HGTV Eco-Extreme: Precious Edition

Gracious Producers,

HGTV has thrived for over twenty-five years with programs based upon the simplistic premise that every house in the US of A demands to be gutted, open-flowed, and subsequently trimmed out with rustic mantels, pickled floors, and media centers. Not to mention granite. Madagascar-size islands of granite. Your formula is genius: product placement that scratches the itch that every one of us still slumming in the doldrums of 2019’s Color of the Year. What was Metropolitan, really? At best: timid taupe. In reality: drab grey. Three years on, it’s so boring everyone in America pines to repaint. But I digress.

What HGTV needs is a fresh formula. A rebuttal to those astronomically profitable shows rutted in the identical plotline: churn our yearn for excitement into a crave for interior glitz that leads (inevitably) to demolition to create space, space, space for a bunch of new stuff, stuff, stuff so when the reveal unfolds, the wife cry tears of joy. Everything — except her blotchy face — looks fabulous as the camera pans.

HGTV should consider diversifying into that miniscule market niche of non-consumers. The contra-demographic. The sustainability audience aching for a net-zero dream.

Everything about Eco-Extreme flips the successful HGTV formula on its head. Start with the hosts. Forget another burly builder-type with a massive beard with his petite, bubbly designer wife. The hosts of Eco-Extreme will be Luis and Maria, the Fix-it gurus from Sesame Street…