This Old House
This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2017) |
This Old House | |
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Created by | Russell Morash (through WGBH-TV) |
Presented by |
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Starring |
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Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 44 |
No. of episodes | 1,136 (as of June 22, 2023) ( Inside This Old House, The New Yankee Workshop |
This Old House is an American
Boston PBS station
In 2016, Time Inc. sold This Old House Ventures to executive Eric Thorkilsen and private equity firm TZP Growth Partners (although it continued to have a special partnership deal with its former parent company).[5][6] On March 19, 2021, Roku acquired This Old House Ventures.[7]
Overview
This Old House and its sister series Ask This Old House are often broadcast together as The This Old House Hour, which was originally known as The New This Old House Hour. Both shows are owned by This Old House Ventures, Inc. and are underwritten by
Two of the original underwriters were
The third series to share the name is Inside This Old House, a retrospective featuring highlights from previous episodes. Old episodes are also shown under the program name This Old House Classics and were formerly shown on
This Old House was one of the earliest home improvement shows on national television. As such, it was initially controversial among building contractors, and some cast members were afraid that they were giving away secrets of the building trades.[9] As time passed the show grew into a cultural icon, and producer-director Russell Morash became known as the "Father of How-To".[10]
History
Begun in 1979 as a one-time, thirteen-part series airing on WGBH, This Old House has grown into one of the most popular programs on the network. It has produced spin-offs (notably The New Yankee Workshop hosted by Norm Abram), a magazine, and for-profit websites. The show has won seventeen Emmy Awards and received 82 nominations.
Although WGBH acquired the first two project houses (6 Percival Street in
Vila left This Old House in 1989 following a dispute over his doing commercials, and he created a similar show called Bob Vila's Home Again. According to news reporter Barbara Beck, Vila was fired by
Steve Thomas took over hosting duties after Vila's departure, remaining with the program until 2003. Cast members later complained that Vila took up too much screen time for himself, and noted that the show became more of an ensemble production after he left.[12]
Since 2003,
Beginning with the 2007–08 season, This Old House and Ask This Old House are presented in a high-definition television format.
To celebrate its 30th anniversary season, This Old House worked with Nuestra Comunidad to renovate a foreclosed home in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. Nuestra Comunidad is a non-profit development corporation that acquired this 1870s-era Second Empire style home from a bank foreclosure.
In 2016, Time Inc. sold This Old House to a joint venture operating as This Old House Ventures, LLC.[6]
To celebrate the 40th season in 2019, a retrospective and revisit of some of the more-notable projects were incorporated into a handful of episodes, with some of the original homeowners providing tours. The first house highlighted was the original 1979 project house in Dorchester.
On March 19, 2021, TZP Growth Partners completed the sale of This Old House Ventures to Roku. All 1,500 episodes of Ask This Old House and This Old House will be made available to owners of Roku streaming products free with ads, and through their dedicated 24/7 Streaming TV channel.[7] PBS will still have rights to air episodes on their platforms.
Theme music
Title | Artist | Composer(s) | Years in use |
---|---|---|---|
Louisiana Fairy Tale | Fats Waller | Coots |
1979–2002[13][14] |
This Old House '97 | not credited | Peter Bell | 2002–2011[14] |
Untitled | not credited | Bill Janovitz | 2012–2021[15] |
Untitled | not credited | Jordan Critz | 2021–present[16] |
Ask This Old House
In 2002, Time Inc. created a spinoff of This Old House entitled Ask This Old House. The show was inspired by a similar feature in This Old House Magazine. It takes place in "the
Magazine readers or show viewers submit home repair or improvement questions to the four regulars, who sometimes also invite guest experts to answer more-specialized questions. Most of the questions are answered in the home-base loft, but one or two homeowners in each episode receive an on-site visit from one of the show's hosts. The visiting host assists in starting or completing the task with the homeowners' hands-on participation. Over the course of several seasons, at least one of the traveling team members has been featured in a segment in each of the 50 US states.
Ask This Old House had a program segment called "What Is It?".[when?] In this segment, three of the four regulars would offer humorous guesses as to the function of an unusual tool or device, before the fourth regular would reveal its actual use. The segment was so popular that it would sometimes feature notable celebrity guests such as Jimmy Fallon, Nick Offerman, and Richard Mastracchio, the latter of whom broadcast from space.[18] Beginning with the 2007–08 season, Ask This Old House added a "Useful Tip" segment provided by a viewer of the show; this is a revival of a short-lived feature of This Old House when Bob Vila hosted the show. Another occasional feature is "Home Inspection Nightmares", in which viewer-submitted photographs of badly-made or deteriorated home installations are shown and commented on by the hosts.
The opening sequence of Ask This Old House consisted of a GMC van towing the dark-blue Ask This Old House trailer from around Massachusetts before reaching the barn at the end. The 25-second version of the opening sequence showed Tom Silva, as passenger, picking up four coffees from a drive-through. The original version had Steve Thomas as the driver. The 40-second version of the opening sequence showed Kevin O'Connor as the driver. In both versions, after the van pulls into the barn driveway, the footage cuts to Richard Trethewey handing out the coffees to the other three regulars. The original opening sequence has since been modified, and still shows the travels of the small trailer which has the Ask This Old House logo prominently displayed.
Ask This Old House has been nominated for five
This Old House magazine
This Old House magazine was first published in 1995[19][20] by Time Inc. and discontinued in 2024. Published eight times per year,[21] the magazine has a circulation of over 950,000 and reaches nearly 6 million consumers each month. Nathan Stamos[22] is the publisher. As of April 1, 2016[update], Susan Wyland, best known for her tenure on Time Inc.'s Real Simple magazine, became the magazine's editor in chief, replacing Scott Omelianuk, who had been editor for 12 years.[23]
ThisOldHouse.com is the brand's website and features how-to projects and inspiration and tips for homeowners. The website also serves as the online destination for the television show and includes bios on the cast, information on all of the home projects, and live webcams of the current house projects.
Inside This Old House
A short-lived spin-off of the This Old House franchise, Inside This Old House was shown primarily on the
This Old House: Trade School
In 2017,
Episodes
Personnel
Current cast
As of 2022,[24] the cast is as follows:
- Kevin O'Connor (host)
- Tom Silva (general contractor)
- Richard Trethewey (plumbing and heating expert)
- Jenn Nawada (landscape contractor)
- Mauro Henrique (painter)
- Mark McCullough (mason)
- Heath Eastman (electrician)
- Charlie Silva (home builder)
- Ross Trethewey (building engineer)
Former cast
- Norm Abram (master carpenter, 1979–2022[25])
- Roger Cook (landscape contractor, 1988–2020[2])
- Steve Thomas (host, 1989–2003[26])
- Bob Vila (host, 1979–1988[27])
Hosts
The first host of This Old House was designer-builder and remodeling expert Bob Vila. He hosted the program from 1979 to 1989, when he left This Old House to become a spokesman for
For the original program, Vila was followed by Steve Thomas, who hosted from 1989 to 2003. In 2003, Thomas left the show and was replaced by current host Kevin O'Connor.
In popular culture
Like many successful programs, This Old House has found its way into the humorist's eye on occasion. The most famous example is Tool Time, the "show-within-a-show" on the American television situation comedy
HBO's Hardcore TV parodied This Old House as "This Old Whore House", "This Old House of Style", and "This Old House Party". Bill Nye the Science Guy parodied the show as "This Old Brain", as well as "This Old Climate"; both featured Pat Cashman as Bob Liam. Nick at Nite's On the Television parodied the show as "This Old Backyard".
In 1985, PBS produced its own parody of This Old House titled "This Old Shack", which featured "Bob Villa" and master carpenter "Paul Thumbs" in a three-part rehab in Arlington. In the seventh season of the second series of
In 1988, John Larroquette portrayed Bob Vila on the NBC late-night sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live in a parody of This Old House with homeowners Tom (Kevin Nealon) and Peggy McGuinness (Victoria Jackson) in which he rehabilitates an 1865 Victorian farmhouse to have load-bearing walls that sweat blood. Another SNL sketch shows Phil Hartman portraying a robot named XG-7000 who hosts a PBS show called "Robot Repair", where he shows the viewers how to repair a variety of things, like a grandfather clock. The robot objects to the title, saying that it misleadingly implies that robots are in need of repair, rather than doing the repairs, and asks the producer to change it. For the next several weeks, the show's name changes, to equally, if not increasingly, misleading titles, such as "Robot Repair and You", "Explaining Robots", and "Let's Fix, Robots", much to XG-7000's increasing frustration, eventually to the point where he's considering harming the producer, even though his programming prevents him from doing so. Finally, after the title is changed to "This Old Robot", XG-7000 experiences a complete meltdown, and storms off the set to kill the producer. The sketch would end with FOX show called "Fugitive Robots", (parody of America's Most Wanted), where an FBI agent (played by Jon Lovitz) remarked that XG-7000 was now wanted for the brutal murder of said producer, and he identified the show as "Robot Restoration" which was supposedly about how to fix robots. The skit ends with the text reading onscreen: "Fugitive Robots, previously known as Robot Apprehension".
Fox's long-running sketch comedy show Mad TV did a parody called "This Cold House". Fox's In Living Color parodied This Old House as "This Ol' Box". Damon Wayans portrayed a homeless person named Anton Jackson, who talks about renovating a large cardboard box where he lived.
In the mid-1980s, a special on PBS station WTTW-Chicago starring Jim Belushi ostensibly showcasing three pilots for potential new programs featured Belushi as "Bobby Viola," the host of a parody titled "This Old Car." [1]
References
- ^ Cristantiello, Ross (May 24, 2022). "'This Old House' legend Norm Abram set to retire". The Boston Globe. Retrieved June 10, 2023.
- ^ a b Jimmy Fallon; Kevin O'Connor (January 7, 2020). Ask This Old House Experts Show Jimmy How to Survive Winter at Home. NBC. Event occurs at 0:21–0:43 (21 seconds to 43 seconds). Retrieved January 8, 2020.
- ^ "History of This Old House". This Old House. January 18, 2020.
- ^ Sefton, Dru (June 26, 2019). "'This Old House' moves from presenter WGBH to WETA". Current.
- ^ Lieberman, David (April 1, 2016). "Time Inc. Sells 'This Old House' To Eric Thorkilsen, Who Created The Franchise". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved May 14, 2016.
- ^ Advertising Age. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
- ^ a b Spangler, Todd (March 19, 2021). "Roku Acquires 'This Old House' Business, Including 1,500-Episode Library". Variety. Retrieved March 20, 2021.
- ^ a b Beck, Barbara (April 4, 1989). "Was 'This Old House' host fired for wrong commercial endorsements?". The Modesto Bee. Retrieved March 25, 2010.[permanent dead link]
- ^ Storrs, Francis (February 2009). "This Old House: An Oral History". Boston.
- ^ Collins, Geneva (June 23, 1997). "Russell Morash: This old Yankee leads a guerrilla crew". Current. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-5254-7670-2. Retrieved June 10, 2023.
- ^ Sharpsteen, Bill (June 22, 1997). "If I Were a Carpenter". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ Ahr, Thomas E. (January 1992). "Show and Tell". Cincinnati: 27.
- ^ a b "FAQs". This Old House. Archived from the original on November 29, 2011. Retrieved March 17, 2023.
- ^ Shanahan, Mark; Goldstein, Meredith (October 2, 2012). "'This Old House' has new song by Bill Janovitz". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on November 20, 2012. Retrieved March 17, 2023.
- ^ This Old House: Masonry Lessons Season 43 Episode 07 (streaming). This Old House Productions, LLC. November 11, 2021. Event occurs at 23:28. Retrieved March 17, 2023.
- ^ "A Letter from Roger Cook". This Old House. June 2018. Archived from the original on April 29, 2019. Retrieved June 10, 2023.
- ^ Celebrating 20 Years | What Is It? | Ask This Old House. YouTube. This Old House. August 7, 2022. Retrieved September 30, 2023.
- S2CID 220292393.
- ^ "Top 100 U.S. Magazines by Circulation" (PDF). PSA Research Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 15, 2016. Retrieved June 4, 2016.
- ^ "Our Products". This Old House. August 26, 2016. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
- ^ O'Shea, Chris (June 5, 2013). "Nathan Stamos Named This Old House Publisher". FishbowlNY. Retrieved January 23, 2014.
- ^ Steinberg, Brian (April 1, 2016). "Time Inc. Sells 'This Old House' To New Owner". Variety. Retrieved July 26, 2017.
- ^ This Old House: Atlanta Postmaster's House Season 44 Episode 01 (streaming). This Old House Productions, LLC. September 29, 2022. Event occurs at 23:42. Retrieved October 4, 2022.
- ^ "This Old House® To Air Tribute Special to Master Carpenter and Television Trailblazer, Norm Abram". This Old House. 19 May 2022. Archived from the original on 5 July 2022. Retrieved 7 September 2022.
- ^ De Vries, Hilary (September 11, 2003). "For This Old Program, An All-Thumbs Host". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 4, 2022. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
- ^ Clark, Kenneth R. (April 1, 1989). "'This Old House' Host Keeps His Ads, Loses Job". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on October 4, 2022. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
External links
- Official website
- This Old House at IMDb
- Ask This Old House at IMDb