Cable Tie

One of the benefits to living in Southern California is daily home delivery of the Los Angeles Times. I realize that I’m bucking the trend on getting all my news online – in fact, I get three different newspapers every day – but there’s something about the L.A. Times and its coverage of the entertainment history.
Mid-May is a busy time in Televisionland, as networks occasionally renew or, more often, cancel shows. The Times prints pages of this stuff, and I thought again of one of my recent columns on getting stone into showbiz. Maybe it’s time for that anthology series, Travertine and Me, to find a spot somewhere on the CW.
Stone hasn’t been much of a hot wire in the entertainment trade for awhile. The last time a stone worker got top billing came with Gary Cooper’s short stint in the quarries for The Fountainhead, and the scenes had a lot more to do with Coop manhanding a drill while a young Patricia Neal watched rapturously than any discussion about granite or marble (or Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, for that matter). And master stonemason Corrado Soprano Sr. only gets lip service in the series that bears his family name, while his grandson Anthony gets all the attention.
It’s always good to do some current recon before pulling together a pitch; just how much stone is really on TV today. I programmed the digital video recorder (DVR) to look for any stone other than Sharon and expected, after a week, to have a few odd things about English weights or a showing of The Family Stone.
The DVR immediately sounded a chime and the “Record” light came on. It seemed to stay lit every time I walked by the entertainment center. And then, after a week, I had a double-ding, telling me that the DVR’s hard drive would soon reach full capacity.
I thought the machine was full of obscure French movies and Formula 1 race broadcasts. Instead, I found show upon show detailing façades, veneers, floors, walls, bathrooms, kitchens … a video home guide to stone work. Nothing like this ever showed up in the TV listings of the Times.
It took a few days of viewing to realize these weren’t on-camera home tours of the rich and famous. My DVR held a week’s worth of programming of good-old-fashioned, dirty-fingernail stone work.
I’d looked at some cable shows a few years ago that had pretty stone pictures, and a few makeover programs had appeared since then. But, mainly on cable channels like HGTV and the DIY Network, a cast of characters appeared with trowels, torpedo levels and lively banter about stone.
In short, what I’d dreamed up for a fun column was already coming to life on the screen. My Hollywood pitch was already in reruns.
The best of the lot came on the DIY Network with Rock Solid, a regular half-hour featuring Dean Marisco and Derek Stearns as two happy-go-lucky New England stone masons cracking wise as they rolled through a series of home-improvement projects ranging from an outdoor kitchen to bluestone entryway steps. Much like Jack Webb working out a hot case every 30 minutes on Dragnet, the two kept the action lively as they got the jobs done.
Rock Solid isn’t one of those let-the-subs-do-it shows. Marisco and Stearns both grew up in the stone trade, and they show the less-glamorous prep work as well as the finishing touches. They can make retaining walls fun, which is no mean feat.
I’d worked through a number of episodes before going to Coverings 2007 in Chicago, only to find a display touting an in-the-flesh appearance by Marisco and Stearns late on the show’s opening day. And then I walked into the press room to find Stearns having lunch, and I couldn’t help but walk up to him and say, “Haven’t I seen you on TV?”
Stearns turned out to be pretty good-natured about it, especially when I ribbed him about the New England locations for the show, and how many of the episodes involved going down to the “local quarry” to pick out stone. His production crew noted that the show’s now traveling around the country, with at least one West Coast episode set for the newest run of episodes.
Having this new run of do-it-yourself stonework on television with amiable hosts whipping up a new barbeque pit or travertine patio does beg a serious question or two: Does this kind of exposure really do fabricators any good? And, does it drive more consumer dollars away from established shops and toward home-improvement centers?
The answer to the second question is likely a yes. The army of weekend warriors who’ll watch home-improvement shows will pick up on any good idea, and more than a few jobs will be handled by homeowners than professionals.
The amount of amateur stone work, though, is paltry compared to stone’s growing exposure on the DIY circuit. These shows are good, positive PR directed at an audience that’s keenly interested. They’re learning more about stone and what it can do for their homes – and that’s an interest that can roll from a new front step to a complete countertop replacement in short order.
If anything, the stone industry needs to encourage these DIY mavens in any way possible. It’s a great way to build consumer awareness with an audience primed to listen and learn.
In the meantime, it’s time for me to put away that screen treatment of Travertine and Me and get back to work. But, if Rock Solid decides to take an extended European tour and needs a special guest-star thinset mixer ….
Emerson Schwartzkopf can be reached at emerson@stonebusiness.net.