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=-=-= book source, http://www.fromrussia.com/default.aspx

=-=-= Morning Edition, 17 Feb 2011 excerpt [emphasis added],
INSKEEP: Well, let's go global with our discussion of style and substance here, because you've also sent us something from the London Review of Books. It's a diary entry - that's the type of article that it is here. And it's a gentleman who went to Russia and tried to deal with questions of style on television. What did he learn?
Ms. BROWN: This was a very amusing piece by this guy who went to Moscow to be the development producer, assigned to get Russian TV channels to take reality shows and documentaries.
INSKEEP: Peter Pomerantsev is perhaps how it's pronounced?
Ms. BROWN: Yes.
INSKEEP: What happens to him?
Ms. BROWN: Well, what happens is he discovers that, for a start, you know, aspirational ideas just don't work in Russia. For a start, you know, when they try to do this kind of Russian "Apprentice," the Russians don't actually admire that kind of brash, you know, you're fired tycoon. They actually admire people who kind of operate in the shadows. And their heroes actually are not businessmen at all. They're gangsters.
And, in fact, you know, Putin actually dresses like a gangster, he says, sort of on purpose, because that's kind of what the Russians really relate to. I guess they know so many of them in business life.
INSKEEP: Mm-hmm.
Ms. BROWN: He says that the idea of kind of a meritocratic way of getting a job is just not used. He says the usual way to get a job in Russia is not by impressing in an interviewer, no, but what is known as blat, which is connections. He said Russian society isn't much interested in the hardworking, brilliant, young business mind. Everyone knows where that type ends up: in jail.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BROWN: So it's really very funny, indeed. I laughed so much, because, you know, in America, we tend to sort of see everything through the prism of us. And that's one of the mistakes that's being made both in diplomacy and in media, is that, you know, you have to go there and realize these are very different places.
INSKEEP: Let me raise another thing that is in this article. There's an attempt to put reality TV on. And, of course, reality TV is fake in the United States, but there's a degree to which people are at least unscripted with many of their remarks. People can't get over that idea of actually being even that real in Russian television. It's impossible.
Ms. BROWN: Absolutely. You know, well, this is an - obviously a, you know, a society that has had fake TV put to them for so many years, with all the propaganda that goes out. They don't believe that there's any such thing as reality-based programming. They just think it's all completely fake, like everything else they've been ever shown.
So it totally bombs. I mean, they just say this is just some nonsense, and they all shrug.