In 2008, in The New York Times Magazine, Susan Dominus described Zalaznick’s impact on the cable network in class terms. She had effectively gentrified the sketchy neighborhood of reality programming, with all those basic bachelorettes and bug-eating contests, transforming it into a newly marketable landscape, one that felt “boutique and chic,” a glimmering Tribeca of the mind. “The formula may be lowbrow—attractive people pitted against one another, ruthless eliminations—but the content is, if not exactly highbrow, then certainly high-style,” wrote Dominus.
