Now in its 24th season, MTV's "The Real World" launched the roommate reality genre that inspired "Big Brother," "Jersey Shore" and wacky family variations, including "The Osbournes," "Jon & Kate Plus 8" and "Keeping Up with the Kardashians."
McNaught has been a long-distance den mother for "The Real World," "Big Brother" and the Kardashians. She says the sedentary nature of household shows can be deceiving because producers like to break up all the emoting with action from time to time, as when the Kardashians wanted to try racecar driving.
"Can you imagine these girls driving a racecar and they lose control and go into a wall and there goes their career in modeling?" she says.
For this reason, McNaught says many insurers still consider roommate shows too risky.
But Seaman says time has eased some insurer's heartburn about 24/7 coverage for cohabitating strangers.
"When we put all these people in a room together, what's going to happen? Does a fight break out? What you discover is that 99.9 percent of the time your worst-case scenario doesn't occur," he says.