Former Bravo network executive Andy Cohen now hosts two shows and has become a reality TV guru; corporations are being extra cautious about advertising in an age when opposition campaigns can quickly gain traction; after a long hiatus, the band Fleet Foxes is back.
'Fame is an aphrodisiac': TV host Andy Cohen on why reality TV will continue to thrive
It’s safe to say that Andy Cohen lives and breathes reality television.
A former executive for the Bravo network, Cohen was instrumental in making “The Real Housewives” series a massive franchise. Though he's not an exec at the network he’s still an executive producer of the "Housewives."
Though he spent much of his career behind the scenes as a producer both for CBS News and then at Bravo, Cohen always wanted to be in front of the camera. Since 2009 he’s been the host of "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen", Bravo’s late night show where he drinks and gabs with guests about reality TV.
When Fox came calling with an offer to host a reboot of "Love Connection," he just couldn’t say no. When I reached him in New York he told me why now’s the perfect time to bring this show back to network TV:
"I'm surprised that Love Connection hasn't been on the whole time, frankly, because the themes of the show are universal. At its core it is about attraction and it's about the he said she said surrounding first dates. It's a pretty simple concept. It seems old fashioned in the age of swiping now and Tinder and everyone judging each other based on a profile picture for 2.5 seconds or less, but we did it we set up two singles per episode on three dates each and we hear about the dates. I think that's as universal a concept as just about anything on TV."
Interview Highlights:
On getting the gig as host of the reboot of "Love Connection":
When I was in charge of programming at Bravo I actually went after the format for someone else to host just because I loved it so much. All these years later when FOX came to me with the offer to host a new version produced by Mike Fleiss who does The Bachelor and Mike Darnell from American Idol I absolutely jumped at the opportunity
When the original "Love Connection" was on we only saw white people dating white people, or black people dating black people. Obviously the world has changed a lot and in the first episode it's clear that there are interracial couples. But will we have same sex couples too?
Yes, we have lesbian daters, we have gay guys, and we've got all permutation of races intermingling. It's 2017! The great thing is we don't make too big a deal out of it. In the premiere episode we have a woman of color who had never been out with a white guy and I said how was the conversation and she said, 'well it was good, surprisingly...because I've never been out with someone who is that color." I said you can say it, he's a white guy!
We have a woman who comes out on national television to her mom. On the date she had told her companion that her parents didn't know that she's gay and I said they do now. She outed herself on television, it was something else.
When you're working as a development executive trying to figure out what it is the nation wants, what is that experience like when you think you have a really good idea that the nation doesn't respond to.
The good news for me is that I wasn't looking for the nation to fall in love, I was looking for shows that were on brand for the Bravo audience. We knew what our brand was very well, so that was a relief, because when you program into your brand I think it's a lot easier than programming for a huge mass audience. Look I had many clunkers at Bravo and I think The Real Housewives is a great example of a show that I thought had promise, but that in the first season of the Housewives of Orange County, it was not looking great in the edit room. There was a discussion of maybe even pulling the plug on that show. Thank God we didn't.
On the responsibility of reality TV producers when it comes to what's fake vs. what's real:
I worked in news for 10 years at CBS news from 1990-2000 and there were rules of journalism and there are not really rules of reality TV. I would say that the responsibility really is to entertain and not to hurt anyone in the process. You don't want to see people getting hurt or their lives being ruined. I think that there's so many forms of reality TV, Love Connection is a form of reality TV, so it's hard for me to generalize.
On why reality TV shows like The Real Housewives franchise isn't ruining American culture:
I think its escapism and I think that it is a reality soap opera. I grew up watching All My Children and Young and the Restless. I loved them and I knew what they were. There were always articles in Time Magazine, like, have soaps gone too far? Are soaps too scandalous? Are soaps ruining the fabric of our culture? There are certainly those articles about reality TV. In terms of the Housewives, I think they're successful because people love judging human behavior. People love some of these women, I think they hate some of these women I think they love to hate some of them. I think the shows are funny, if they were all just ratchet, or all just one speed of people yelling at each other I do not think we would still be talking about the show 11 years into the show. I've debate Gloria Steinem about the housewives who said they're minstrel shows for women. My argument is if they were the only depiction of women on television I think this would be a real conversation, there's not, there's a million ways that women are shown on television.
On why it doesn't surprise him that people are willing to expose their personal lives for reality TV:
It did at the beginning and now I just kind of understand that fame is an aphrodisiac. Some of these women are really really wealthy, and the one thing that money cannot buy is fame. This is not a huge show and a lot of women come on for a lot of different reasons...I think everyone has a personal reason, but the commonality for a lot of them is fame.
"Love Connection" airs FOX Thursdays 9/8c on FOX. It will return on June 22.
Advertisers are on high alert in the age of President Trump
It’s not easy being an advertiser these days.
The highly polarized political climate, combined with the ease with which consumers can launch a social media campaign or boycott against a brand, has advertisers on edge.
This week, Bank of America and Delta Airlines pulled their support from the Public Theater’s controversial staging of “Julius Caesar.” Then JP Morgan Chase said it would temporarily yank its ads from NBC News as a result of Megyn Kelly’s upcoming interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Sapna Maheshwari, an advertising business reporter for the New York Times, joined The Frame to explain how the current political climate has changed things for advertisers:
Essentially, [advertisers] are on high alert. I think we sort of saw this around the time of the election where we were seeing these social media crises boil over, and we saw lots of brands getting caught in the cross-hairs of online mobs. And since then we just haven't really seen it taper off.
Maheshwari says advertisers are more sensitive about the content they align themselves with because of intense social media attention from consumers:
It's definitely more scrutiny and that's heightened by really divided groups of consumers online who are trying to use boycotts and threats of boycotts with advertisers to pressure different kinds of content they may or may not agree with.
Though JP Morgan's recent pulling of ads from NBC News is a departure from the norm, Maheshwari says it's a sign of the political times:
JP Morgan's decision here was really unusual. And I think it's definitely reflective of this post-election environment. And they're saying it's in line with a new post-election policy of avoiding fake news, and so they don't want to give any financial support to people who spread misinformation. And in their view that's what Alex Jones is.
And while it's an advertiser's prerogative to protect its brand, pulling support for news organizations because of their coverage of a particular person or issue can raise some ethical concerns, according to Maheshwari:
JP Morgan and any advertiser is entitled to support or not support what they want. I think it is unusual to make this decision based on a piece of news. And I think the sort of typical way to look at it is how a newsroom operates: for example, any story I write cannot and will not be influenced by what an advertiser wants or needs, right? And I should never be influenced by those conversations. And I think we take that for granted within the news business.
So there is a little bit of a concern that was raised with this — you know, Will advertisers be having more influence than is desired on maybe what guests are brought on in the future, or how things should be covered?
Still, for the most part, Maheshwari says advertisers don't want to get involved with influencing content production:
Advertisers don't want to make editorial decisions or say that one type of content is offensive or not, because then they have to stick by that. So what was interesting about JP Morgan pulling from NBC News is that they were able to say that this is an anti-fake news policy and they can stick by that going forward. When you kind of cross into the line of, This is in poor taste, or We need to support the president, I think it becomes harder to maintain across all channels.
For the most part, really, advertisers don't want to get involved in making those decisions because at the end of the day they want to get their message seen by lots and lots of people, wherever they are, without being in any sort of controversy.
To hear John Horn's conversation with Sapna Maheshwari, click on the player above.