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: continued…

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“I work with all the visuals from cover to cover, so when you read the magazine, whether it’s the model, the celebrity, the styling, the fashion, the photography, all those things come into my play,” Zee explained in our Media Beat interview. “It’s really sort of helping to define a visual signature for the magazine.”

And @mrjoezee gets pummeled with questions daily from women trying to mimic the seemingly effortless style of their favorite celebs. The number one question he gets? No, not that white pants after Labor Day thing — seriously, are we still discussing that?

“I think the biggest question I get all the time is people want my job. How do I do what you do?” said Zee. “I love my job, and it definitely is glamorous after all these years. But there was a lot of years of no glamour to get to that point.”

Part 1: Elle‘s Joe Zee Puts It All on the Line for Sundance Channel
Part 3: How Elle‘s Joe Zee Broke Into Fashion (and How You Can Too)

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“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)

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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.

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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’

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So, we couldn’t let senior VP of original programming and development Andy Cohen leave our Media Beat studio without answering some tough questions: How real are your reality shows anyway? Why is Atlanta the only Housewives series with women of color? And was Bravo behind that whole Salahi White House crashing fiasco?

Cohen reveals all. Just watch… what happens, of course.

Part 1: Bravo’s Andy Cohen to Reality TV Hopefuls: ‘Good Luck’

Part 2: Andy Cohen on Bravo TV’s Sexuality: ‘We’re Bi’

Media Beat is mediabistro.com’s interview series with the movers and shakers of the media world. View all past episodes at MediaBeat.com.

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If we hadn’t seen this ad with our own eyes last night on MTV, we would have never believed it to be real. Looks like the network has decided to base an entire reality series on a certain viral video about Jager bombs and new haircuts.

Yes, the upcoming series “Jersey Shore” will take a probing look at the fascinating sub-culture of the fist-pumping guido, a stereotype that has already been mocked to the point of exhaustion. In fact, MTV has already delved into this area a few times for its “True Life” series. Aren’t there some less annoying groups of people somewhere beyond the East and West Coasts that MTV could draw inspiration from?

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