Carol Vorderman - Better Homes

[StealthUK]

Sorry, this may have already been covered, but I had to get it off my chest....

What is the point of Better Homes with Carol Vorderman? They take a house worth 120k and spend 25-30k on it. Then Carol stands back in amazement as an Estate Agent tells her the house is now worth

7k more??? Nothing in this show makes any bloody sense! The 2 houses are competing against one another and the house that has increased in value more wins, yet there is no budget limit at all. One house gets the whole kitchen refitted, a new conservatory, decking and the whole garden remodelled and the other house just gets a new bathroom. Guess which one wins?

What a pile of crap.

[Chris Oates]

& the point of Mz Vorderman is ????? at least the girls on other 'home' programs actually 'do' something.

Her 'money lending' adverts are worse

horrid woman

[R P McMurphy]

here here

rpm

[Dave Plowman]

Ignore the which one wins bit and treat it as a showcase for ideas. Not that it's much good for that either.

[Conrad Edwards]

But I can get rid of all my debts.......

[May]

yes, with stencils, staplers and muslin, is all I've seen. lol

[Steve Firth]

I'm amused that the decision about what to put into each house is determined by which sponsor will give them somethign this week in return for a banner ad across the lower third of the screen. Do restrictions on product placement not apply to these programs?

[<Barbara]

"StealthUK" wrote

Enough people enjoy watching it to make it profitable TV.

And that is ALL the justification it, or any TV programme, needs.

Barbara

[Nick Finnigan]

"stuart noble"

[Owain]

"Alan" wrote | And it just goes to show how much 'tradesmen' over change you and | I for the 5 minutes all these jobs take to do :)

Be fair, it takes almost twenty minutes to do a complete loft conversion including PP and B Regs approval!

Owain

[Owain]

Carol Vorderman's Detox for Life: The 28 Day Detox Diet and Beyond Carol Vorderman's Guide to the Internet Carol Vorderman's Guide to the Internet: The Internet for You and Your Family Carol Vorderman's Better Homes Dirty, Loud and Brilliant, Too! The Countdown Puzzle Mountain Carol Vorderman's Better Homes and Better Gardens

Or any of 129 books and 5 videos listed on Amazon.

Owain

[BAH]

Alleluiah, hear,hear! At last someone agrees with me because my wife thinks the sun shines out of her backside!

I would like to kick her up the back side for her pathetic adverts designed to increase the debt for people who can least afford it.

[Michael McNeil]

I think the idea is to use a "face" to sell TV no matter what. The "idea" is to fill 24 hours of TV. Both the BBC and the others have realised it can't all be done with news reviews and game shows.

The alternative is to show programmes but they cost money. Films younger than 50 years old also cost, so bad haircut or not, it's a face anyone can recognise and the same new same new.

As for tradesmen. The whole crew put in for whatever it takes when the cameras are not rolling. If you used mdf in your own home to anything like that extent (I have never seen the show but I do know the type) you would lose amazing amounts of living space.

A 3/4 inch board all around the room on 2" battens takes up 6" length and 6" breadth all around. The real alternatives are:

1. Stripping the old wall paper and rehanging new.
2. Repainting.
3. Moving.
4. Get Cable or a DVD or a life or...

[Woodspoiler]

A lot of this psuedo-educational crap is primarily entertainment dressed up in a way that people find interesting (home-making and DIY) and viewers can easily convince themselves that the time they are burning on it is in fact self-improvement like reading an educational book.

It isn't. You may pick up the odd useful point but that isn't the main idea and as a means of picking up valuable info it's massively inefficient (in terms of gain per hours viewing).

These are just the new cookery programmes where Gary Rhodes pours in another gallon of lard for your entertainment while you peck at your TV dinner. It doesn't matter that if you ate that stuff he's making it'd give you a coronary quicker than your staple diet of microwave chips will, hardly anyone who watches these shows actually does any cooking but they can justify dribbling their lives away by thinking that they are learning cookery.

W.

[Brian]

Did you apply to take part and were turned down - hence the green eyed monster called envy?

I doubt that those that have taken part will agree with your point of view as it certainly makes sense to them - they are having the work done :-)

As always, this type of "show" is only of interest to those interested in that type of thing and besides, if ITV wishes to spend their money in this way then surely that is up to them and their sponsors?

I am sure that if you feel that stongly about the program then you can exercise your right to either press the off switch or press the button on the remote control and change channels or go and do something else whilst SWMBO watches it.

Bri

[Brian]

The answer is then.........don't buy the stuff from the sponsors.

With regards to the sponsorship - this is a way to lots of blatant and subliminal advertising that makes you want to go out and spend your hard earned cash on their products - and that is all sponsorship is - another from of advertising.

Do you object to their advertising budgets which are probably umpteen times more expensive than a straight sponsorship deal - and for which you ultimately pay for in the price of the product that you buy.

Brian

[Toby]

Vorderman should do a Delia and retire, or just stick to countdown.

The only speck of light on an otherwise bleak TV horizon is C4's "Other peoples houses" I like the way they are invited in to film someones pride & joy, yet the posh girl totally slags it off on voiceover. I can't imagine the nation settling down to an evening in front of Norm.

Toby.

[Owain]

"Woodspoiler" wrote | A lot of this psuedo-educational crap is primarily entertainment | dressed up in a way that people find interesting (home-making and | DIY) and viewers can easily convince themselves that the time | they are burning on it is in fact self-improvement like reading | an educational book. | It isn't. You may pick up the odd useful point but that isn't the | main idea and as a means of picking up valuable info it's | massively inefficient (in terms of gain per hours viewing).

I can remember when gardening programmes would put plant names (in Latin, that would be too elitist now) up on screen and talk about the right soil type and sunlight etc.

Now it's all decking and water feechurs and the 4' high nursery-grown shrubs delivered on trolleys are just there to fill the blank bits left over at the end.

You learn absolutely nothing about gardening.

Owain

[StealthUK]

Yes, I'm just bitter and twisted. It was late and I'd had a few drinks when I posted this thread, but the truth must be told! :-)

Brian, the point I made was that this program makes no sense. Okay, they can improve peoples' houses, there are plenty of programs where they get work done at the program maker's expense, I'm not here crying about them. Why mention the value of the home before and after if you're not going to tell the viewer how much the bloody work cost! Improving peoples' homes and pretending that fairies installed it all at no cost is pathetic. Also, I just remembered in the very first series the family whose home had increased in value more also got a cash prize. So, the more money you had spent on your home the more likely you were to win the extra money. This program should win a prize for stupidity. Runner-up can be that other ITV turkey (I forget the name) where they gave someone x amount of money to somebody to buy a house from an auction, renovate it and then re-sell it through the auction.

[StealthUK]

"people's" rather....excuse the error!