Thea Flaum, the undisputed queen of TV show production, with three current series running on HGTV, is in preproduction on another home-oriented-with-a-twist series for DIY, the Do It Yourself network.
The 26-week series is called “From Junky to Funky,” and will begin shooting the last week in March for airing sometime next fall.
The series concept, Flaum said, “is to show Cinderella stories.”
“We’ve all spotted things we can’t believe someone is throwing out, or going to a friend’s home and realizing, wow, that desk used to be a door. We’ll show homeowners to take interesting, discarded objects and transform them into something beautiful, exciting and useful,” she said.
The first of a three-tiered audition for the show hosts, actually skilled experts?artists, carpenters, interior designers?will be held the last week of January at Act One.
All production will take place in the Chicago area, Flaum said. The experts will go into homes to find the objects and taking them to their workshop for transformation.
Dan Lombardi is the senior producer on the new series; he produced the HGTV series “At the Auction,” “The Appraisal Fair,” and “Cityscapes.” Associate producers are Nicole Bernardi-Reis and Brian Sharpe. Flaum is executive producer.
DIY’S parent Scripps-Howard operates HGTV, for which Thea Flaum Productions has produced 500 episodes of “At the Auction with Leslie Hindman” and “The Appraisal Fair” series. Providing just the title, Scripps asked Flaum’s company “to develop a proposal for the kind of show we’d do.”
Thea Flaum Productions for 21 years has been one of the most consistent and prolific TV show producers, ranking just below the more prodigious output of Jonathan Towers’ Towers Productions and Bill Kurtis Productions.
Her most recent TV show was a HGTV Christmas special, “The Games We Grew Up With,” and the company is currently developing a special, “One Dog at a Time,” a coproduction with Ch. 11, to air in March as PBS pledge show. In fact, Flaum hopes to develop a series with dog trainer Dennis Hill, called “Handling Your Dog.”
Thea Flaum Productions is located at 515 N. Noble; phone, 312/733-3700; Email, info@theaflaum.com; see www.theaflaum.com.
