You can set the backgroundView of the cell to nil in drawRect, that will remove the background from drawing for that cell.
If you have your custom background just added as a subview (before adding your text views and everyting else of course), then you can have a custom background.
To make the text's backgrondColor be transparent set it to [UIColor clearColor]
At least, this is one way to get what you are trying to do
