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Maybe the TV producers of existing shows, or some new show will read our ideas and give us genealogy people a show we'll love!
We've had three (that I know of) genealogy TV shows: Who Do You Think You Are? Finding Your Roots Genealogy Roadshow
They each have pluses and minuses.
The most successful (meaning longest lasting and most viewed) of these shows has been WDYTYA. In the US, it started off on network TV, then moved to TLC. To me, the worst things about the show, which don't appeal to me, are:
1. The focus on celebrities. I frankly have zero interest in celebrities. That's not what makes me watch the show. I'm interested in the ancestry stories.
2. The expensive unnecessary travel. They seem to do way too much traveling which is just gratuitous and not necessary to the info being presented. For example, Tom Bergeron going to France WAS relevant. He obtained info there that was only available in French archives, plus, it was important for us to see the walled city of La Rochelle that had gone through a siege in the 17th century. But it was completely unnecessary for Jesse Tyler Ferguson to go all the way to Alaska, just to read some news articles from Newspapers.com and read some letters that were published online, about his ancestor who left Alaska shortly after arriving.
3. Too few episodes in a season. To me, problem #3 could be solved by addressing problems #1 and #2. Spend less money on celebrities, airfare and hotels, and make MORE EPISODES.
4. Too many episodes that are just about one ancestor. I like when multiple ancestors are discussed, from multiple generations or family lines.
Finding Your Roots also focuses on celebrities, and has a second problem (for many of us) in that the stories are often slanted to promote Gate's own political agenda. There was a little too much tsking-tsking, indignation, and mock-indignation about people who were products of the times and places they lived in. The good things about FYR include a lot of background info on the historical periods being presented, and the use of DNA testing to augment and enhance the genealogical info already found. Oh, and no commercials! Another thing I don't really like is that this show includes almost zero "work," meaning the info is presented to the celebrity already completed. Ta-da! Here's your genealogy information all wrapped up with a pretty bow! I'd like to see more of the actual research as it's happening, or at least "recreations" of the research, which I'm sure is true of WDYTYA when they try to make it look like they're looking something up.
Genealogy Roadshow started off pretty rough, with a creepy unnecessary host that they thankfully got rid of in the second season. What I like about GR is the focus on ordinary people instead of celebrities, and the variety of stories presented in one episode. But that second strength also becomes a weakness at times, when they only spend a couple of minutes on a very interesting story and they have to quickly move on to the next. It's also a bit of a fraudulent presentation, calling it "roadshow" and having hoards of people walking around. It's not like Antiques Roadshow where ordinary people can buy tickets, wait in lines, have their items reviewed by an expert, and if it's interesting, get on TV. I don't know what all those people in the background of GR are doing with all that milling around, but no one is walking up to a table and getting "cold" research done for them by an expert. The people chosen to have research done are chosen months before the show is filmed, from packets they send in, including family history info and a headshot to see how TV-suitable they are.
So here are my suggestions for my idea genealogy TV show:
1. No celebrities. Maybe once in a great while you can have a celebrity guest, but they don't get any special treatment.
2. Include more about how the research was done, how the info was found. Give the viewers "tips." Show up what online source was used, tell us what exactly we might find in a county courthouse, a state historical society, or a library.
3. No political agendas or judgmental tongue-clicking at ancestors who were the products of the times in which they lived.
4. Include information on multiple ancestors, not just one.
5. Show the diagrams/images of the "trees" more often, to give us reminders of where we're at on the person's tree and how the people fit together.
6. Only travel when it's integral to the information being presented.
7. Have one (non-famous) guest portrayed, with a lot of his/her ancestors, but maybe at the end of the show for the last 5 minutes, have one mystery or brick wall get solved for a lucky viewer who writes in.
Agree. The thing that I don't like about the genealogy TV shows is that the "experts" just present the data to the famous person without showing the hard work that went into finding that data.
How about a show where we see an average genealogist taking months to find one name on the census because their name was totally misspelled. Now that would be reality TV. LOL
Personally I would divide it into two different types of shows:
1) Ancestral Discovery
A show just focusing on showing someone's ancestry, going to places those ancestors lived, learning new information about them, learning the historical context, pictures, documents, etc.
Basically for me Finding Your Roots is practically perfect in my opinion. Your negative isn't a negative to me, to me it's fully embracing the historical context (you pretty much can't properly look at American history without facing race and the civil war, unless you skip over it or focus after it, I mean our nation split in two and killed more of ourselves than in any other war before or since kind of a big deal).
2) Genealogy
Focus on the genealogy, the research, the discoveries, techniques to help discover it etc. This could even be filmed based on show #1 but as a companion series or follow up episodes etc.
I think those can be combined into a single show though I'd be fine with them being separate shows.
So here are my suggestions for my idea genealogy TV show:
1. No celebrities. Maybe once in a great while you can have a celebrity guest, but they don't get any special treatment.
2. Include more about how the research was done, how the info was found. Give the viewers "tips." Show up what online source was used, tell us what exactly we might find in a county courthouse, a state historical society, or a library.
3. No political agendas or judgmental tongue-clicking at ancestors who were the products of the times in which they lived.
4. Include information on multiple ancestors, not just one.
5. Show the diagrams/images of the "trees" more often, to give us reminders of where we're at on the person's tree and how the people fit together.
6. Only travel when it's integral to the information being presented.
7. Have one (non-famous) guest portrayed, with a lot of his/her ancestors, but maybe at the end of the show for the last 5 minutes, have one mystery or brick wall get solved for a lucky viewer who writes in.
What would your fantasy genealogy show be like?
Pretty much like yours -- BUT -- how about showcasing people who have done their own work, and helping them through their brick walls, and showing the audience HOW to break through theirs....
Pretty much like yours -- BUT -- how about showcasing people who have done their own work, and helping them through their brick walls, and showing the audience HOW to break through theirs....
I`d rather see a show something like " who are they now " .. look up todays relatives of famous people of history .. what is Mozarts great great great grandson doing ... are there still people named Devinci or Shakespeare ?
I`d rather see a show something like " who are they now " .. look up todays relatives of famous people of history .. what is Mozarts great great great grandson doing ... are there still people named Devinci or Shakespeare ?
Great idea. When reading about history I often wonder about famous people's descendants.
Pretty much like yours -- BUT -- how about showcasing people who have done their own work, and helping them through their brick walls, and showing the audience HOW to break through theirs....
Today, out of curiosity, I checked out the WDYTYA website. They had a thing called You Be The Star ofWDYTYA. People wrote their stories, their brick walls, etc. and then sat back and waited to be chosen...or not. I didn't see just when these episodes will be shown but sounds like they are coming around to working with the Average Joe/Josie? Evidently it was one of those things that you could enter every day but reading the comments it sounds like that didn't work very well. Anyway, thought that was interesting and will be watching for it.
Genealogy Roadshow should be reinvented on the model of History Detectives--cover no more than three issues in an hour and get into the details and methods of research. No more than one celeb, if any, but with interesting questions to be researched. The Roadshow format doesn't work and the researcher/stars have no credibility once you see the fumbling and fudging that goes on.
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