Posted on: Friday, January 7, 2005
Renovation show sparks ABC spinoff
By Rachel Kipp
Gannett News Service
Until last summer, 6-year-old Hannah Grinnan could only watch as her brothers and sisters swam in the pool at her family's home in Redlands, Calif. Medication she takes for a heart condition causes her skin to be sensitive and easily irritated by chlorine.
Bob D’Amico • ABC This weekend, a widow and her three children who lost their house in a fire get a new, well-outfitted home.
Beginning Monday, fantastic turnarounds like those experienced by these families will be put into context with a new spinoff that tries to answer a question on the lips of viewers: How'd they do that? The program is the latest in a string of behind-the-scenes offerings from makeover shows.
The Grinnan's redo came complete with a high-tech air filtration system, counters and other surfaces that don't hold dust mites or germs, and a pool Hannah could use safely. Cathy and Bill Grinnan are still trying to get used to the idea the house really belongs to them.
• 'Home Edition: How'd They Do That?' • 'Home Edition' Network execs also hope that "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: How'd They Do That?" will bring in ratings similar to "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." The spinoff is not likely to do as well as the original, but both feed into the public's appetite for home makeovers infused with suspense factors, says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.
"Most of the people watching it in fact don't have any intention of actually making over a room or doing anything other than maybe changing a light fixture or calling a contractor," he says.
"Makeovers become a type of compelling drama. ... There's all this interest in the people and the lives that it affected and how they feel about it afterward and how exactly did they get it done and all these other details."
Designed as a complement to the Sunday program, "How'd They Do That?" will include how-to hints for viewers and peaks at the challenges faced by volunteer-heavy makeover teams.
"I think viewers see a ton of people running around in blue shirts, so they know we get a ton of help, but they're not sure who they are and what they are doing," Forman says. "This is a chance to say 'The plumbing team really wrestled with a sewer pipe problem.' Now we can tell about the guy who stayed up three nights in a row to fix it."
Other home makeover programs will join "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in branching out this year.
"Trading Spaces" designer Genevieve Gorder will redesign the small upstate New York town of Jeffersonville on "Town Haul" (premieres Jan. 22 on TLC). Her "TS" cohort Douglas Wilson will host "Moving Up" (premiering Jan. 29), which follows the housing journey of three families.
"Couple A moves into the home of couple B, B moves into C and C moves on," explains Michael Klein, interim vice president of production for TLC. "They come in and renovate the spaces to reflect their lifestyles and then we take each prospective couple back to their old house to see how it's changed."
Nowadays, however, Hannah's medication load is lower and her pool time is only diminished by the weather, thanks to a high-tech alteration of her home by the folks of ABC's "Extreme Makeover," which shows at 7 p.m. each Sunday.
"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: How'd They Do That?" will show how homes for needy families are rebuilt. Constance Ramos, Michael Moloney, Ty Pennington, Paul DiMeo, Tracy Hutson and Preston Sharp star.
"I think we just realized how much great stuff we weren't getting to air," "Home Edition" executive producer Tom Forman says. "We were just squeezing out the middle of the show, which was the process and the things our designers built, and we felt that was worthy of a show of its own."
'EXTREME MAKEOVER'
Series debut, 7 p.m., Monday
7 p.m. Sundays, ABC
