:: Earl Green - Freelance Television Writer / Producer ::

The beauty of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition filming was that we could milk it, promotionally speaking, until the show actually aired. Almost immediately after the previous promo was finished, I put this one together to tease ongoing coverage that would be appearing for the next month. It wasn’t a perfect promo, but with the time constraints involved, it turned out more than passable - but there’s a problem with wishing you had more time to work on something. It sometimes comes true.

This promo aired for about a day before ABC notified the station that the premiere of the Nick family episode had been pushed back until August.

As so many local volunteers had given freely of their time and effort to build the new house for the Nick family, we were almost obliged to cover the “reveal” of the house by the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition team - of “move that bus!” fame - but we were also contractually bound to not actually show it on TV. (Never mind that fact that you could drive through Alma and see it for yourself.) This spot paradoxically teases the fact that you can see the finished house…but we can’t show it to you.

Early in June, just when we thought we’d escaped from May sweeps with our skins intact, Ty Pennington and the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition gang paid a visit to Alma, Arkansas to build a new home for Colleen Nick, who founded the Morgan Nick Foundation to help families of missing children after her daughter was kidnapped in 1995. The Nick family’s story is part of local history now, and 40/29 has covered the story since long before I was working there. This was just first promo for our coverage of the Extreme Team’s presence in the area.