The Respectable as Collectible:
The Appeal of
the Antiques Roadshow
by Natalie Flemme, media analyst
Antiques – don't you love 'em? Well, someone does, or why else is the Antiques Roadshow on at all hours of the day and night?
It's on CBC, it's on PBS, it's on HGTV, it's on the History Channel. There's a British version, an American version, and now a Canadian version. What is it about Antiques Roadshow's milkshake that brings the boys to the yard?
If this were a scholarly article, I would now proceed to a thorough examination and evaluation of various hypotheses which have been proposed to account for the popularity of the show. But this ain't a scholarly article. This is media analysis, honey, so all I got to do is tell you the truth.
In brief, the truth is that Antiques Roadshow fills a gaping hole in television networks' offerings. It is a game show, but not your ordinary game show. It is a game show for respectable people
Sure, you can admire the expertise displayed by the evaluators, and you can learn useful information from the show, and I'm sure those reasons alone are why many people watch. But those characteristics do not distinguish Antiques Roadshow from dozens of other shows.
There's a popular game show, though, which also involves evaluating goods. It's called The Price is Right. But on The Price is Right, instead of experts valuing the audience's goods, the audience has to value the producers' goods, correctly. In other words, the audience on The Price is Right has to work. Sometimes it has to work quite hard, as in those games which require the contestant to run around while rapidly estimating the prices of goods.
Well, really. That's physical labour! Admiring successful physical labour is a prole characteristic, and no respectable non-prole could watch The Price is Right without affronting his entire sense of self.
But – there is hope! It's called the Antiques Roadshow. There you don't have to put up with the unseemly spectacle of the contestants working. Instead they bring in their highly respectable goods (sic) and have them valued (sic) by a hired functionary. Now that's the respectable way to do things, especially as the contestants get the valuation free.
So Antiques Roadshow attracts the scholarly (those people watching for the information) and the pretentious. Hardly the audience likely to create a hit, but then Antiques Roadshow ain't exactly a hit, not in North America, at least.
As we can see from the latest BBM ratings, the blockbuster, heavily hyped premiere of the Canadian version of the Roadshow failed to penetrate the Top 20.
In fact, it's not important that the Roadshow be a hit. What's important is that it appeal to the type of people who grant and oversee television licences. Let's suppose someone in Parliament or at the CRTC starts to wonder how the CBC, part of whose mandate is to produce predominantly and distinctively Canadian shows, ended up with a schedule of foreign shows and knockoffs of foreign shows which are so un-Canadian that few Canadians bother to watch them. However, when he or she turns on the CBC to see what they're offering, what does he or she find?
Why, he or she finds programming with tone! Programming for your better class of people, such as him or her. You know, the regulatory classes tend to be drawn from the wealthy, who also tend to be the people with pricey collectibles of the type evaluated on the Roadshow. How reassuring that the national network is doing its utmost to improve Canadians' tastes by making them more like those of the regulatory classes. And another regulator is pleased as punch.
For HGTV and the History Channel, the Roadshow is an earnest to the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission of their serious intentions, just like Ann Medina's banal and irrelevant introductions to the latest Clint Eastwood retrospective masquerading as social analysis.
I'm not making that up. They ran a Clint retrospective for Christmas (Christmas!). At least I got to make a copy of The Outlaw Josey Wales.
In fact, I'm not making any of this up. In North America, the Antiques Roadshow is part of that special branch of telecasting reserved for the respectably middle class (and heavily subsidized by the other classes). While ordinary Canadians flock to Desperate Housewives and to the various versions of CSI and Law and Order, our television regulators are making sure that people like them have TV too. I mean, if you're both respectable and powerful, shouldn't you be making sure that you and yours get some respect?
Posted January 19, 2005
The Respectable as Collectible © John FitzGerald, 2005
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