Is Top Chef still Top after Top Chef Carolinas?

Let's dive right into Curtain Pull, in which I take a quick peek behind the scenes of a show to share a little tidbit about how reality TV is produced.

In this all Top Chef episode, it's about the fact that Top Chef's cities or locations, in this case, the Carolinas, last season, Canada, the season before that, Wisconsin, those represent a kind of product placement or product integration.

Yes, the places pay to bring the show there, and more specifically, they use public money through public agencies to do that.

This is not some kind of big secret.

In the press release announcing this season, Top Chef said, quote, "The partnership is with the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, CRVA, and Visit Greenville SC." So what that means is that these visitors authorities, the convention bureaus, uh, whatever they're called in various cities, they're public agencies, use some of their money to pay the production, the producers of Top Chef, to film there, and they get stuff in exchange.

If you wanna know what that stuff is, I published the contracts and documents for Top Chef Wisconsin last season.

I will link to that in the show notes or the episode description of your app, so check that out.

Wisconsin paid one point three million dollars to get Top Chef.

Carolinas, Charlotte, and Greenville paid one point two million dollars.

I think the first time I became aware of this practice is when I saw that, I think, New Orleans, uh, used some of its...

Or maybe it was Texas.

No, I think it's New Orleans used some of its, um, money from an oil spill, [chuckles] like relief fund, basically, to pay Top Chef to come there.

Whether or not this is something that you think these agencies should be spending money on, one thing I hope we can agree on is the fact that because it's public money, they should be public about how they're spending their money.

So when I made public records requests in Wisconsin, I got pretty re- quick answers, and I got the documents that I asked for.

The previous season for Top Chef Texas, I did not get those because Magical Elves, the production company that produces Top Chef, objected to Attorney General Ken Paxton's office, who basically, I think, advised the, um, Houston First that, Houston First is the name of the, the visitors bureau in Houston, that they did not need to, um, comply with requests for this information.

Specifically, uh, and this is what I was told, "Magical Elves objects to the disclosure of confidential information." And that was a quote.

And again, quote, "Attorney General..." And, and they asked that the, quote, "Attorney General advise Houston First that any subsequent requests for identical information may be withheld." So anyone else, journalists, members of the public who request that, they're asking that it not be released.

I think this is bullshit.

If you are a private company like Magical Elves producing a reality TV show for a massive corporation, NBC Universal, of which Bravo is a part, I think you need to accept the fact that how that money is going to be spent is going to be public.

It shouldn't be something you're embarrassed about.

It's a common practice to have localities pay to bring productions in, from tax incentives to other kinds of spending.

So none of this is a huge surprise.

But the fact that they're calling it confidential is, I think, completely obnoxious.

If you want to have a confidential production, don't take public money from people, from, from, you know, the people who live there.

These, this is, you know, it's whatever the sources of it are, whether it's like tourism tax dollars or hotel taxes or other kinds of fees, all of this is supposed to be money that is spent and, o- on, you know, uh, by these agencies to help the places where they are.