Snipped from TV GUIDE online
"REMAKING SPACES: With ratings down 50 percent, Trading Spaces will undergo an extreme makeover this fall. "We've got to reinvent the show, and clearly we should've done it a little bit sooner," TLC general manager Roger Marmont tells Variety. "We'll evolve the format so that the show will be a lot less predictable than it is now." Translation: Wet T-shirts for Paige Davis!"
Just curious what your suggestions would be to improve the show's format....
To take it to its (il)logical conclusion:
A) Conspiracy theory is big, so do a theme month. Amy Wynn and Ty talk about the Freemasons. Kia starts wearing a shirt reading "Majestic 12" and saying she gets ideas from the aliens (everyone will believe that). Small animals/pets vanish mysteriously when Frank is around, and he starts talking about how "The stars are right." and "Cthulhu wakens...." Hildi puts a life-sized statue of Adam Weishaupt in a room. Laurie turns Satanist.
B) Sex sells. So, all cast members not deemed "sexy" are fired. Of the remaining cast members:
B1) Carpenters work shirtless. All of 'em. Even in Maine in December. ESPECIALLY in Maine in December. Nipples you could hammer nails with.
B2) If designers go overbudget, they're stripped of clothing estimated as approximating the overage value.
B3) Negative reactions from the homeowners that can be blamed on the designer's myopic "vision" of the room earns the designer a spanking which provides a background for the closing credits.
B4) Laurie's pregnancy wasn't properly utilized. It just happened; where's the media blitz? Nowhere! So, the very next pregnancy gets leaked to the tabloids as being the fault of one of the male designers. This assures a ratings bonanza next time the pregnant woman and the rumored designer daddy are on together. Use company employees as homeowners that episode and have them later go to the papers with a story of either violently bad blood or barely-controlled passion between the suspected parents (or, use both stories on different occasions). Hell, careful use and you could keep a modest ratings tonic going until the kid is a toddler.
B5) Paige does something involving nudity, or perhaps a softcore adult film, and the only advertising for it is during the show. Word-of-mouth will get them watching just to find out how to order it.
And, back in the realm of the sexless:
C) "Trading Spaces" drinking game. Every time someone does something cliche, they have to take a drink. We'll see how good the room looks with two soused homeowners doing the painting and a designer who's so blotto he/she can't remember his/her own name. Some interesting beans might be spilled as well.
D) Ninjas. Everything's better with ninjas. And cream filling, but I don't see how to do that for a television show.
D2) And if any of the designers are good at fighting ninjas, their own toy line. "Fighting Frank with Kung-Fu grip!"
Len
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