Over 400 members of New York media and bloggerati packed Kiss & Fly in the Meatpacking District Thursday to watch the premiere episode of VH1′s Love & Hip-Hop 3, which airs Monday January 7. For those not in the know, that’s the show that goes inside the lives (more personal than professional, really) of hip-hop stars.

While the show’s first outing focused mainly on rapper Jim Jones and his family and friends, this season has a lot of upstarts whose affiliations with the music world are flimsy at best. I’m still trying to figure out what it means for Rashidah Ali to be a “shoe consultant” to the stars, but, hey, whatever works for you.

Here are more photos from the event, courtesy of photographer Stephen Knight: Read more

In All on the Line with Joe Zee, Elle creative director Joe Zee helps struggling fashion designers save their businesses. And, although reality shows come a dime a dozen these days, Zee says the decision to step in front of the camera for Sundance Channel was not taken lightly.

“I loved the idea of being able to do this, but it was important to me that it be authentic. It was important to me that it be original, and that it would be genuine, and that I could actually come in there and help people,” Zee said in our Media Beat interview.

And he says that the many sides of his personality you see in the show are the real deal.

“The reality is we do what we do, because I am authentic in that position. I don’t do it because of the cameras. I don’t do it for any heightened drama. I do it because I really believe in it. If I’m mad at you, I’m really mad at you and, if I’m really excited about you, I’m really excited about you. And those moments exist with or without what’s going on. So, I think my reality TV experience is the fact that I can be myself.”

Part 2: Elle‘s Joe Zee Reveals Exactly What a Magazine Creative Director Does
Part 3: How Elle‘s Joe Zee Broke Into Fashion (and How You Can Too)

There was Julie, Kevin, Heather B., Norman, Andre, Becky and Eric, just seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people… You know the rest.

The Real World might be a household name now, but back in 1992, MTV wasn’t that enthusiastic about the concept. In fact, the show’s creator and executive producer says nobody in TV was.

“The people who were in charge of the networks had all come out of scripted television, and they just didn’t get it. They just didn’t understand it,” explained Jonathan Murray, founder of Bunim-Murray Productions, in mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do? interview. “We would go to various places and people would ask us, ‘So basically what you do is all improv, right? You bring everyone together and you improv the shows? You have a script and you improv?’ There was just no understanding of how we did this.”

The man behind other hits like Road Rules, Bad Girls Club and Project Runway also gave tips on getting a job in reality TV and whether Kim Kardashian‘s 72-hour marriage was really a sham. ”Kim did not seek us out as to who she should marry, nor should she, ” he said.

Read the full interview.

While Billboard has long been required reading for music industry professionals, its online counterpart Billboard.com has expanded over the years to be more consumer friendly, often covering whatever musical moment is in the zeitgeist.

So, for the second installment of our @MediaBeat interview, we got editorial director Bill Werde to weigh in on music television, like Danielle Staub‘s quest for the Hot 100, and why  American Idol has produced more flops than platinum plaques. (We see you, Taylor Hicks.)

“Once you get off of Idol, it’s just such a fleeting window of opportunity generally,” @bwerde said. “We’ve seen –  and the labels now know — that when you finish second, or third, or fourth, or somewhere in the top 10 on Idol, you’ve had an enormous amount of exposure. But you better get those records out fast because, in like 20 minutes, people are going to forget about you.”

You can also watch this video on YouTube.

Part 1:Billboard‘s Bill Werde: ‘If You’re Gonna Write About Music, You Better Love It’
Part 3: Bill Werde: ‘iTunes’ Success Does Not Equal Billboard‘s Detriment’

This is weird: Russell Simmons has teamed up with women’s network Oxygen to produce a show about his life.

Why would women be interested in watching a media mogul in a show called “The Russel Simmons Project,” billed as “exclusive peek at the life of entrepreneur, entertainment and fashion icon, philanthropist and yogi, Russell Simmons, and the powerful team who runs his businesses”? Oh, because Simmons has an assistant, and she’s a woman, and we’ll get to watch him as he bosses around his team “comprised of strong, passionate women.”

It gets somehow even more offensive, since Simmons’ “women network” is comprised of “dating coaches, spiritual advisors, and close confidantes.” You really have to read the press release in its entirety to get the mind-bogglingly backwards logic of a show on Oxygen about a rich man who’s made a career off a genre of music known for its degradation of women, who keeps a bunch of women circulating his celebrity orbit. Luckily, we’ve provided one for you after the jump.

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After proclaiming that the “Jon & Kate + 8″ marriage scandal was single-handedly helping to bring a dying media back to life, we thought it only fitting to add our voice to the cacophony of opinions making noise after last night’s “J&K” episode revealed the couple’s plans to divorce.

While watching last night’s very special one-hour episode, we couldn’t help but agree with Kate Gosselin: the show and it’s publicity did not cause this couple’s problems. It may have sped up the process of a total break down in communication, but it also gave the family the means to survive. Maybe Jon wouldn’t have had to quit his job if he had to support the family, but he probably would have grown to resent his wife for something else instead. And without the show, Jon certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford those pretty diamond earrings he was wearing last night, not to mention the hair plugs and the exciting life he now leads. Do you think a 32-year-old, balding man with eight kids would be able to attract 20-something girlfriends without the allure of reality show fame?

Regardless of what the inner workings of Jon and Kate’s relationship might be — before or after the cameras began to capture their every move — what’s at stake is a brand and empire that they have spent the last few years building. It seems that neither one of them wants to let all that hard work go to waste, so both Jon and Kate said last night that filming of the show will continue, even as they try to figure out custody, alimony and all of those lovely things that come with the splitting of assets.

Did you watch “Jon & Kate + 8″ last night?(polls)

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