WTF TOH?

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury) 08/07/2017 at 16:38 • Filed to: None

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I went to YouTube yesterday to watch a series of This Old House from 2005 about the restoration of a mid-century modern place in Cambridge MA, something I’ve done numerous times over the years. But it seems that most of the TOH full episodes have been pulled. TOH has their own sub-section filled with hundreds of snippets, but not the full episodes I was looking for.

On the broadcast version they’ve been mentioning something about an ‘insider’ package where you can get access to all of old episodes and back issues of the magazines. I guess that’s why they had the others pulled, so now they can charge $83/year for access. Umm, no. One more attempt at monetizing once free TV programming, and I’m not going to bite. $5 here, $6 there, and before you know it you’re paying more than a damn cable subscription, something that makes cable almost seem like a bargain by comparison, believe it or not.

Screw that. I thought a bunch of our tax money went to support PBS, so don’t we, as taxpayers, have access to this stuff? Oh well, it was good while it lasted. I’ve learned that just because something is available now doesn’t mean it will always be available ((*cough* NetFlix *cough*). Too bad I didn’t download those episodes when I had the chance...

crowmolly > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 16:43

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I don’t think they realize that some of the knowledge in the shows is stale, too. The world is different now that we have, say, Shark Bite fittings. And so on.

Takuro Spirit > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 16:44

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BOB VILA WOULDN’T LET THIS HAPPEN

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > crowmolly 08/07/2017 at 16:47

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Bob Vila would not use a shark bite fittings. He would forge his own copper pipe from ore, then solder the pipes back together using the heat generated by burning his beard trimmings.

benjrblant > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 16:49

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Seemingly, more and more media companies are pulling or restricting their content and insisting that viewers subscribe to be able to access it. Maybe this is their attempt at circumventing cable companies and trying to more directly control their income as “cord-cutting” becomes more commonplace.

It might work for some types of content, but for reference material like TOH that numerous viewers might watch once or twice in a blue moon, it just doesn’t make sense. Personally, I’m not a fan of paying $5/mo to a dozen or more different media producers to watch the few shows I’m interested in.

crowmolly > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 08/07/2017 at 16:51

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Tim Allen (hey, we are going back in the day here) used to tell a story of how he saw Bob Vila walk through wet concrete on a job site.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > crowmolly 08/07/2017 at 16:53

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Doesn’t surprise me, fella seemed a bit self adsorbed most of the time.

arsenal88 > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 16:53

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This Old House is a business that sold and sells content to PBS to air. PBS has not and probably would not buy rights to distribute TOH long term.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Takuro Spirit 08/07/2017 at 16:55

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You sure? I thought that’s why he left PBS, since he wanted to make extra money selling his reputation, and that was against the PBS ethos back then. Times have changed...

Kiltedpadre > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 16:56

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I ran into a somewhat similar issue with one of the broadcast networks. I don’t recall if it was ABC or CBS. My wife found a show she thought I’d like, but it’s on while I’m at work. I watched a couple episodes, and I decided I liked it enough to watch and figured I’d watch the first episode in the season. Nope, can’t do it. If you want to watch an episode more than two weeks old you have to log in through a cable company.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > arsenal88 08/07/2017 at 16:57

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You have a point there. It might not have been a separate business originally, but it certainly is now...

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > crowmolly 08/07/2017 at 16:59

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I didn’t know Bob Vila drove a Porsche:

Maybe it was a Lexus:

Could have been a Benz or Bimmer:

Takuro Spirit > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 17:04

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....BOB ROSS WOULDN’T....

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Takuro Spirit 08/07/2017 at 17:13

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Are you sure about that?

Takuro Spirit > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 17:16

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Bob from Sesame Street?

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Takuro Spirit 08/07/2017 at 17:25

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Oh my gawd I’m feeling old. I remember Bob as a young guy when I used to watch Sesame Street when it first came out, and just now I find out that he’s 85 years old. Eighty freaking five...

Steve in Manhattan > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 17:43

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I remember seeing them redo that house ... the result was pretty nice.

As for charging - on the one hand our taxes (although very little and, probably, even less now that we’re ruled by sociopaths) paid, in part, for that programming. On the other hand, tote bags and signed Ken Burns DVDs don’t pay the bills. So a reasonable charge seems appropriate, although they should give good content.

arl > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 18:55

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PBS doesn’t own the original TOH content. It’s still owned by the TOH production company and they can license it as they see fit. PBS, by it’s charter cannot produce any TV shows. They distribute the shows to the member stations that producers make and license to PBS corporate. This is all TOH, not PBS.

There are some videos over at pbs.org/video, but not the episode you’re looking for. TOH must not have licensed the content to PBS for distribution.

ranwhenparked > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 19:05

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Yes, that happened a few months ago. You have to subscribe to see all their old stuff. The one good thing about is is that they have made most seasons available back to 1979, which haven’t been shown on TV or available on video in many years.

I signed up when it became available, was disappointed that most of the ‘80s stuff with Bob Vila wasn’t included, and cancelled for a refund after about a month. I signed up again when they added more seasons into the package. Still missing a few, but they’ve got most of them now.

Also, This Old House has been a for-profit entity for some time now. PBS/WGBH divested it to outside investors as This Old House Ventures LLC. PBS stations still have first run broadcast rights on new episodes, and I think they still pay to use WGBH’s facilities for editing/post production stuff, but, otherwise, its all private. The franchise just got too valuable for a local public television station to hold on to. Kind of amazing PBS hasn’t sold off Sesame Street by now, when you think about it, although they have monetized the brand quite well through licensing.

ranwhenparked > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 19:07

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Yeah, but, to be fair, Bob Vila still makes all his shows free on YouTube and bobvila.com. He wants to lure you in with free content and then try to sell you other stuff while you’re there, like most web businesses.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > ranwhenparked 08/07/2017 at 19:13

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Thanks for the info. I can’t justify the cost for a subscription at this point, and will have to check my hard drives and optical discs to see if I still have those episodes somewhere. I used to offload a bunch of stuff from the TiVo to the computer, and also may have recorded those episodes onto a DVD burner in my A/V setup, but the problem is finding stuff I want in the countless terabytes of crap I have stashed away. I did purge a number of discs since I figured I would never watch the stuff; hopefully the TOH stuff I want wasn’t included in the purge.

There was some deal last year whereby HBO gets to show new versions of Sesame Street first, and PBS gets them afterwards. I suspect that this will be the model for the future, sad as that sounds.

ranwhenparked > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 19:23

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You could always sign up, binge watch for a month or two, then cancel. There’s no charge for the first month, and they prorate after that.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > ranwhenparked 08/07/2017 at 19:26

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Yeah, I don’t know. I read an article a few years back about these supposed free trials and how difficult they make it to cancel, and refuse to participate in such deals. It kind of reminds me of mail-in rebates, something I also avoid like the plague.

ranwhenparked > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/07/2017 at 19:45

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I cancelled after two months, and they credited everything back to my card right away, no problems.

Only ran into issues when I went to reactivate it, and couldn’t get my account to unlock. It took about four days in a row of calling their customer service to get it unfrozen.