HGTV: Stay Numb Everyone
I spend more than an ordinary amount of time in doctors offices. All have a TV of some sort with chairs socially distanced. One of the great COVID results is emptying out doctors offices. But, what I began to notice, prior to COVID, was that doctors office TVs were all set on the same channel, HGTV.
I noticed because I can’t imagine watching at all hours of the day, programs involving the buying, fixing up, and selling of single family homes. Yes, the personalities undertaking these improvement projects are different, but, the premise is the same, hour after hour.
When I asked the phlebotomist why the TV in my oncologist’s office was always tuned to HGTV, he seemed amused while he drained a half-pint of blood from my arm for immediate disposal in the bright red waste can next to me. “Oh, I think it has something to do with them wanting programing with no violence, or sex, or cussing,” he said in Philipino-accented English, followed by a shrug and smile.
A week later The New Yorker arrived including a novella-length article by Ian Parker entitled “Fixer-Upper: In the streaming era, does HGTV need to be more than wallpaper?” (different title online) Many hundreds of words into the piece, Parker mentions Ken Lowe pitching the board at Scripps on a cable channel in 1993, geared mainly for women, as an alternative to the “Jerry Springer” variety of talk shows. Lowe proposed a channel with “no profanity, no violence, no sexual innuendo.”
Ah, there it is. Doctors have been sold on the idea that HGTV provides a calming effect on their patients. Cable and financial news will only serve to rile up their already sick patients. If they read Parker’s piece, they will be just that much more convinced.
Costing only $200,000 per hour to produce, “HGTV is viewing for a hotel room reached late at night,” Parker writes, “or--as [Parker] noticed on a visit one morning a couple years ago--for the windowless breakroom used by N.Y.P.D. detectives in the police station beneath Union Square.”
To further his point, Parker continues, “HGTV is television of recuperation, or respite. Hilary Clinton has said that the network was part of a personal regime undertaking after her defeat in the 2016 Presidential election, noting, ‘I believe this is what some call “self-care.”’” Actor and director Mark Duplass wrote recently, “Would that the afterlife is just a dark, quiet room with all the best HGTV shows playing on a loop.” I wouldn’t presume to believe that HGTV has shows in its lineup that are better than others.
HBO’s Michael Lombardo tells Parker, “I watch ‘House Hunters,” continually. I love ‘Love It or List it.’” Lombardo claims to end his days watching HGTV “It’s relaxing, it’s slightly affirming.”
Affirming? Really? Surely HGTV is only a product of the housing bubble. But which one? The network has been popular and continues to be, no matter the Case-Shiller Index. “Last year, only Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN had larger average audiences, and HGTV outranked all its sibling Discovery channels, including TLC, the Food Network, and Animal Planet,” Parker writes.
While the network was made for women, men get hooked as well, as long as those “well, we have to tear down this wall” portions of a program. Men love to see walls receive the business end of a sledgehammer and some aggressive crowbar work. The HGTV folks call it the demolition segment.
With endless shows available how does HGTV hold up, except as non-threatening background noise? “I become annoyed when they command your attention,” Lombardo said, and laughed. “Is this just all a response to Trump’s four years—you know, P.T.S.D.? Or is this because nobody watches without a phone in their hand?” Don’t give me a complicated story to follow, I’m multitasking with Candy Crush or Tik Tok.
Says the HBO man, “The television revolution was not supposed to end with me and you talking about ‘Home Town’ ”—in which a young married couple in Laurel, Mississippi, does home makeovers—“yet here we are.”
After the network began in 1994, viewer feedback included, ‘I’m “addicted” to this network. I watch it day and night.’ Or ‘I’ll turn it on and just leave it on, like a night-light.’ ”
At the same time, bringing Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” to mind, Lindsey Weidhorn, a former HGTV executive who oversaw “Fixer Upper,” approvingly told Country Living that the network was “like Xanax.”
“I love doing this, because ninety-five per cent of the people who are participating are celebrating one of the best days of their life,” Loren Ruch, who is HGTV’s senior vice-president of development and production, said. “They find a new house! Or they’re fixing up an existing house. They’re selling a house, moving on. You’re proud to have your name in the credits.”
Count me in the five percent who would consider moving into or fixing up a house as one of my worst days.
But, if there was no speculative fervor in the housing market, in others words, houses went back to being just somewhere to live, not the average person’s primary store of wealth, would viewers keep their eyes glued to “The Property Brothers,” or “Restored by the Fords”?
In 2009 Time magazine listed Burton Jablin as one of the 25 people we should blame for the 2008 housing crash. Poor guy. He simply was, according to Time,
The programming czar at Scripps Networks, which owns HGTV and other lifestyle channels [Scripps has since been purchased by Discovery], helped inflate the real estate bubble by teaching viewers how to extract value from their homes. Programs like Designed to Sell, House Hunters and My House Is Worth What? developed loyal audiences, giving the housing game glamour and gusto.
Since the ‘08 crash, HGTV has pulled back from “dramas of flipping, which climax in a renovated house that’s ready to be shown to new buyers, at a price that brings a profit.”
Discovery sees the end of cable coming and has loaded all of the HGTV content onto Discovery+ available for you to stream and binge to your heart's content. Parker quotes an executive who believes, “the appeal of Discovery+ would be less ‘Everyone’s talking about “The Queen’s Gambit,” ‘ and more “That’s a lot of great shit I love.”
So far so good, “Subscribers have since found their way to more than fifty thousand of the fifty-five thousand hours of programming available.”
Stay numb everyone.
