News that a producer for Dr. Phil McGraw's popular syndicated talk show bailed out one of the Lakeland girls arrested and charged in connection with a videotaped assault on a classmate should come as no surprise.

McGraw's show has shown an increasing appetite for guests connected to hot-button, high-profile issues, most recently displayed in McGraw's ham-handed attempts to get close to troubled pop star Britney Spears while preparing a show on her public meltdown.

Unfortunately, McGraw's organization doesn't seem prepared for the backlash such moves can create.

In this case, local media swarmed the Friday release of Mercades Nichols -- the girl who police said lured another girl to a house where she was pummeled -- while someone, presumably connected to McGraw's show, repeatedly asserts that the program has exclusive rights to Nichols' story. The news literally made worldwide headlines and the show later issued a statement saying the bail posting was against the show's policies and they will no longer go forward with their planned segment on the fight.

But McGraw often gets at the stories of his guests by using his show to provide resources that they  cannot access on their own. The barter is an implied one: bare your deepest problems on the show, and we'll provide the kind of treatment or counseling you could never afford on your own.

In a country where 40-million people don't have health insurance, that's a powerful bargain. So this time, Dr. Phil sealed the deal in a different venue, with a higher profile subject. My question: what policy did the producer break? And how did he get the okay to post a bail set at $30,000 without the approval of a senior executive on the show? (one side question: should media outlets be naming the younger girls involved in this attack, who range in age from 14 to 16?)

TMZ.com is reporting that the guy in the footage below is a production assistant, a job they dismiss as an intern with a checkbook. But they also raise my question about how an intern with an expense account could arrange the financial resources for bail on his own, and Hollywood has a long tradition of expecting low folks on the totem pole to take a PR bullet for the boss.

I'm not really placing much stock in gossipy reports that Dr. Phil benefactor Oprah Winfrey is growing tired of the demanding doctor, although this won't help that dynamic if it's true. But it looks like McGraw's once-winning formula is showing some fraying edges -- perhaps he ought to reconsider the cynical bargain at the heart of many of his shows.