The little grass-roots network that grew

Ken Lowe had an idea that every room in the house, and the grounds outside, could have its own television show.

The idea became Home & Garden Television.

Since it went on the air a decade ago, HGTV has become one of America’s most recognized cable brands, reaching 87 million households and sprouting sister networks for E.W. Scripps Co.

“Not everybody recognized -- maybe even some of us who were there that fateful morning on Dec. 30, 1994, when we pushed the button and launched HGTV -- the impact this network would have,” says Lowe, now president and chief executive of Cincinnati-based Scripps.

Before HGTV, fixing up the house and working on the yard were largely the province of PBS’ “This Old House” and “Victory Garden.” Now it’s prime-time fare -- witness ABC’s remodeling hit “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

Still, nobody does home and gardening 24/7 like Knoxville-based HGTV, which has broken into the top tier of cable networks with an 80% growth in audience since 1998.

HGTV is projected to end 2004 with a 12-month average prime-time rating of 0.9, putting it on a par with TLC, according to the network.

“This station has changed my life. It’s all I watch,” says Paula Zirinsky, public affairs director for a New York law firm and wife of an architect. “I have never seen ‘The Sopranos,’ never saw ‘Sex and the City,’ never saw ‘Desperate Housewives.’ Why, when I can watch ‘Divine Design’?”

Ed Spray, the retiring president of Scripps Networks, which oversees HGTV, says within two months of starting HGTV “we knew we had something.”

“I recall going to the home show here [in Knoxville] in February of 1995. We had a little booth. And people kept running by and saying how much they loved the shows. That was my first direct contact with real people watching us,” Spray says. “Now, we had no idea it was going to grow to this size.”

In 1997, HGTV did its first viewer call-in show, with no promotion. It had 10,000 calls in two hours.

By the next year, HGTV began making a profit -- more than a year ahead of schedule.