'Home Diagnosis' Finally Puts Home Performance Testing on Mainstream TV
Corbett Lunsford
Grace and I have been trying to make a TV show about home performance testing for years- we've tried three times so far! This is how it works traditionally:
- You get a network executive to want to see you as a couple onscreen because they think you're quirky or weird or otherwise compelling in a I-can't-look-away kind of way
- You work with a production company and pay out of your own pocket to shoot a 'sizzle reel' that shows off the personality of the hosts
- You remind yourself and everyone else that your show is about SCIENCE, not about relationship drama and being quirky or weird
- They remind you that no one cares about the topic in reality TV
- You feel frustrated and you throw the whole idea in the garbage because you don't want to play their stupid game
So we've decided to make the show ourselves, without asking anyone's permission. We find that works best for us- whether self-publishing a book (Home Performance Diagnostics) or making a feature film (The Other One), it always seems to work perfectly when we don't have someone breathing down our neck to conform to 'the way things get done around here normally.' Here's the show that will actually make it onto mainstream television: HOME DIAGNOSIS.
In 2014, we pushed hard for a show called PRESCRIPTION HOME PERFORMANCE to get made, but it went exactly nowhere. We went to the national RealScreen Summit, a non-fiction television programming conference (yeah, I know!), met with all kinds of networks to pitch the idea, and finally had Science Channel interested until they finally said, "wait, we don't want to compete with HGTV." And that was that. But you can still see what the show was like here:
And way back in 2009, we worked with our friends and client Sandy Gordon to make OUR GREEN COMPANY, which resulted in all of us being told by the Discovery Green channel that 'green' was a fad. Look at these kids- so young, so fresh, and maybe clueless!
Stay tuned for developments on HOME DIAGNOSIS- at the very least, it'll show on PBS just like This Old House does, and at most, it'll be running 24 hours a day on every channel there is. Probably it'll be somewhere in between!
If you'd like to participate in the making of this show, please reach out to us about it!