TV Lets Animals Feel Right at Home

Forget diamond rings and gold bracelets. The concept of a home shopping network has gone to the dogs. And cats. And bunnies.

“The Pet Place” parades four-legged furry things, not bobbles and bangles, for TV watchers to snatch up. And snatch up they have, helping Southland animal shelters increase adoption rates, some by as much as 90%, show officials say.

“Those pets have the kind of appeal that send people to shelters,” said Fred Bergendorff, “Pet Place” creator and executive producer. “Once they see those adorable faces . . .”

The half-hour show, broadcast throughout Orange and Los Angeles counties by Anaheim’s KDOC Channel 56 (Saturday at 6 p.m., repeated Sunday at 6 a.m.) and five cable outlets, features animals from various shelters each week.

Cats, dogs and rabbits get their 15 minutes of fame (well, it’s really more like a minute) while shelter officials and host Bergendorff describe each one. Shelter phone numbers and addresses and animal identification numbers are given.

Bergendorff, promotions director for a Los Angeles radio station, launched the show in April, 1990, on Simmons Cable in Long Beach. Two weeks earlier, he’d had a transforming experience at the Long Beach Animal Shelter where he’d gone in search of a lost cat.

Shelter officials “told me they handled some 11,000 animals a year and were only able to place about 1,200,” Bergendorff said. The rest were exterminated for lack of a home. “I said, I have to do something about this.”

With the first show, the shelter reported a 63% increase in its adoption rate “overnight,” Bergendorff said. Now 17 shelters have animals on the program, and in the past two years, about 2,000 have been adopted.

“Pet Place” shows produced at KDOC and each cable outlet feature animals from shelters in their respective areas, and more than 90% of all the animals are adopted, Bergendorff said. If a cat or dog isn’t taken after its first appearance, it’s brought back for the next show, he said.

The Orange County Animal Shelter, the county’s largest, features animals on KDOC every week, giving its television pets a 20% to 30% higher adoption rate than those that don’t appear, said shelter assistant director Judy Maitlen.

The show’s good for publicity, too.

“Lots of people become aware we are here, or they find out we have big dogs, or poodles, for instance,” Maitlen said.

Viewers may not get the animals they see on the show, which is taped a day before it airs, but they rarely leave empty-handed, she said.

“The Pet Place,” which stresses spaying and neutering, also has interviews with animal experts or special features, such as segments in which handicapped animals are displayed for adoption.

Bergendorff once brought on an Orange County newlywed couple who had adopted two black, three-legged kittens.

“The newlyweds said they were going to start their family this way,” he said.

Gary Lychen and Missy Will, producer and associate producer, respectively, of the KDOC show, say the work is truly a labor of love. Neither gets paid.

“The bottom line is we’re all there for the animals,” said Lychen, who has been involved for about a year.

KDOC recently renewed the series for another 26 weeks, Will said. Beyond additional advertising revenue, future broadcasts may bring in a whole new demographic group.

“We’re expecting to do birds and reptiles soon,” she said.