Why I love HGTV

I watch a lot of HGTV.  I mean, a LOT.  I’m a TiVo addict, but I will happily watch HGTV live.  It is the only channel I feel this way about.

For those who don’t know, HGTV stands for Home & Garden Television.  The line-up consists of home buying shows, home selling shows, and home renovation shows.  I particularly like the shows that combine the renovation and the selling – shows like Designed to Sell, Get it Sold, and The Unsellables take houses that are sitting on the market and address the problems that keep them from selling – usually on a very tight budget.  I’m always impressed with how the realty agents and designers on these shows need to be tough business people, supportive counselors, and creative problem-solvers, all at the same time.  They take sellers who are often set in their ways and gently but firmly push them to where they need to be.  Sometimes this means convincing them to pack away Grandma’s ugly china, clean up the baby clutter, or repaint the bright orange rooms that they just love.  Other times it means getting them to accept that their asking price is a delusion based on memories of better markets.  Throughout, the shows’ staff just keeps toiling away to make the house better for the seller and for the buyer.  It’s pretty cool to watch families’ lives get changed, one half-hour tv show at a time.

I also watch a lot of the house hunting shows, and from this, have decided that many, many people are insane.  I sometimes find myself talking back to the television, telling people that no one “needs” 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms if they are just one person, or that a 3-month-old baby’s toys should not, in fact, take up 2 entire levels of a house.  In contrast, I find the young Mid-Western house-hunters adorable.  They walk into homes that others would dismiss out of hand (the master bedroom only has one walk-in closet!  there’s only a single vanity in the bathroom!  the appliances aren’t stainless steel!) and they say “Honey!  Look!  The master bedroom has its own bath!  You’ve always talked about how you wanted that one day.  And the closet’s a walk-in!  Can you believe it?  Oh – look in here!  They’re leaving the kitchen appliances – we won’t have to buy any!  Did you ever think we could get all this in one house?”  Such an adorable breath of fresh air, these couples inject some much needed sanity into a sometimes crazy (but oh-so-watchable) set of shows.