1/12/2009

BET's New Knockoff Reality Show Harlem Heights

BET is soooooooo on MTV's jock! Ridin the hell outta of it too. Why every show on BET got to be a knock off of something on MTV? Can we get some originality please? This is one of the reasons why I don't watch BET. It's boring and totally redundant! Anyways, BET held a session at the Television Critics Association press tour Saturday to promote their upcoming inauguration coverage, introduce a new head of programming and unveil its promising new series following young urban professionals in New York.

“Harlem Heights,” is BET's newest upcoming reality show following a group of young college-educated professionals living and working in the New York neighborhood. In a departure from many reality shows, most of the "Harlem Heights" cast members either knew each other, or knew the show's creators and producers. Among the cast is Brooke Crittendon, a former assistant to MTV News chief David Sirulnick and ex-girlfriend of Kanye West.

During Saturday morning's Q&A session, Brooke tried to keep her famous ex-boyfriend a secret, apparently unaware that the room full of TV critics were all on laptop computers connected to wi-fi and a click away from Wikipedia. She explained that her reason for doing the show was to repair some of the tabloid damage she endured during her relationship with West.

"I was involved with a very famous rapper for a number of years," she said. "And I worked in the news and documentary department (at MTV). So a lot of our pop news involved myself. But because I sort of played the background to the person that I was dating, I had to go through people saying things about me or just sort of assuming who I was... I just was like, 'I just want to let people know what I really am and what I really do. I’m not just this person’s girlfriend.'”

When a reporter (likely without a laptop) asked Brooke to reveal the rapper's name, she replied:--- "Part of my personal journey beyond actually wrapping the show is to not mention that person, because if I’m trying to get from under the shadow of being that person’s girlfriend, I feel like to constantly drop their name and that association is sort of saying, 'Hey, I don’t want you to think I’m just that, but I did used to date this really cool person,' you know what I mean?"

The show was acquired before Obama became the nominee of the Democratic Party, but cameras were rolling on the night of Nov. 4 and captured several of the cast members' emotional reactions to Obama's victory. ---“None of us expected the election to be so meaningful to us and the people in Harlem,” said Loretha Jones, BET's new programming president. “We happened to be with these people on Election Night. And you saw their reaction to the election.”

2 comments:

Change for HighBridge said...

At least BET is airing something positive. I am sure there has to be some Drama for the sake of TV, but at least they are showing black ,college educated, professionals who live in Harlem. Hopefully,the younger kids in Harlem will follow similar paths. Anything to get our kids to go to school is a good thing.

Eb the Celeb said...

BET isnt on MTV's jock.. their both owned by Viacom... so the big white executives are going to make a black version of everything that works for the white audience. Every since Bob Johnson left and they went under that umbrella everything on their networks has looked exactly the same, I dont know why people are just now noticing it.