There's a definite place for steady's in production turning, even for newels, etc. After all, for efficiency things are normally batched and not necessarily completed from start to finish on a one-by-one basis.
I've seen some awesome home-made steadies designed purely for quick turnover, one of which I seriously covet even though it'd sit idle for 99.99% of it's life with me. (And that .01% would be mainly be me hefting it around the shed to get it out of the way of some project. :- )
I'd imagine so. But I'm pretty confident that the reliabilty would be more consistent if they just used the appropriate chatter tool instead.
Still, "Viva l'experimentation!" :D