Real estate show on fire by Claudia Sonea

HGTV, Fine Living, Discovery Home, A&E and TLC are just some of the networks broadcasting real estate shows. If you are tired of seeing the old sign "For Sale'' that is spread all over the town (and not only) and hearing on TV how bad the market is right now, then switch the channel and watch!a real estate show. For fun, for future investment or just to get some new tips on how you could improve your house and make it more appealing. It doesn't cost you a thing to dream, after all that is why you pay the cable every month. When everything goes bad, all that remains is hoping and entertaining. Therefore for most US residents house flipping, home renovation programs are very attractive. For example Jim Samples, HGTV president, says that life still goes on and people feel the need to nest as their families increase, they change their jobs, and so on and so forth. HGTV is preparing itself with new real estate shows like "House Hunters," "My First Place," "Hidden Potential," "Buy Me" and "Design to Sell" and on 29 February they did a special day with the theme of investing in a first house. It is clearly that after being built on shows on crafts and landscaping, now HGTV has as main objective: the house. Another broadcaster is A&E Network with "Flip This House" that is different from TLC's show and will premier Saturday night, "Date My House" that allows potential buyers to spend a night in a home for sale and that is presented by "Bachelor" Bob Guiney. Its rival TLC which introduced this with "Trading Spaces" announced that "Flip That House" will renew with teams in Atlanta and Los Angeles joining "flippers" from San Antonio and New Haven for its fourth season. Also Brant Pinvidic, TLC's senior vice president of programming said the show will focus more on the economy and will tell the truth about each investor and his/hers results, because their plan is to help people in making their houses appealing and livable, more valuable. The market's situation made people interested in what they have and how they can do the most of it, nevertheless Robert Sharenow, senior vice president for alternative programming at A&E, thinks that these shows might induce a false sense of security. But the good ones might also help to increase the values of houses with home made projects. Until now "House Hunters" by having almost a million viewers per episode seems to offer people just what they need and "Flip This House" with 802,000 viewers per episode has the same status. Who cares why people watch them, when there is so much trouble in US economy, let them dream and relax however they please, it cannot harm them.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080309/ap_en_tv/ap_on_tv_flipping_houses;_ylt=AoA.e.1OxtBOwhwcVhneQyms0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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