Make workshop host John Park contrives a DTV antenna out of coat hangers. In case your grandma will need one, tell her she can download instructions.
Make a DTV antenna so you won’t miss the rest of Make
The performance artists of Cyclecide build bicycles out of junked parts — including a manual lawnmower — for their bicycle rodeo. Cris Benton takes aerial photos by rigging remote-controlled cameras to handmade kites. Lyn Gomes rides around town in a motorized Barcalounger. Mitch Altman wired a remote control inside a hat that can turn off any TV.
All appear on Make, a new program from Twin Cities Public Television that showcases inventors and provides how-to instruction. The show, syndicated by American Public Television, airs starting in January.
TPT collaborates on the series with Make magazine, a 4-year-old quarterly (circulation 100,000) that is a sort of bible for the burgeoning do-it-yourself (DIY) movement. With the declaration “We celebrate your right to tweak, hack and bend any technology to your own will,” the magazine encourages makers to take machines and other objects apart and reconfigure them for new uses and to replace expensive technology with homemade creations that are more affordable.
Robert Stephens, founder of the Twin Cities-based tech-support company Geek Squad, invited TPT down the path toward Make. Banking on the station’s background in science programming, such as the family-science show Newton’s Apple, Stephens suggested that TPT invent a program that could re-energize Americans — especially young people — to dive into innovation. He intimated he would fund such a venture, says Richard Hudson, e.p. of Make and director of science production at TPT.
Neo-do-it-yourselfers' Make magazine and Twin Cities PTV presumably did their preview reel themselves.
TPT producers and Stephens spent a day brainstorming and mapped out several shows but didn’t settle on anything, says Hudson. To inspire the producers, Stephens suggested that they visit the 2006 Maker Faire, a convention for inventors and DIY enthusiasts in San Mateo, Calif.
Hudson and more than 20,000 others attended the event, which he likens to the annual Burning Man event in Nevada but with more technology and old-fashioned workshop skills, such as woodworking. There he met Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of Make magazine, who told him the publication had been working with Beyond Productions, producer of Mythbusters, to develop another show for Discovery Channel.
Discovery wanted to duplicate the Mythbusters formula with a lot of high-energy explosive projects, Hudson says — “They wanted to blow stuff up.” Dougherty says Discovery execs wanted to drop the how-to element, but the magazine disagreed. He was concerned about how the network perceived home inventors.
“Some look at our audience as freaks and geeks, and I didn’t want to portray them that way,” because many are just ordinary people doing interesting things, he says. Basically, says Dougherty, Discovery was following the reality-show formula for a guaranteed primetime hit, but Make wanted a show that was more distinct.
Make eventually cut ties with Discovery, and Dougherty approached Hudson about producing the show. They struck a deal in early 2007—Make licensed TPT to produce the 10-part, half-hour series on the condition that it would get on the air in two years. In October 2007, Geek Squad signed on as the major underwriter for the $1.3 million project.
So far, public TV stations serving about 70 percent of TV households have decided to carry the program, says Hudson. Geek Squad has a year-to-year underwriting contract and is already in discussions with TPT about next year.
“We know there’s an audience for this if it’s done right,” says Dougherty. In summer 2008, the Maker Faire in San Mateo attracted 65,000 people, and there is now a second Maker Faire in Austin in the fall. In the years since Make magazine was created, DIY culture has gained momentum, bolstered by the possibilities of the Internet and cheap digital media gear. Make has helped define the movement and bring together constituencies as different as fringey artist-activists and traditional weavers.
Hudson is confident Make TV will attract a wide range of ages, too, from kids to retirees. A chunk of the audience could be the folks Wired Science was supposed to attract. CPB’s research shows there is definitely an audience for this kind of program, Hudson says, but Wired may not have been the right show. Dougherty hopes the series can have a long life on pubTV even if it isn’t a smash hit in primetime — Saturday afternoon is just fine with him.
Make moves faster and incorporates more segments and more music than many of the aging how-to programs on pubTV. Episodes open with profiles — shot in HD by various freelancer producers TPT has hired — of makers in their workshops. Their inventions often walk the line between form and function, and some are guided by social commentary.
The Flaming Lotus Girls art collective, for example, makes giant, fire-breathing metal sculptures and trains women in traditionally male-dominated crafts such as welding.
John Park, a 30-something animator for Walt Disney and part-time inventor, hosts the “Workshop” portion of each episode and shows viewers how to make a DTV antenna, a VCR-powered cat feeder and a shopping cart chair, among other things. In the short “Maker to Maker” segment, inventors show their stuff and how they made it. The concluding “Maker Channel” segment features user-generated video on a computer-screen interface.
Hudson says TPT producers troll YouTube constantly for videos and tap techie bloggers for ideas. Makers can also upload their videos at makechannel.org. Clips for the first season include a Japanese musician playing flutes made of carrots, peppers and squash. Also: a guy who retooled his printer to print images on latté foam.
Hudson hopes such creativity will interest young people in how things work, particularly those who aren’t turned on by science and technology at school. As Dougherty puts it, “We want to make more makers.”
Web page posted Dec. 2, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC
