Once upon a time there was a little cable network named ZDTV. The ZD stood for Ziff-Davis, the magazine publishers who among other things publish PC Magazine and Computer Gaming World. The focus of ZDTV was technology and from the beginning their leading host was Leo Laporte. A few years later ZDTV was sold to Paul Allen and renamed TechTV, based in San Francisco.
Paul Allen was a "Friend of Bill". The problem was that he wasn't a "Friend of Bill W." or even a "Friend of Bill Clinton" it was worse ... much worse. Paul Allen was a friend of Bill Gates and indeed was the co-founder of Microsoft. Allen owned TechTV through his investment company Vulcan Ventures which also owned such things as Charter Communications the Portland Trailblazers and the Rose Garden Arena in Portland. The trouble was that the company made a number of bad choices, such as a nine hour a day live tech news program which later shrank to three one hour programs a day and eventually became a half hour daily show. Still, the network was seen by 40 million households across Canada and the United States, and had at least some distribution in some 70 countries.
There were problems however. In 2001 and 2002 Comcast Cable dropped TechTV from most of their cable systems. Comcast had their own network called G4 (which supposedly stands for four generations of video games and gaming platforms, although there are other theories which are less kind). G4 was focussed almost entirely on videogaming. G4 itself had a problem because a lot of non-Comcast cable systems were not picking up the G4 network. At the same time Vulcan Ventures was having troubles with its investments with the arena in Portland (which eventually declared bankruptcy in February 2004) as well as losses from TechTV. In March 2004 G4 and Vulcan Ventures announced the sale of TechTV to G4 which merged the two as G4-TechTV. In fact it was more full submersion than a true merger. Comcast had bought the network to gain access to cable systems which had previously not carried G4. The new entity immediately fired 250 existing TechTV employees and Leo Laporte left in a contract dispute. The remaining 80 to 100 employees were told they could keep their jobs if they relocated to Los Angeles. Only a handful of TechTV shows were actually retained, including The Screen Savers and X-Play which was TechTV's own videogame review show, although within a couple of months of the move to Los Angeles most of the on-air TechTV personnel were fired - today only four remain with the network - and in February 2005 Comcast dropped "TechTV" from the name of the network, returning it to G4.
Even before the elimination of "TechTV" from the name, the merged network retained the original G4's focus on gaming rather than technology. This posed something of a problem for many of TechTV's international partners most of which simply dropped the network programming when the merger occurred. There was a much bigger problem in Canada where, in order to get the network on digital cable Vulcan had entered into a partnership with the country's two largest cable companies (and not coincidentally two of the largest ISPs) Rogers Cable and Shaw Cable to create TechTV Canada which went on the air in 2001. Vulcan had a minority position in ownership which was inherited by G4. There were certain restrictions which Canadian regulations inflicted on the channel, for example not being able to show entertainment programming notably Anime Unleashed. Rogers and Shaw couldn't have been too happy with the sudden change in format and they certainly weren't happy with the drop in viewership which was beginning to happen almost as soon as the merger was announced. They had started a technology channel - and had good viewership for it - rather than a gaming channel. Even if losses in viewers didn't hurt them there was also their CRTC license renewal to consider. Rogers Cable decided that they needed to do something. What they did in August 2004 was to hire Leo Laporte to host a new version of Call For Help, this time based out of Toronto. Subsequently the program was picked up by the "HOW TO" Channel in Australia and there were active efforts being made to bring the show to an American station, efforts that were finally rewarded when, ironically, G4 decided to buy the show. It will start airing on the American network on Monday, August 29 at 11 A.M. EDT.
So what will American audiences be seeing? The simple answer is what they won't be seeing and that is a show exactly like the original Call For Help. There's a simple reason for this - it isn't live TV. Laporte hasn't moved to Canada; he lives in the Petaluma area of California and commutes to Toronto for one week a month to do a month of show episodes. This means no live calls and also no real technology news. In fact Leo Laporte has compared the new version of the show with the old TechTV version of The Screen Savers. There are phone calls but the basic questions are submitted in advance by email, allowing more research and more accurate answers to the questions, but less spontaneity. That doesn't stop Leo from displaying the same evangelical fervour for teaching people about everything from computers to cell phones and big screen TVs that he had when he was doing the original versions of Call For Help and The Screen Savers (not bad for a guy who admits that he started doing technology programming "to get free stuff"). The show also offers more technology related tips delivered by Laporte and his co-hosts, technology writer Andy Walker and journalist, and professional web designer Amber MacArthur. Walker's demonstrations of how things work - usually involving food stuffs - are infamous as well as both funny and informative. Unfortunately there are rumours, which seem to have been confirmed by a rather indicative "non-denial" that Walker wrote in his own blog on Cyberwalker.com, that Walker will be leaving the show. There are a number of regular guests, notably Steve Gibson of Gibson Research who discusses Internet Security for personal computer users, and Photoshop expert Alex Lindsay. A recent addition to the show is former TechTV host Kevin Rose who is doing a number of segments each month - he too is flying up from California to do the show. The show is good, but viewers probably shouldn't expect the same show that they remember when the original Call For Help was on.
A more interesting question is why G4 has decided to bring back Call For Help? One suggestion is that the new head of broadcasting for Comcast is less than happy with the performance of G4. The simple fact of course is that while the acquisition of TechTV was an attempt to buy eyeballs the purchase alienated TechTV's original viewership. They bought households but those households didn't necessarily turn into increased market share. Indeed it it is interesting to note that one of the most popular series on the network is the old TechTV games review show X-Play with Adam Sesler and Morgan Webb. In addition to Call For Help The network is reducing its reliance on gaming further with the addition of a British science series called Brainiac: Science Abuse starring Richard Hammond and Jonathon Tickle (originally a contestant on the British version of Big Brother), and revived two old TechTV series, Nerd Nation and Future Fighting Machines. Think that they have to; the simple fact is that people who play video games aren't like golfers or participants in outdoor pursuits (two of Comcast's other networks are The Golf Channel and OLN (formerly the Outdoor Life Network). They would rather be playing video games that watching other people playing video games. My opinion is that G4 was built on a flawed model as a result, and the return of more generic technology focussed programming, including the addition of the new version of Call For Help is the first step in the right direction. Technology geeks can always find the sort of "fix" that they need - Laporte offers one of the most popular podcasts around with his This Week In Tech and has several other offerings, Kevin Rose has a weekly podcast called Diggnation that looks at the top stories on Digg.com as well as a couple of streaming video shows through his company Revision 3, and even Amber MacArthur and Mike Lazazera (Call For Help's technical researcher and a frequent guest on the show) have a streaming video show called Command-N. However a conventional television show, even one on a cable network such as G4 or the old TechTV, reaches a far greater audience. As Rogers Media realised when they brought Leo Laporte up to Canada to revive Call For Help, the market exists for this kind of programming, it just needs to be reached.
One thing is for sure: viewers of ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition will never be mistaken for a show where you can learn anything. A one hour commercial for Sears and Disney, yes. An example of a show that is heartwarming well beyond the point of cloying, undoubtedly. An example of bad amateur comedy, almost certainly. But a show where you can seriously learn anything about renovations or improving your home? You must be joking. Who'd watch that?
Originally I wanted to write this as a "compare and contrast" exercise with a show that NBC had aired on Sunday called Home Intervention which featured designer Vern Yip from Trading Spaces but for a variety of reasons (well one actually; I forgot to turn the timer on the VCR on before I had a nap and so didn't tape it - I've been taking a lot of naps lately) I missed it. Still - and despite the fact that Sunday's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was previously aired episode - I decided to press on with the reviewing process. I will admit that Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is a show that I watch on occasion, usually when Cold Case is a repeat - and I don't feel like having a nap - and I have to admit that the show is entertaining in a "they must be doing this on the cheap" sort of way. Or at least they must be doing the production on the cheap, since I be they run up a big bill for construction materials not to mention labour.
A typical episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition starts with the design team, led by former Trading Spaces carpenter Ty Pennington, in their luxury bus watching a video from the people they are going to help. Somehow it all has the feel of "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to..." from Mission: Impossible mixed with those videos of people in the third world that Sally Struthers used to voice-over. The people usually have some sort of health emergency or a recent death in the family which makes them "worthy" (and believe me I'm not saying they aren't but when you consider how many applications the show must get in season, how do you decide that the mother with two adopted kids - their birth mother was a drug addict - and a contractor that took the money and ran gets a makeover before or even instead of the woman who has cancer). The family story usually prompts some "ahs" from the assembled "design team" and the encouragement of "touching" Ty. Then they arrive at the house and "goofy" Ty takes over. Out comes the bullhorn that has rapidly become Ty's trademark (you just know that if he had more than one he'd try the Bart Simpson trick) and to the shock of the family in question - and presumably the consternation of their neighbours - Ty yells for the family to show themselves. Thus it begins. In the course of the next 30 minutes (adding in commercials will pretty much take it to the right length) of TV time and seven days of real time the show tears out all the bad stuff - or sometimes just tears down the whole house - and builds up what is usually a spectacular new home. Frequently there's some sort of cameo appearance by some celebrity who shows up for a minute or two to talk contribute something to the place. Then in the last 15 minutes they show it to the family who are appropriately appreciative.
The idea of the show is that the design team will come up with a super special design that will not only reflect the family's needs but also their interests (with plenty of products from Sears) but also be able to do it during the seven days that the family is off on an enforced vacation (frequently at a Disney resort or cruise). The whole thing must take tremendous logistical work before hand of course. Ask any builder and he'll tell you that just the process of getting city building permits can take months and we're supposed to believe that Ty and his crew not only assess the family's needs but throw together the design in about a day and get the permits either for massive additions or building a totally new house? Sorry, I ain't buying it. There are other questions of course. How does a family which can't afford to renovate their home in the first place manage to pay the taxes on a newly reconstructed palace, which is frequently better than any other house in the neighborhood? Not to mention the increased utility bills from all the new appliances and plasma TVs (supplied by Sears or have I mentioned them). I don't know that many viewers think of it, but I worry that some of the people who have been forced to give up their new house. Indeed the Pope Family who were featured in a 2003 episode are facing a property tax bill that doubled to $6,500, and an electrical bill that went more than tripled as well as a potential state and federal income tax liability of $664,500 based on the amount of goods and services used in building their new house.
That said the show is good, entertaining, television. Ty Pennington has a certain goofy, frenetic charisma that works well on TV. The design team is good if a little overly fond of themed rooms for kids. However, for me the real stars of the show are the ones who don't get much credit - the contractors and building tradespeople. It's estimated than on a recent episode in the Phoenix area approximately 1,600 tradespeople were working to build the house. In the case of the Pope Family (mentioned above) the estimated value of labour plus goods in the form of construction materials as well as appliances (from Sears mostly and probably donated) was $1.5 million, and according to a subcontractor who worked on a show ABC pays for nothing, refuses to allow any logo other than the general contractor's to be shown, and gives only a brief credit to subs at the end of the episode (the kind of credit that runs at 150 mph and generally gets squished for previews of the next show). Clearly it take a lot to rebuild a home in five days and I can't help wondering if it isn't building up unrealistic expectations in more ways than one.
I think I've mentioned that I like home renovation shows. The grand-daddy of all home renovation shows in North America is This Old House. Through twenty five years and three very different hosts, the show has been a standard on most PBS stations with some, such as WTVS Detroit (which serves eastern and central Canada including Saskatoon) airing the show in prime time, along with its much newer companion show Ask This Old House.
I haven't seen every episode of This Old House. I pretty much missed the fifth or sixth season when the nature of the show changed radically from what it had been and would be later. Until that time the show would buy a property, renovate it and put it on the market. One season they actually built, from the ground up, an energy efficient house that had all of the bells and whistles that, at the time, were expected from an energy efficient property - solar heating, partially buried structure, heavy insulation, and solar cells for power generation. It was a nice house but I gather they had trouble selling it because the next season was spent doing "small" one or two episode projects in and around the Boston area in a style much like the current Ask This Old House. Subsequent jobs have primarily been "sweat equity" projects where home owners have been required to provide some of the labour and more importantly, most of the money.
Over the past 25 years the show has had three very different hosts. The first host was Bob Villa, a Miami born contractor who hosted the show for the first ten years (1979-89). He was selected as host because of his background in journalism and because his work on restoring an Italianate style house won an award from Better Homes and Gardens Magazine. In the beginning he very much was the show, but over the next couple of years carpenter and (at the time) general contractor Norm Abram effectively became the show's co-host and is the only on-air personality who has been with the show since the beginning. The Villa-Abram relationship was at least in part the genesis for the characters of Tim Taylor and Al Borland in Home Improvement. Villa left the show in 1989, reportedly over a conflict over advertising that Villa had done for Time-Life Books and his relationship with Sears. He was replaced by Steve Thomas. Thomas, who had previously worked in the construction industry in various capacities, but at the time probably best known as a sailor who had written a book and made an episode in the PBS television show Adventure about his experience learning about star path navigation from a master navigator in Micronesia. Thomas was with the show from 1989 to 2003, a period which saw Abram secure his position as co-host as well as a start his own PBS show The New Yankee Workshop. This period also saw the emergence of general contractor Tom Silva, plumbing and heating contractor Rich Trethewy, and landscaper Roger Cook as major figures on the show. In Thomas's last year as host a companion show Ask This Old House was started. This show had the This Old House experts travelling around the country (although the country seemed to consist mostly of the Boston area) helping ordinary people with home renovation questions. One of the people who appeared on that show was a young man named Kevin O'Connor. He became the current host of This Old House and Ask This Old House in 2003.
A lot of factors help make the show work. O'Connor is an ideal host because, while he is articulate he is also an every man. A vice president in Sports Finance with the old Fleet Bank, O'Connor isn't a professional in the building trades. As a result there's a feeling that he's learning something at the same time as the audience. He contrasts nicely with master carpenter Norm Abram. Another factor is that the principal trades people are not only proficient in their areas but are actually doing the jobs,because they are. Indeed Villa has said that while he was hosting the show he was also continuing to work as a contractor - the salary for doing This Old House was never great enough that he could make a living from doing the program. While Rich, Tommy and Roger are polished and capable of explaining what they're doing, you are never permitted to forget that they are in fact amateurs in the TV business, and if it went away tomorrow they'd still make a very good living in their respective trades.
Another factor of This Old House is the projects they undertake. One of the complaints about the show is that the projects are bigger than what the average person would undertake. They aren't renovating a $100,000 bungalow or ranch style house, a lot of the projects have renovation budgets larger than that. However big projects allow them to do two things that the show does very well: show the techniques that are used, and show innovative products. In the episode that aired this Thursday on WTVS, viewers not only saw the manufacturing process for polyurethane moldings but also the installation process for installing a window casing using the product. Even failures can be used to illustrate a point. In the same episode it was revealed that the oak lintel that had been intended as a fireplace mantle wasn't approved by the local building inspector despite what the people involved in installing it regarded as adequate protection. To appeal the decision test results were needed that proved that the installation was safe. The testing techniques were explained as were the standards that had to be met. When the tests were completed it was discovered that the lintel was in fact inadequately protected and because of time constraints on the project it would have to be replaced rather than been brought up to standards. It's true that few of us are going to try to turn a 150 year old barn into a home, but it's also true that the techniques for installing a wood laminate floor don't change much whether you're putting down 1000 square feet or 50.
This Old House is an interesting combination of a instruction and entertainment. Most home owners have renovation projects they need or want to undertake - I know I have - and it is also a fact that most guys who have been through a couple of shop classes think that they're capable of at least trying most jobs. What This Old House does is show the wannabe handyman how to do projects and new ways to do projects. They also make clear that there are some projects that the home owner needs to hire professionals for. And in a rather strange sort of way it's sort of entertaining to watch professionals doing their job and trying to explain it.
Last night I watched an episode of Trading Spaces straight through. It wasn't a new one, but the one with Christopher Rich and Melissa Peterman from Reba doing each other's rooms. With all due respect to Rich, I was there to watch Peterman because her character on Reba is a hoot and probably the best reason to watch the show, although Steve Howey's character "Van" comes close. I tried to write about the experience last night but the words wouldn't come, mainly because I was trying to do a general overview of why American adaptations of British "lifestyle" shows may be commercial successes but don't work as well as the British originals - in my opinion anyway. So let me take another run at this thing.
I am not a handyman. I have tools but most of them were inherited when my grandfather died, and my brother got the better tools, like the router. The one power tool I own because I wanted to have it is a new 22 speed Craftsman cordless drill because, let me tell you, a cordless drill is the one power tool that you will use the most. Even if you live in an apartment there are screws to take out and put back in and Ikea furniture to put together and a cordless drill is just the thing. But even if I am totally inept about tools - a tool about tools if you will - I love home improvement shows. Norm Abrams is a demi-god in my world, thanks to his series New Yankee Workshop and the gang at This Old House are idols. I watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition which is fun, and the guy they call in next Holmes on Homes (a Canadian series that features contractor Mike Holmes going into peoples places and redoing renovations that slipshod contractors have done in the first place). And of course there's Changing Rooms.
Changing Rooms is a simple little half hour series that was adapted into the hour long American Trading Spaces. All of the elements of the former are in the latter but for me at least they don't come out right. Going to an hour from a half hour is part of it. I think that the half hour format makes the show more focused and dare I say it more entertainment than the American version. Of course the American show has more of a commercial element to it. In the episode that I saw last night we watched the designers head off to Home Depot (the adult male's answer to "Toys R Us") and Pottery Barn and actually do some shopping. In the British series you might get a designer mentioning where he picked up a particularly nice bit, or a particularly cheap bit but to a North American the product might just as well be on Mars. Tell me, where do you get lime wax in Saskatoon? The interesting thing is that while the British show is shorter than the American program, it doesn't seem as forced. Fast paced yes, but not as if they were trying to overstuff it.
Of course the big thing is the personalities. Both shows had perky hosts - in the United States there was Paige Davis, while in the UK there was Carol Smillie (I say was because Smillie ended her hosting duties in 2003 after six years and three pregnancies, while it was announced that Davis will be dropped at the end of the current season). Smillie always seemed more polished. Not surprising, after all she had been the "Vanna White" clone on the British version of Wheel of Fortune while Davis was a Broadway performer with no previous TV experience. The British have always had "chippie" (British for carpenter) "Handy" Andy Kane, while Trading Spaces has gone through a succession of carpenters starting with Ty Pennington, Carter Oosterhaus, and several others. Kane tends to be calmer but can be quite sarcastic to the designers and even the "clients", but it's a funny quality.
Of course the designers are the hear of both shows. The core British designers are Graham Wynne, Linda Barker, Laura McCree and Anna Rider Richardson with Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen moving from designer to host after Carol Smillie left. The American series has had a larger number of designers although Frank Beliec, Hilda Santo Tomas, Roderick Shade, Laurie Smith and Doug Wilson have been with the show from the start. On the whole I think that the British designers aren't as flamboyant or abrasive as many of the American designers. Certainly they seem to take the tastes of the customers - the people they are working with rather than the people whose houses they're renovating - into account more than the American designers. That's not to say that the British designers don't have their stupid designs that please no one except the designer. Laura McCree's first room was a bedroom in an 18th century vicarage that belonged to an artist - she turned the room into a replica of a London squat (an abandoned building taken over by squatters) that no one liked. On the other hand no one is likely to staple straw to a wall, paper the kitchen of a teetotalling Baptist minister with wine bottle labels, or turn a family room into a home theater despite the fact that the family only had a 19 inch TV. The British designers are usually calmer and less prone to be overdramatic and tend to work more cooperatively with their teams. American teams and designers frequently seem to be in opposition to each other.
I can't really put my finger on the reason for it, but - and this tends to be common to all of the American versions of British originals - I like tend to feel that Trading Spaces is nowhere near as enjoyable as Changing Rooms. I watch the latter as pure entertainment and somehow I'm just not as entertained by Trading Spaces as I am by Changing Rooms.
