In Vegas News item today, you write that the reality TV show "Rehab" ran for two years and ended when the Hard Rock and TruTV when the hotel and network got into a legal squabble about how the venue and staff were being portrayed. Sounds juicy! Can you tell us what that was all about?
Starting in November 2008 and running for three seasons, "Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Hotel" was a reality-television docudrama on truTV, a basic-cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The show ended in December 2010.
The 29 non-scripted episodes followed the shenanigans that took place at the Sunday Rehab pool party at the Hard Rock (now Virgin). It focused, mostly, on two women bartenders, two cocktail waitresses, the director of nightlife, the pool manager, a security supervisor and guard, and assorted one-off performers, high rollers, swingers, and the like and was billed as "the event that mixes the hottest bodies with the richest guests, told from the point of view of the people who keep everything running."
The drama usually involved alcohol service, staff in-fighting, attempts to keep the partygoers under control while avoiding the anger of their bosses, at least one of whom was particularly volatile, and the hook-up culture of good-looking bodies, often wet, in skimpy attire.
A scandal or two surrounded the pool party and show. In the first, during the second season, the owner of the overall Hard Rock brand sued the owner of the rights to the name of the hotel-casino, Morgans Hotel Group. Hard Rock accused Morgans of "damaging the company name by associating it with drunken debauchery, acts of vandalism, sexual harassment, and violence." Morgans countered that the show was bringing priceless publicity to the brand -- and the show went on for a third season.
The second involved a drug sting and though that happened at the nightclubs of the time (Body English and Vanity), they both made appearances on "Rehab." The two scandals proved too much for truTV, which failed to renew the show for a fourth season.
Today, the Virgin pool party is called Kassi Beach and, though known as a high-energy dayclub, it's somewhat more sedate than Rehab, which has often been cited as the rowdiest and wildest pool party on the planet, even eight years after it closed in 2018 to make way for the Virgin transformation.
