Nancy Franklin writing about VH1′s head of programming in the New Yorker:
If your first response to the prospect of these [nostalgic] shows is cynicism and dread, that is largely due to VH1′s approach to popular culture, which is to put it all into a blender, purée it until you can’t tell one ingredient from another, and feed it to boy ironists (and the occasional girl), who then spit the mixture up against the wall for their—and, supposedly, our—amusement. …
Hirschorn, who went to Harvard and has a master’s degree in comparative literature from Columbia, was for a time the editor of the music magazine Spin, and writes about culture for The Atlantic, said that he grew up in a self-consciously cultured home where the only TV he was allowed to watch was Jacques Cousteau and “Masterpiece Theatre.” Like Scarlett O’Hara, filled with life-affirming resolve at the end of the Civil War, he rose up from the poverty of middle-class standards, stared at the ratings numbers twinkling in the heavens, shouted, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be tasteful again!,” and set fire to his parents’ beige public-television tote bag.