Why I'm Not Excited about WDYTYA

Will everyone forgive me for being a wet blanket and not being awfully excited about Who Do You Think You Are?  I am happy to see another genealogy program on the air, and yes, I have been watching Henry Louis Gates on PBS.  But I'm not as excited as others seem to be, from all the buzz, because I have to admit that I am just about up to the gills with celebrities.  Yes, Dr. Gates is using celebrities on his show, too.  It is interesting to see, for example, that the genealogy of Yo-Yo Ma goes back so far and to hear the story of how courageously his kinfolk in China hid an extremely valuable family record from the ignorant depredations of the "Cultural Revolution."   WDYTYA is airing on a commercial station instead of PBS, which leads me to wonder just what the production values are going to be like.   One thing that worries me is that in all the announcements about it, I haven't seen the name of a genealogist yet.  At least Henry Louis Gates has earned his stripes in the field.  It is possible that I've missed something, so if there have been announcements that particular well-known genealogists are affiliated with the show, please let me know.  it might help to assuage my fears.

Okay, it's nice that people will watch the show because everyone in the world seems to be more interested in celebrities than I am.  But I think it would just be so much more interesting if they were talking to and investigating the lineages of plain people.  Plain people finding out interesting things about themselves and about artifacts or family documents and the people behind them is why I like Antiques Roadshow and History Detectives, and I think is part of the reason for the success of these shows.  I think it would be so much more interesting to see plain people -- who probably have thought "Who would be interested in my dull story?" -- finding out just how fascinating it is to learn who their ancestors were, even if there's not a famous person or royal bloodline among 'em.  How much more motivating would this be?  Watching the celebrities find out about their lineages may be nice, but plain people might watch them and say, "Well, they're celebrities.  Of course they're going to have interesting stories.  But not me."  Seeing other plain people find out about how their ancestors came across the Atlantic or the Pacific, or up from Latin America, how they dealt with situations such as wars and depressions and strikes and discrimination would, I think, be much more heartening to other plain people, who might say, "Wow.  That guy's a working stiff like me, and look at his story!  I wonder if there's something that interesting in my family history." 

I'll watch WDYTYA, of course, to see how the whole subject of genealogy is handled.  I'll be holding my breath.  I know how commercial television handles history.   I do hope they get the details right, because it will grate on me if they don't.  I'm also generally not impressed with the ability of network TV to present a subject intelligently these days, and in recent months, too, I've seen reason to have very unsettled feelings about the judgment of NBC executives!

My genealogy society is hoping that the show will cause the phone to ring at our headquarters, so in conjunction with our meeting next month, I will be presenting, in another room from the main meeting, my presentation called "Bare Bones: Getting Started in Your Genealogy."  I'm happy to do this, and will be happy if WDYTYA brings people into the door of the society.  We've been doing some exciting things in the past few years, and we hope more people will want to become part of that. 
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