Similarly, cooking shows used to actually show you cooking techniques and how to make certain dishes. Now they are all competitions or shows about the best places to get something or other and they aren’t anywhere near where you live.
The one I hated the most was Beat Bobby Flay where they would take a person who was well known for a certain dish and then the a-hole from NYC would come in to try to knock them down.
Sorry for the brief hijack.
I also hate the ones where they come in and have a budget of $1 million for a second home and end up getting the one for $1.5 million.
It’s a classic example of “network decay,” to the point that Food Network actually created a second channel (Cooking Channel), onto which they shunted many of the shows that were actually about cooking.
You can still sometimes find actual cooking shows on Food Network, though nearly never on prime time.
Not so. I watch cooking shows on PBS. I’m watching Lydia’s Italy as I write this. Sara Moulton, Pati Jinich, Ming Tsai, America’s Test Kitchen, Martha Stewart, Diane Kochilas, Kevin Belton, Milk Street, and others-- not a competition among them. All strictly how-to demonstrations.
I watched the original Iron Chef in Japanese with English subtitles on a little UHF station in San Francisco. I never thought it would start its own genre.
My viewing is mostly limited to prime time. PBS is currently showing a 2 hour show on a small rural town in Indiana. As far as I could see in the few minutes I watched, there was no narrative, no music… just the surrounding sounds of dogs barking etc.
As far as food shows go I’ve got Master Chef, Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives, or Spring Baking Championship. So, two competitions and one featuring food I’ll never eat.
I don’t know how widespread this is, but we have 4 PBS channels. One is regular programming; 2 is often travel, but other stuff; 3 is all kid stuff; 4 is called “Create TV,” and it’s all cooking shows (that I named), This Old House, other DIY shows, some travel.
I don’t have cable, I have a Roku. I get my PBS station over the air with an antenna. In fact, it’s the only station I get OTA. I’m guessing Create TV might be available on cable or satellite.
Sorry for the lengthy hijack. Back to trashing HH!
Based on having a wife whose viewing habits focus on “food porn” as well as “house porn,” Saturday mornings / early afternoons are the time when both Food Network and our local PBS station (WTTW) tend to run their cooking programs.
I just want to know how many people who insist on having a 2nd bedroom for guests actually have guests who sleep in the 2nd bedroom. Especially the ones who are moving to, say, Iceland.
Oh, and while we’re ranting about HGTV, can I wonder why they gave Christina el Moussa her own show? Yes, she’s attractive, but she’s also vapid, boring, and unlikable. As far as I could tell, her only contribution to “Flip or Flop” was screaming like a 2-year old whenever she saw a bug, and causing every flip to go over budget by insisting on Carrara marble and custom cabinetry.
I’d watch Tarek’s show because he has actual skills, but I will not watch Christina on a boat, I will not watch Christina on the Coast, I will not watch Christina here or there, I will not watch Christina anywhere.
Finally, while I hate “Love it or List It”'s formulaic presentation, including the surprise leaky basement and Hillary having to break the bad news to the family that she can’t rehab an entire house for $35,000, I do love Hillary’s designs.
Well I’ll be darned… I do get that channel. I cut the cord over a year ago and have a smart TV which tends to show me my usual (recently viewed) channels. I get about 60 over the air channels and most don’t interest me so I just skip past them. I’ll have to check this one out… Thank you!
Spot-on observations so far, and a real hoot to read as well.
I can’t get over the very young couples with such deep pockets: Couples young enough to be the spawn of parents who were married online.
You see/hear this: The wife, lightly stroking her locks as she says breezily in some “vally-girlish” accent: “Well yaahhh…we’d like to keep it to no more than 950,000 'cause we need to take renovations into consideration”.
I was kind of hoping that when they came out with all the other Flip or Flop knockoff shows in other cities, it meant that would be the last we’d see of those two idiots. They keep popping up on clickbait online, so apparently someone wants to hear them yammer on about their trite personal lives… probably the same people who idolize that Fixer Upper couple with all the shiplap.
… I watch Love It or Leave It while working out at the Y, I think mostly to see if Hillary is ever able to move her eyebrows. It’s disturbingly fascinating. Also, the two hosts actually have chemistry. But I can’t stop watching the Face of Botox.
The pernicious creep of gentrification has brainwashed so many to hold the inveterate view that if some thing or some place is not “upscale” it’s to be sneered at with scowling derision.
There’s a great, absurd SNL skit from last season, I think, when Liev Schrieber hosted and he and Leslie Jones did a hilarious take on House Hunters. Especially man caves.
I used to enjoy HH and it’s spinoffs but eventually got tired of the formula, not to mention all the silliness that you guys have highlighted here. Project shows like This Old House were entertaining and also actually educational. My favorite show that was in between (sort of) was Holmes Inspection. Mike Holmes was a give-no-quarter inspector/engineer(?) who would investigate and then fix problems in people’s homes. Some of the issues he found were mind-blowing and I always enjoyed it when he called the inspectors who missed the problems bad names. (“When we bought the house, our inspector who was recommended by the realtor said everything was good.” LOL!)
My favorite episode was when he was called in to find out why a couple’s family room floor seemed un-level… and discovered that the center support pole in the basement (supporting two floors above it) was under-sized and starting to collapse. That was a terrifying problem, and it was fascinating to watch his team VERY gently jack up the middle of the house in order to install correctly sized supports and matching joists. Must have cost a fortune.
I think I’ll go take a nap.