Sunday’s New York Times Magazine featured a largely slobbering portrayal of Lauren Zalaznick, the programming chief of Bravo. Zalaznick is the woman who masterminded the network’s transformation from an arts network to the reality show network for rich jerks. She took over the channel during the Queer Eye boom and spun that into the panoply of brand-marketing aspirational douchebaggery that it is today. Mostly the article just made me upset, but this paragraph truly left me agog. The author concludes the article asking what the Bravo brand might be in the context of an economic downturn:
One answer, said Zalaznick, might be a nightly show in which a host would interview characters from the various other shows, about the relation between events on their shows and current events. “We know we just showed you an episode about someone buying $1,500 shoes,” she said. “Here’s what’s important about that, or here’s what’s funny about that, here’s this person sitting on my couch to talk about that, given what’s going on in the world. It’s providing a little context, less inference — it’s not a time for subtlety.”
Yeah fucking right. That’ll make it allllll better.