Press Clippings
Current Magazine - June 13, 2005
How-to Producers Have 3 Big KISSes for Saturdays
By Geneva Collin
Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss, but this season it can be an acronym for Keep It Simple, Stupid, even in the dayparts where This Old House is getting decked out with a state-of-the-art media room.
The simplicity movement has clearly become a pubcasting trend, with one show about life in the slower lane now shooting its second season (SIMPLE LIVING WITH WANDA URBANSKA), another slated to debut in October (Real Simple), and a third launched in January that applies the no-frills, no-fuss approach to cooking (Everyday Food).
SIMPLE LIVING WITH WANDA URBANSKA debuted in July 2004 after Urbanska’s four-year grassroots campaign for production funds. Author of a book by the same name and host of the 1998 PBS special Escape from Affluenza, Urbanska was not deterred when big foundations turned down her neophyte production company. She turned to her neighbors in tiny Mount Airy, N.C. to collect cash in two-, three- and four-figure sums. Talk about social capital: Urbanska eventually raised $150,000 that was used as seed money to qualify for grants and fund the first five shows. Smead Manufacturing Co., a Minnesota-based maker of office filing supplies, eventually stepped in to underwrite three more episodes as well as the second season.
The magazine-style show has a decidedly low-tech look that befits a series created on a $550,000 budget, but the lack of flashy production values is perfectly in sync with the show’s message of paring down and making do. In one segment, Urbanska goes shopping and holds up a pair of $120 chic black shoes, noting that it would take the typical $15-an-hour worker eight hours to pay for the purchase.
“Before you make that next purchase, do the math on how much time or life energy it’s going to cost you,” she tells viewers. “A simple equation for the simple equation for the simple life: less stuff equals less money to earn equals less work equals more time.”
Urbanska provides viewers with tips for instituting small changes (by carrying a travel mug everywhere for the past 20 years she has kept more than 7,000 disposable cups out of landfills, she estimates) and interviews experts on big-picture activism: the advantages of building a community , supporting mass transit, embarking on long-term financial planning.
The show has aired (or will soon) on stations that cover 84 percent of U.S. households, according to its distributor, Executive Program Services.
“People are looking for answers to our frenetic time-starved, thing-cluttered lifestyles,” said Urbanska in explaining the show’s appeal.
Highlights of the second series, to be ready for fall, include tracing family roots and simple travel (with segments filmed in Poland, Denmark and Sweden), and an interview with former President Carter.
The newer series, Real Simple, if it adapts the polished look of its lush namesake magazine, will probably not speak directly to $15-an-hour wage earners. The show, produced by WGBH, Boston, is part of an orchestrated branding effort that Time Inc. conceived when the magazine debuted in 2000. Real Simple now boasts 4.5 million readers.
The show’s description by WGBH publicist Dustin Smith suggests it will be more tip-oriented and less environmentally centered and idiosyncratic than Urbanska’s program: “It will be about tackling day-to-day activities more effectively to eke out more time to spend with the family and on yourself. There will be cooking tips and recipes, some home makeovers, decorating, entertaining, and gift-giving tips.” Although Real Simple editors will appear in the 26 episodes, three broadcast pros, Brooke Alexander, Rob Keefe and Cydnee Welburn, share hosting duties.
Everyday Food is also a magazine spin-off produced by Martha Stewart Living Television in association with WETA. Washington, D.C. The Martha-less program, which began in January, has five hosts who all worked in Stewart’s test kitchens. Although all five have serious culinary chops, they like to play up their off-camera lives as working moms and dads. In one segment, salad dressing is shaken in a jar instead of whisked in a bowl; a salad is unapologetically prepared from cans of tuna.
The show is not shot in Martha’s studio kitchen in Greenwich, Conn., but in the nearby prep kitchen that’s usually behind the scenes for her TV shows. Whereas most cooking shows appear to come from a home kitchen, this one strips away one layer of artifice, showing the five hosts maneuvering around multiple stovetops and industrial steel sinks.
“They didn’t build a set for this show. It becomes very crowded during shooting because it wasn’t created for TV,” said John Potthast, WETA project executive.
Everyday Food stands out from other culinary offerings because “there are all cooks, not restaurant chefs,” he said. “This is about getting a nutritious and quick dinner on the table five, seven nights a week.”
Potthast met with Martha Stewart TV execs last week but was mum on whether a second season was greenlighted.
The magazine Everyday Food is a supermarket-distributed digest-size publication that launched in fall 2003, before Stewart’s legal troubles. Its family-friendly recipes take 30 minutes or less to prepare and use widely available ingredients. The show’s dishes follow similar guidelines.