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Wife-Swapping Trouble for Fox
Fox's "fresh take" on good, old-fashioned wife swapping is nothing but a "rip-off."
So says a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the British production company behind ABC's Wife Swap against Fox and the producers of Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy.
The copyright-infringement suit by the U.K.'s RDF Media accuses Fox of stealing the British-born-and-bred Wife Swap's reality format after network executives learned the show's U.S. rights had been sold to ABC.
"In our view, this is the most clear-cut case of copyright theft in the history of the genre," said Stephen Lambert, creator and executive producer of Wife Swap, in a statement.
Fox spokesman Scott Grogin said Thursday the network had not been served with the lawsuit and had no comment.
This is not the first time Fox has been accused of being a, for lack of a magniloquent phrase, copycat.
"Imitators" was the word NBC executive Jeff Zucker used last summer as his network promoted the boxing reality series, The Contender, while Fox introduced its boxing reality series, The Next Great Champ.
The producers of The Contender, which debuts in January, ended up mounting an unsuccessful legal challenge to keep Champ off the air. In the end, viewers K.O.'d the Fox series themselves. The show was demoted to cable's Fox Sports Net after just four episodes.
Trading Spouses premiered on Fox in July. While it beat ABC's Wife Swap to the air by two months, the RDF Media lawsuit alleges Fox's interest in the concept dates back to 2003 when Fox executive Peter Chernin caught the U.K. version of its show. (The original Wife Swap debuted on British TV in January 2003.)
Despite their swinging titles, neither Wife Swap nor Trading Spouses resembles anything close to the final act of The Ice Storm.
Instead, both series take women from disparate backgrounds (two per episode) and move them into each other's homes for a week, where they cope with their new families. The temporary husbands are tolerated, not romanced.
When it launched its series, Fox described Trading Spouses as a "fresh take on the classic fish-out-of-water story." For its part, ABC called Wife Swap "a reality show unlike any other."
In the ratings battle, Wife Swap is the clear winner. It's been averaging 10.3 million viewers, per Nielsen Media Research. The fall session of Trading Spouses has been drawing 7.8 million each week.
The RDF Media lawsuit names Fox and Rocket Science Laboratories, a production company, as defendants.
Fox and ABC will be in each other's hair, and audience pools, again in January when ABC rolls out Supernanny, a British-inspired reality show about a U.K. nanny who straightens out-of-control American children. The series is not to be confused with Fox's Nanny 911, a British-produced reality show about a team of U.K. nannies who straightens out...
Well, you know the rest.
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