So often, public broadcasting would turn to underwriting, allowing corporations to pick up the bills in a way that wasn’t directly advertising but served much the same purpose. As the home-improvement show became one of the most popular shows on public television, President Ronald Reagan was aggressively going after public television’s funding, and would often veto bills aimed at increasing that budget during his time in office.įunding challenges like this, often common for public television outlets during conservative presidential administrations, created a natural tension between television created as a public service and the commercial realities of how the bills needed to be paid. In a lot of ways, the issue Vila faced was not unlike the problem that The Disney Channel’s star system was designed to anticipate: He outgrew the franchise that made him famous.īut there were bigger issues at play, issues that cut at the core of PBS’ overall mission to provide quality public programming, and issues that constantly lingered behind the scenes. Anyone getting any Tool Time vibes from this? Why Bob Vila’s ouster from “This Old House” reflects deeper tensions around public television
But Vila? Well, let’s just say things got messy.Ī YouTube clip of Bob Vila and Norm Abram on Late Night With David Letterman. Trethewey and Abram are still with the show after all these years-and the show is still chugging along, like the homes that gained a second life from This Old House’s TLC.
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In one example cited by Morash in a Boston Magazine oral history from 2009, the show’s producers would actively hide the Owens Corning branding on rolls of fiberglass (even though Owens Corning was an underwriter for the show!), which led the manufacturer to change the way the rolls were branded so hiding the detail was unavoidable.ĭuring its first decade of existence, the show, as it highlighted demolitions, touch-ups, and all the headaches that happened in-between, had Vila right at the center as the everyman who explained what was happening as it was happening-with familiar faces like construction pro Tom Silva, Richard Trethewey (the resident plumbing and HVAC expert), and master carpenter Norm Abram helping to see the renovations through to the end. As an educational program focused on a broad niche, This Old House used much the same framework as Child’s show The French Chef and The Victory Garden, a show about gardening that Morash also created.ĭue to its status as a show on public television, the show’s on-air personalities initially went out of their way not to mention brands during the show. Morash’s approach had already drawn one of the most iconic success stories in the history of public television: Julia Child came to prominence through her WGBH-produced cooking show, codeveloped by Morash.
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Vila ended up hosting that show for a full decade, with the show going national in its second year. (They, of course, bought the home for themselves.) This profile earned Vila the notice of the Boston-area public television WGBH, which was looking for someone to host a home-improvement show. Vila and his wife, Diana Barrett, earned a profile in The Boston Globe for the project, which Vila and Barrett personally restored with an eye to keeping its classic qualities intact. Vila Inc., which had won an award from Better Homes and Gardens magazine for fixing up a Victorian house in Newton Center, Massachusetts. Vila stumbled into the job as a result of his home-restoration business R.J. For that you’ll have to turn to an encyclopedia.” Will they solve this or that problem? That’s enough to keep you interested. “We wonder what’s going to happen week to week. “It’s an adventure story,” producer Russell Morash stated at the time of the show’s national expansion in 1980.
Rather than today’s more common HGTV-driven approach of showing a “flip” over the span of an entire episode, the show focused on the process, detail by painstaking detail. This Old House represented an interesting opening salvo in the way home renovation was presented on television.Įvery season, the show would highlight an aging house, and renovate it, step by step, over the span of a number of episodes. (WGBH press photo) How Bob Vila became the face of home repair An image of Bob Vila during the early days of This Old House.
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