‘Roadshow’ takes its look to the showroom floor

In its ninth season on the air, PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow” is busting out all over.

Filmed at convention centers across the country, the show documents what happens when regular folks drag family keepsakes -- paintings, clothing, posters, toys, kitchen utensils, you name it -- out of their attics and into what amount to outsized sessions of show and tell. At any given taping, some 6,000 fans, assigned tickets by lottery, converge on a sort of collectibles cattle call.

Dozens of arts and antiques appraisers blow past everyone’s stuff (reviewing 700 items an hour), explain what it is, and -- if a tchotchke owner is lucky -- offer satisfyingly outsized estimates of its value on the open collectibles market.

For years, devotees have been able to buy “Antiques Roadshow” books, videos and calendars. In some markets, they’ve been able to watch the show several times a week.

But now there’s more. A new half-hour magazine-style spinoff, “Antiques Roadshow FYI,” premiered last month. “Canadian Antiques Roadshow” also recently hit the airwaves. A company in North Carolina has introduced an Antiques Roadshow Collection furniture line. You can now buy Antiques Roadshow lamps. And rugs. And wall coverings.

Executives at WGBH, the Boston-based PBS affiliate that produces the American version of “Roadshow” (the original comes from the BBC), host “brand summits” with licensees, where “they share information and plan future promotions.” It sounds like a case of successful marketing gone wild. But “Antiques Roadshow’s” outsized success has as much in common with the serendipitous journey of a $7,000 orotone photograph that an Omaha participant carried in to the appraisers -- the man had bought it, unwittingly, for $45 a few years before -- as it has with any MBA-generated marketing plan.

It’s true that WGBH, which produces one-third of all programming that airs on PBS, is more proactive than your average affiliate when it comes to new ventures. But there hasn’t been any uber-vision for “Antiques Roadshow.”

Public television, which is funded by the government-backed Corporation for Public Broadcasting, corporate sponsors, foundation grants and individuals, doesn’t necessarily need large numbers of viewers to keep its programming alive.

Still, it never hurts to have a hit. In 1998, “Antiques Roadshow” surpassed “Nova” to become PBS’ No. 1 prime-time show, and it now attracts close to 11 million viewers each week -- more than “Masterpiece Theatre” and “Frontline.”

With such a treasure on its hands, it would stand to reason that PBS, which has watched its budget fall as the federal government and corporate underwriters have pulled back on funding, would try to milk the popularity of a franchise like “Antiques Roadshow” for all it’s worth.

“If we were any other network, we would have stripped it Monday to Friday, done kids’ spinoffs and so on,” says John Wilson, senior vice president of programming at PBS. “But we didn’t have those pressures.” And so, brand summits aside, development of the new “Antiques Roadshow” properties came about a bit haphazardly.

Take “Antiques Roadshow FYI.” The magazine-style show, which airs on most PBS stations Wednesday nights and is hosted by regular “Roadshow” host Lara Spencer, digs deep into subjects that the original show doesn’t have much time to explore. Where an appraiser on “Roadshow” might be able to talk about antique parlor stoves for a minute or two, the first episode of “FYI” devoted a full eight-minute segment (called “Hot Property”) to the subject.

Also featured was a segment following up with a woman whose rare Beatles album, appraised at $10,000 to $12,000 on “Antiques Roadshow,” ultimately sold at auction for more than $10,000; and another segment called “Breaking News” that explained how collectors can recognize damaged ceramics.

It looks, sounds and feels like a spinoff. But according to “Antiques Roadshow” executive producer Marsha Bemko, WGBH developed “FYI” because the vice president of programming wanted to recycle the thousands of hours of unaired footage the show had in its archives.

In turn, Bemko says, PBS picked up “FYI” because it had a 30-minute opening in its schedule and it was looking for an easily digested show to slot at 8 p.m. “PBS needed something, and we were ready,” Bemko says.

The story’s similar for the Antiques Roadshow Collection, which was the brainchild of a North Carolina-based furniture marketer named Joie Wilson (no relation to PBS executive John), who brought the idea to WGBH in 2003.

“She was brilliant,” marvels Betsy Groban, managing director of WGBH Enterprises, the division that handles licensing for the station’s many programs. “Home furnishings was a surprise. They came to us.” Wilson didn’t just come up with the idea -- she also did the legwork to find the station its industry partner, Pulaski Furniture, a 50-year-old manufacturer in North Carolina that has taken the notion of “Roadshow”-based home design and run with it.

Taking their inspiration -- sometimes loosely -- from 400,000 images from the “Roadshow” archives, Pulaski’s designers have dreamed up 110 new products. The Beacon Hill Collection is a group of 16 pieces “inspired by an ornate American sideboard” a Bostonian offered up in 2000; “Carlton Manor” is an English-style collection that “was inspired by one dresser’s delicately turned leg, and a smooth arch detail.”

Jim Kelly, Pulaski’s executive vice president in charge of product development and marketing, says that his favorite design is a replica of a hall tree that “Roadshow” appraisers believe was owned by “the biggest, baddest gunslinger in Texas.”

Executives at WGBH review Pulaski’s designs carefully to make sure that they stick to the spirit of “Roadshow,” and they convene those occasional brand summits with Pulaski and fellow licensees Dale Tiffany (lamps), Southern Furniture (upholstered furniture), Village Court (wall decor) and Momeni (rugs) to make sure the overall brand message -- “quality, style, craftsmanship and pride in the past,” says Judy Matthews, a WGBH spokeswoman -- stays on course.

But in large part, WGBH sticks to collecting license fees (which go to developing new programming) and leaves much of the scientific marketing to Pulaski executives, who have conducted extensive market surveys.

The furniture company also regularly hosts Roadshow Collection events at which appraisers visit Pulaski retailers and look over customers’ heirlooms a la the TV show -- all while Pulaski representatives collect data for future marketing efforts.

Look out for more furniture designs from Pulaski, and for a “Roadshow” taping to swing by Los Angeles Aug. 13. “FYI” plans 26 episodes this season and possibly more in 2006. Bemko says she’s got a couple of other spinoffs in mind too. “I have tons of ideas,” she says. “I just have to get someone interested in them.”