« Montana for Obama? Yeah, so what? | Main | In the country's last toss-up state, McCain has TV, but Obama has GOTV »

October 31, 2008

The Z woman gets the NYT treatment

Nup_130762_0302Lauren Zalaznick is one of my favoritest people in the whole business of television. We got to know each other when she was hired to shepherd a tiny little cable channel called Trio for the Universal Cable Group that was eventually sold to NBC. Kansas City was one of about a dozen cable systems in the country that got Trio, and I loved how she used attitude and a splash of color to make something out of nothing.

This weekend, she's the subject of one of those way-too-up-close-and-personal profiles that the New York Times Sunday Magazine specializes in: 8,300 words about her and her career, which currently is running a major chunk of the growing NBC Universal cable empire. Trio died, but by then it was already living on at Bravo, which the Z woman took over and began to apply exactly the same smart makeover that she brought to Trio.

In the Times story, Trio gets exactly one sentence, but I don't know how you write about the job Zalaznick has done at Bravo without writing about Trio as the warmup act. When I read her complaining about Bravo to the Times writer, Susan Dominus, "I’ve got no budget, no stars," I had to laugh. Compared with the budget she had at Trio, Zalaznick is a friggin' Cecil B. de Mille these days.

If you'd like to comment on this story, send email to writeme@tvbarn.com. Select comments may be added to this story. If you'd rather I not quote you by name, use this instead.


TV Barn tweets: Only the good stuff

TV Barn Tweets - only the good stuff

    follow me on Twitter


    Site design by A.B. with help from Julio Garcia | About KansasCity.com | Terms of Use/Privacy | Copyright | RSS | Contact