Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
For HGTV, a DIY path leads to stellar returns
Nikki Justice doesn’t seem like she’d be a big fan of HGTV’s show “Property Brothers.” A first-year astronomy and physics major at Ohio State University, she’s never owned a home, let alone flipped one.
But her parents watched regularly, and now Justice tunes in several hours a week to watch one home transformation after another.
“A lot of the news these days is really stressful,” she said. “HGTV is not something that’s going to hurt me. I watch it and dream of what I want for my future house.”
So does Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins, who said that he prefers HGTV to ESPN.
Taylor Swift shared on Instagram her affection for HGTV’s “Fixer Upper.”
And Hillary Clinton said she likes “Love It or List It” and “Beachfront Bargain Hunt,” calling them “relaxing, entertaining and informative.”
The escapist appeal of looking at other people’s beautiful homes turned Home & Garden Television into the third most-watched cable network in 2016, ahead of CNN and behind only Fox News and ESPN.
Riding HGTV’s reality shows, parent company Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. has seen its shares rise more than 30 percent this year, outperforming bigger rivals like Walt Disney, 21st Century Fox and Viacom.
HGTV’s formula is relentlessly consistent: a shabby house gets a makeover, and a happy couple moves in.
A variation on the theme — house-flipping for fun and profit — works too.
The network has aired 23 different flipping shows over the past few years. Today “Flip or Flop” and “Masters of Flip” run in prime time.
In the cable industry, though, success is relative.
Like other networks, HGTV has lost nearly 4 million subscribers in the past two years, while ESPN lost about 6 million in that time.
Since the mid-1990s, HGTV has made its home in a low-slung building about 15 minutes outside downtown Knoxville, Tenn.
Like HGTV itself, the offices feature some homespun touches. The walls of Scripps chief executive Ken Lowe’s office feature framed press clippings from the local newspaper, the Knoxville News Sentinel.
The last year has been vindicating for Lowe. When he started HGTV in 1994, few people thought anyone would watch his network “about grass growing and paint drying,” he said.
The average HGTV viewer is a college-educated, suburban woman with household income of $83,600 a year and an interest in home improvement — catnip to advertisers like Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Wayfair Inc., an e-commerce company that sells housewares, is one of the channel’s biggest advertisers, with product integration, commercial time and on-air graphics that urge viewers to “shop this look” on the company’s website.
HGTV’s ad rates are about twice what other cable networks command, said Nancy Go, Wayfair’s vice president of brand marketing.
But she says it’s worth it: Wayfair’s web traffic doubles when it airs commercials on the network.
Without high-paid celebrities in scripted series, costs are low. HGTV makes 900 hours of original programming a year on a budget of about $400 million, according to SNL Kagan.