• LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian are appearing in their own reality show, although the couple plans to keep Cibrian's two children out of it. Cibrian's two sons -- ages 7 and 11 -- with ex-wife Brandi Glanville don't appear in LeAnn & Eddie, an eight-episode series debuting Thursday on VH1. Glanville appears on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Rimes, Cibrian and Glanville have had a history of rocky exchanges in recent years. "We do discuss Eddie's ex-wife when it needed to be discussed," Rimes told the summer TV critics' meeting. "You can't really do a show without talking about that." Cibrian said the show isn't an opportunity to fire back at the couple's critics. Instead, he said it's a chance to mock the rumors that have surrounded them since he and Rimes got together in 2009, when they were both married to other people. "Everyone has used our lives as entertainment, and so we wanted to actually kind of take our life back and have fun with our story," Rimes said. Reality TV hasn't always been kind to other couples: Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson and Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom all divorced, while Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott's marriage has been under strain. "It seems to happen," Rimes said. "Maybe we will beat it."

• Members of Michael Jackson's extended family are stepping out of what they call "the Jackson bubble" for a reality show. The six-episode show debuts Nov. 18 on Reelz and focuses on Alejandra Jackson, the ex-wife of Michael's brother Jermaine, and her five children. After Michael's death five years ago, they left the Jackson family home in suburban Encino, a move that a clip from the show suggests wasn't their idea. "We didn't want it to happen that way," Alejandra's daughter Genevieve said Saturday at the summer TV critics' tour. Son Donte Jackson added, "Some of the politics came into play." At the same time, Genevieve said the family lived under constraints at the Encino house. "We were very sheltered," she said. "There's a lot of outside people coming in and out of our house. We had to watch what we said." Considering the amount of tabloid attention the Jackson family has received, why not keep their lives private? "People already had a preconceived judgment of us and we weren't speaking," Randy Jr. said. "Now we feel comfortable enough to show how we really are."

A Section on 07/14/2014