The hotel-casino, in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas, gave Discovery's cameras the run of the grounds last year, figuring that at worst it would trade a few warts for free publicity.
When the Discovery cable channel's 'American Casino' begins its second season tonight, it will be without Michael Tata, who ran the hotel side of Green Valley Ranch. Instead, the first notable casualty of reality television was the 33-year-old manager of a boutique hotel who did nothing riskier on camera than reposition and fluff couch pillows in the lobby. The logical candidates were shows like 'Fear Factor,' where contestants are put in physical danger, or 'The Real World,' which throws occasionally unstable youngsters together. 30 - It was inevitable that a reality television series would encounter too much reality for its own good: that a star would die, leaving producers in the lurch and viewers groping for unsavory details.
