I’m actually surprised it took so long for Antiques Roadshow clones to get popular. From what I’ve seen, Antiques Roadshow is super popular in America and the UK and people from all walks of life enjoy it. I’m a boring midwestern girl with not a stitch of antique anything in my family and I will watch it any time it’s on. Almost everyone I know would admit to watching and enjoying the show.
In fact, PBS started running promos for Antiques Roadshow a few years back, showing all sorts of people sitting around trying to guess prices while watching Roadshow. It was one of those commercials you’d see and think “that is so true!”
Shortly after that, I think, is when all these other shows started popping up. Seems like PBS had to admit out loud that Antiques Roadshow is one hell of a popular show then all of these other networks said “oh yeah, we want one too!”
I also wonder how these sorts of shows are related to the popularity of the shows like Clean Sweep and Clean House where people come in and make you get rid of all your junk. Makes me wonder if the viewing audience wasn’t all “no, don’t throw that shit away! You can make MONEY!” (generally not true) and producers decided to start homing in on the money-for-stuff angle as well.
Don’t forget to mute when the information on the beautiful city of Harrisburg comes on.
I felt the same way as the OP when I first heard about Tabatha’s Salon Takeover on Bravo. It’s just one show but it seemed such a bizarre concept. Coming in to take over and help fix a terrible restaurant makes sense because cooking shows are pretty popular…but a hair salon? I got surprisingly sucked into watching an episode this week, though.
Yeah, and I’m not sure I’d put *Hardcore Pawn *in with Antiques Roadshow. *Pawn Stars *is kind of the bridge between the two, and actually does represent a pretty creative bricolage of old and new ideas. Much of Antiques Roadshow is built around people who either have been able to keep family heirlooms around for generations or folks who scour flea markets and finally find that one gem that will net them a substantial profit. *Pawn Stars *took the “how much is it worth” meme and transplanted it to a more “everyman” venue where EVERYTHING is fair game–antiques, firearms, art, memorabilia, the whole schmear. Then they added the occasional history lesson on top of it (which is often faulty, BTW–*Pawn Stars *is somewhere south of Wikipedia when assessing accuracy). It’s a fun show, mixing good parts from Antiques Roadshow, Mythbusters (when Rick gets an interesting gun in, he has to fire it), and a dash of Springer’s “WTH are they thinking?” appeal.
The folks who make Hardcore Pawn saw that and thought, correctly, that pawn shops don’t work like that. People don’t pawn really interesting stuff very often; in the real world, that stuff goes on eBay (though I can give Rick and the crew a little latitude since they’re in Vegas–I’m glad they don’t show what folks eventually do with the money) and pawn shops content themselves with an unending flow of jewelry and small electronics. Hardcore Pawn is *Pawn Stars *for the Cops audience–the middlebrow thrill of the appraisal has been replaced by the lowbrow thrill of sleazy pawnbrokers throwing unruly Detroiters out of their store. It’s as interesting as counting car accidents on the first snowy day.
Maybe. Actually I think I was probably conflating two things there: people who were getting low-ball offers, and people who were getting fair “market” offers for things that I didn’t think should be sold at such a price, since–for me–the intangible value would be much greater.
I’ve been watching Antiques Roadshow for years. For me, the entertainment value is watching granny’s expression when she finds out that the Chinese cat blender her husband bought back fro’ t’ war is worth more than her lifetime income.
And the obligatory, “oh, I’d never sell it” when she regains her composure.
I’ve always enjoyed the contrast between the British and American versions of Roadshow, not only in the items brought in but in the reactions.
On the British version, you have people bringing in Roman urns and ancient Celtic torcs that they dug up out of their back garden. I haven’t really ever seen anything older than about 200 years on the American version.
On the British version, astronomical values are met with “Ah…bit of a nest egg, in’nt it?” On the American version people’s eyes pop and they all but scream when it’s worth anything over $1000.
Yeah, they are loosely related within the genre, but I’m talking about reality shows based upon things being bought and sold. Antiques Roadshow inspired Pawn Stars. Then TruTV ripped off Pawn Stars with Hardcore Pawn. Hardcore Pawn is a hunk of crud but you can’t deny that it was produced just because Pawn Stars was a hit.
According to the grandson, Pawn Stars was created because a TV producer was in Las Vegas and saw the shop and liked it. He decided to do the show because he wanted a reason to make trips to Vegas.
Oh, absolutely. *Hardcore Pawn *basically takes the elements that Pawn Stars does not have in common with *Antiques Roadshow *and fills them out with probably the most blatant selections of ethnic profiling on television. *Pawn Stars *links AR and HP, but the two don’t resemble each other in isolation. There’s very little appraisal in Hardcore Pawn–they have their customers over a barrel and take full advantage of that. It’s like Cops, but without the good guys.
Now there’s a story that always provokes schadenfreude.
I’m so burnt out on the commercialism that we are constantly bombarded with that my take on these shows is that they are primer to keep our acquisitive society constantly wanting something more, something new. How else can we keep the economy afloat?
Wasn’t there a Doper who lived in the UK who would quip about us Yanks something like “I have furniture that’s older than your country.”?
To describe much of the North American continent as sparsely populated through history would be kind, so there are hundreds of thousands of square miles that just won’t have any significant artifacts in the earth. Even today, Montana’s pretty desolate. Most likely, if there’s anything there, it was dropped by someone passing through on the way to somewhere else.
