, if either of those titles Romano starred in ring a bell to you, you might be asking yourself - Wait. Weren’t Kim Possible and Even Stevens Disney Channel shows? Why would they be asking a Disney Channel star to work with them on a documentary about Nickelodeon?
Well, as I suspect some of you may have already guessed, they weren’t coming to her to find, as the kids would say, the tea she might have about Nickelodeon. They were already planning on second season, and this time, they weren’t just going to limit themselves to Nickelodeon Studios. They were aiming for the big dogs at Disney.
Romano claims that she rejected these advances. In fact, she claims that this wasn’t even the first time that she was approached to participate in such a project. I find her justification in refusing to participate interesting.
These are people who don’t belong to our community. These are outsiders. And maybe they, maybe if they knew where to put money towards [fixing] a problem, they would, but again, a lot of this has been perceived in a way that’s — it’s outside baseball. It’s not inside baseball, it’s outside baseball. These are trauma tourists.
We’ll touch on this again a bit later, but Romano’s words do strike a chord with a larger problem facing the greater genre of true crime - often times, the coverage of very egregious, very tragic crimes are sensationalized in a voyeuristic way that verges if not crosses into outright exploitation. A brief perusal of various subreddits and forums reveals that, among many true crime fans, Investigation Discovery has a rather poor reputation for doing exactly this.
If you’re not entirely sure what I mean, here’s a helpful graphic I came up with to illustrate how most Investigation Discovery projects apparently feel when you watch them.
No substance - all spectacle.
I can’t say that I felt like the Drake Bell interview, or that with his father, felt particularly exploitative. You get the sense that Drake, for as understandably and visibly uncomfortable as he is, was at the point in his life where he was ready to tell his story. I don’t think he was pressured into doing anything he didn’t want to do, and, clearly, his interview was the centerpiece that the entire docuseries was built around.
Regardless of the team behind Quiet on Set’s intentions were in making the series, it’s not hard to see why they may come off as sideshow hucksters looking to make a buck off exploiting the trauma of child actors - especially to those like Nikolas who were aggrieved child actors themselves.
Yet, the matter remains that Nikolas, despite her later refutation of the program, still did sit down and speak with them. Many have come to see Nikolas as a clout-chasing goblin who’s wringing the most out of her one claim to fame, many asked the logical question - Why did you even agree to do an interview when you weren’t even sure who was running it?
To this, another participant that also claimed that she was duped into giving an interview for the project - The Amanda Show alum Lee Bolleau - said the following:
If Bolleau and Nikolas are to be believed, they were deceived outright by the production team into giving interviews. Though there isn’t much in the way of concrete proof of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true.
If that sounds ridiculous, this bait and switch approach that the staff of Quiet on Set apparently used to snag interviews with Nikolas and Bolleau was not limited to just them. Marc Summers, the long-time host of the popular Nickelodeon game show Double Dare, was called by the production team to sit down for an interview for what he was told was a simple discussion of his time at Nickelodeon.
He claims that, for twenty minutes or so, he gushed about how much fun he had working at the studio and how great the experience was, only for them to begin asking questions about misconduct on set.
He said the following:
Summers’ time at Nickelodeon Studios predates the rise of the Bakery. Summers hosted Double Dare from 1986 to 1993. Schneider’s first project with Nickelodeon, All That, aired in 1994.
Due to his involvement with Schneider being approximately none, Summers requested that his interview be redacted from the final cut of Quiet on Set.
Again, Summers stated the following:
Now, it isn’t exactly a good look when one resorts to underhanded tactics to weasel interviews out of unwitting participants. Apparently, other former Nickelodeon associates that predated Schneider, or at the very least, had nothing to do with him, were drawn into the crossfire. Melissa Joan Hart - star of Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All and later Sabrina the Teenage Witch - and Steve Burns of Blue’s Clues fame, somehow, got roped into all of it, despite having no working relationship with Schneider.
If there was any juicy gossip they had bottled up about misconduct during their time at the studio, they weren’t sharing, and they had no interest in talking to the production crew.
Some former associates of Schneider, both actors and members of the Bakery crew, expressed their opinions that the series was heavily biased and one-sided. In essence, it was a struggle session for Schneider, and no one who had an opposing viewpoint that might offer the opinion that he wasn’t Satan incarnate was consulted - often at their own expense. Gameshakers star Madsyn Shipman received a torrent of backlash for defending Schneider on Instagram, while former Zoey 101 star Christopher Massey’s mother, who did the same, was a recipient of similar vitriol.
The series also opened the gates to a slew of more accusations towards Schneider and Nickelodeon Studios as a whole that ranged from believable to outright ridiculous. Amber Frank, who starred in a Nickelodeon series unaffiliated with Schneider, claimed that she saw illicit material pertaining to children saved on office computers at Nickelodeon. Outlandish, but well within the realm of possibility, though I’m not sure why a twelve year old actress would be on an office computer.
Writer and former Zoey 101 actor Jack Salvatore Jr. alleged that, during writing sessions held at Schneider’s house, as they often were, he would bring out a shotgun to scare and intimidate members of his staff he didn’t feel were pulling their weight. While it makes for an evocative image, I have my doubts about the legitimacy of the story. If Dan Schneider was waving firearms at disagreeable employees - which is a misdemeanor offense in the state of California, by the by - I just have this sneaking suspicion that someone else would have corroborated this story either before or after Salvatore spoke about it.
The most egregious accusations came from a former All That actress named Lori Beth Denberg, who claimed that not only would Schneider show her extreme and disturbing pornographic content that I cannot in good faith state the nature of here, but that he would also attempt to engage in phone sex with her and touched her inappropriately. The accusations were so heinous that Schneider, once again, felt compelled to defend himself, claiming in a statement that Denberg’s allegations were wildly exaggerated and, in most cases, false. It’s worth noting that Denberg was not a part of Quiet on Set and instead was interviewed after the series release in an exclusive publication by Business Insider, hosted by Kate Taylor. This Kate Taylor is the same Kate Taylor that originally published the article that sparked Robertson’s desire to make Quiet on Set, and the same Kate Taylor that produced the series. Schneider was keen to point out that the interview with Denberg, held by an executive producer by the series, was only released after he filed a defamation claim against the program. What convenient timing.
Again - I’ll leave you to draw your own judgement about the validity of Denberg’s claims.
We could go on. There are dozens of former Nickelodeon employees that worked in every capacity for the network looking to either air their grievances or defend their benefactors. Most of them had no contact with Schneider, nor did they ever work for him. Cataloguing every statement made by every person even tangentially involved would be a Herculean task, and further sorting out hearsay from fact is one that I believe is impossible.
To bring this to a close I’d like to pull a quote from a review of the series penned by Candice Fredrick, writing for the Huffington Post. While her impressions of Quiet on Set were largely positive, and I have close to no respect for HuffPo as a publication, I found that the final lines of her review echoed my own thoughts on the matter.
She calls into question the final statement provided by Schneider and presented by the Quiet on Set team, which is shown at the end of the series.
To this, Fredrick articulates what I’ve been trying to impart during the entirety of this series:
And that’s really the dark matter at the core of the Tale of Dirty Dan. That’s the issue that I have with Quiet on Set, as well.
There’s a lot of talk about Dan Schneider. There’s a lot of talk about what he did and what happened while he reigned supreme over the Empire of the Bakery.
But there’s not a lot of talk about the system that enabled it all to happen. And there’s next to no talk about how to fix it.
That’s why Romano’s comment about trauma tourists rings so true to me. I’m not going to say there isn’t a place for exposure or raising awareness. Sometimes, the best anyone can do to ameliorate a bad situation is raise a red flag so that more eyes can find it. I’m not going to say that Quiet on Set was totally worthless. As I said, Robertson and her crew did some legitimate investigative journalist and brought an extremely disturbing episode of television history to light. That’s objectively a good thing.
But, I also have to ask - has anyone at Nickelodeon been fired since the series came out? Has anyone taken responsibility for what happened? Have there been any internal reforms within the studio? Is there even any talk of starting them, or implementing stricter security measures to keep their child actors safe?
So far as I can tell, there isn’t.
What is the answer? How do we prevent these horrible crimes from happening to other young actors in the future so that there never is another minor who suffers in the vein of Drake Bell or Alexa Nikolas or Jeanette McCurdy?
Perhaps this is hypocritical of me, but… I don’t know. I’m not in the industry. As Romano said, I’m part of the outside baseball. I don’t even know what I don’t know about the inner-workings and dark machinations of the entertainment industry and any solution I posit would have all the value of a wet piece of toilet paper. Personally, if I had my druthers, we’d raze the entire current studio system in Hollywood to the ground and salt the earth afterwards.
If there is a solution, it has to come from smarter individuals than I, and it has to come from within the industry.
Quiet on Set did provide much needed information on the subject of misconduct at Nickelodeon and draw attention to the matter. That is a net positive. And don’t misunderstand me - I’m not so cynical as to think Roberston, Schwartz, and Taylor were solely motivated by profit and exploitation. I think that they were and are convinced that they were engaging in a wholly good endeavor and that there hearts were in the right place… and, of course, whatever money they made was not unwelcome.
But, if their stated goal of bringing about discussion that will change the industry and protect not just minors, but all members of any production’s staff from misconduct and abuse, I’m afraid that they failed.
Whatever Dan Schneider may have done wrong, he deserves to be held accountable. But he’s a spent force. He’s gone. He had his apron yanked, his Bakery closed, and, despite his protestations otherwise, his future career in entertainment is dubious at best. He’s cooked. Or, perhaps, baked.
The System, however, continues at pace.
And nobody really seems to care.
This serves as the penultimate entry to the Tale of Dirty Dan. I wanted to do a piece on Jeanette McCurdy’s story, but she’s already told it herself. If you’re interested on the topic, I again highly recommend you read her autobiography, I’m Glad My Mom Died. As I said before, it’s a worthy read.
There will be one last follow-up piece for me to air some final thoughts and tie up some loose ends, but Quiet on Set was always the logical end-point for this series. If you’ve read this far, I sincerely thank you for your time and attention. I hope you enjoyed what you found here, and, if you have, I invite you to subscribe to this publication for similar content that will come in the future.
As for all of my current supporters, I also thank you. Your support means the world.
Or so we’re aware of.
Pronounced Boogie.
I was afraid a little bit, that you will bd going down the glorious return lane. Yes, it is terrible what's happened with Drake, but that doesn't make him innocent.
Actually I think it came up before because...well...it was pretty known stuff and could have easily be connected with this, but they made the deal to not speak about it and you'll have the centerpiece of the series.
Christy Carlson Romano
Didn't know her before...Even Stevens was not a thing around here(but I get it...8 year old Achernar would have crushed on her hard).
For visualising, I remembered that stupid MDE World Peace skit Jews rock. There's a moment when they show the "big people" and as outrageous(I loved it...most unhinged stuff on TV in the recent times) as it was, they couldn't care less. They only cared when the drama started and their money source was in danger.
Modern managerial/bureocratic/clown(name it what you will) systems are such a bullshit. On paper, everyone above you is responsible, but in truth, the system is only there to protect the top people from the backlash. I don't know the degree of separation between those guys and the happenings, but I would have been too livid seeing, that the guys who earned the most money on this are acting like they have no connection to that. I believe that some of them didn't know the stuff going on, but those paychecks must have been nice. (Don't work at multinationals, kids, I'm telling you, there's a lot of bullshit going on...problems and crap never has an owner)
Also nice touch on the predatory nature on these 'true crime' style of channels. Hate them. ('300 korean kids drowned in a capsized ship...here are the last moments they recorded'...like Jesus dude)
We only heard about the things going on in the industry, it would be nice to hear something from Christy on her own terms, even if it is very unlikely. If there should be some closing words, they would be either "Stay away from the media" or "Never meet your heroes". Somber stuff.
Excellent article and series. Trauma tourism is apt, I think. Looking forward to the next one!