Breathing New Life Into Oxygen

摘要

Working at Oxygen-the home of "badtastic" reality spectacles like Bad Girls Club and Tori & Dean-requires a level of fervor and devotion bordering on zealotry. "I feel like a televangelist sometimes," says Jason Klar- man, who was appointed general manager of Oxygen Media in January 2008, shortly after NBC Universal's nearly $925 million acqui- sition of the network. "The whole team," he adds, "takes on the role of evangelists spreading the word."rnAnd that word has shifted since the NBCU acquisition. A network re-branding last summer jettisoned the pink O logo, and any pretense of feminine decorum. At the new Oxygen, where DFW (down for whatever) rules, there seems to be even more on-air drinking, swearing and cat-fighting, and no one apologizes for any of it. It's part and parcel of what the network calls "Generation O." This passion is accompanied by rolled-up sleeves, starting withrnLauren Zalaznick, president of NBCU Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, who oversees Oxygen and Bravo. Zalaznick is credited with turning Bravo into a Top 20 basic cable destination with one of the most well-defined brands in television. As her new team heads into its first upfront presentation with its own programming to introduce, the question is: Can the crew do for Oxygen what it did for Bravo?