The "This Old House" Newton Centre Project 2009, in Newton, Mass., as shown on the Old House My House blog (click the image above).

Americans love homes and fixing them up. In 1979, there was a lone public television show devoted to the task, the art. “This Old House” set out to make the magic of renovation and repair accessible — and became a huge national hit.

This year, “This Old House” turns thirty. The landscape outside has changed. An epic housing bust. A raft of commercial shows from “Extreme Makeover” to “Flipping Out” grabbing at the tool belt.

This hour, On Point: Norm Abram, Kevin O’Connor, and more, on “This Old House” at thirty.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Kevin O’Connor is now in his sixth season as host of “This Old House” and “Ask This Old House.” He is also on the editorial board of This Old House magazine.

Norm Abram, master carpenter of “This Old House” since the show’s premiere in 1979. He was also host of “The Yankee Workshop,” which ran for 21 seasons. He serves on the editorial board of This Old House magazine and has his own column, Norm’s Notebook.

Deborah Hood, senior series producer at “This Old House,” where she started in 2002 as an associate producer.

More links:

On Point got a tour of the current project site in Newton, Mass. In this video Tom Ashbrook talks with Tom Silva, general contractor for “This Old House”:

“Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner joined us Friday to talk about the Emmy-winning show’s new season and how it’s developing.

Host Tom Ashbrook asked Weiner about the claustrophobic feeling of season one — the “box” of social restrictions that define those opening episodes — and how he sees that cultural “box” opening up. Weiner pointed out that his characters are moving through historical time, as the stuffy early 1960s give way to a new era:

TOM ASHBROOK: I wanted to ask you about the writing, let’s say, Season One versus Season Two. We’ll come to Season Three. But in Season Two you seem to open up and have a lot more sort of range in the way you approach the narrative and the characters. I wonder if you consciously felt in Season One like, “We’ve got to keep showing ‘the box’” — and how steely and hard and inescapable the “box” of that time was. Did you feel more freedom in Season Two to sort of work the edges of the world that you had described in [season] one?

MATTHEW WEINER: No… I try to do a new story every year, and the story of the first season was about Don’s identity. And it was important to constantly distinguish this personal world and this public world for all of the characters. And then I think the second season was a chance to go a little deeper internally…. And now in the third season you really get to sort of, starting over again.

I have a theme for the season. I always have an idea of what I’m trying to express. In the first season, I had this story not unrelated to Gatsby, as you mentioned, about this man who was living a lie and who was living in this world and what was good about it and what was bad about it. And I wanted it to be funny, and I wanted to see Peggy progress and Peggy succeed but also get fatter and suffer for this as she was being sexualized…. It turned out she was pregnant, which was just a story telling thing, but I had the idea of the stories I wanted to tell.

It’s interesting to hear you say it that way. It’s not deliberate. I’m learning as I go along. I’ve never done a show before. I’ve never written 39 episodes of TV before, and I’ve never been in charge. And I really just try and find my way along. I think that part of the story is that the “box” was different in 1960 than it was… Right now we’re in 1963… It was very, very different.

Weiner went on to explain that the show this fall season will continue to explore the wrenching changes in American life as the country moved deeper into the ’60s:

Season Three to me is about chaos. It’s about how people respond to change. And we’re in a period of great change in 1963, and right now. And I wanted to sort of show that the culture is in a reaction, where some people are just digging in so deep and they’re so terrified. And some people are saying, “Here it comes. Let me have it.”

You can listen to that full exchange here:

And you can listen to his full interview with Tom here.

Weiner joined us when “Mad Men” first started in 2007. It’s worth a listen if you want to learn more about how the idea for the show was initially hatched.

For the second year running, top honors at the Emmys for best dramatic series went to an AMC cable show set in a New York ad agency in the early 1960s.

The visuals of AMC’s “Mad Men” are all skinny ties and bullet bras — buttoned-down corporate America smoking and drinking and dancing on the edge of what we know would be assassinations and war and 1960s cultural revolution to come.

Its world is white, sexist, racist, homophobic, shadowed by fear of nuclear war — and compelling, right now, in 2009.

This hour, On Point: A conversation with Matthew Weiner, creator of “Mad Men.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Matthew Weiner joins us from Los Angeles. He is executive producer and creator of the AMC show “Mad Men,” now in its third season. This week it won its second Emmy for best drama series, as well as its second Emmy for writing in a drama series. Before creating “Mad Men,” Weiner was executive producer and writer on the HBO series “The Sopranos.”

You can watch “Mad Men” episodes online at the AMC site, which also offers a 5-minute recap of “the story so far.” Here’s a promo for Season 3:

Left to right: Advertisement for "Glee" on Fox; Joseph Fiennes in ABC's “FlashForward”; the CW's "The Vampire Diaries"; and Courtney Cox in "Cougar Town."

Post your comments below

It’s that time again — TV’s fall lineup. You know you love it. What’s on tap?

Kids trying out for the glee club. A modern family’s two husbands bringing home the baby from a foreign country. And Courtney Cox in “Cougar Town,” which defies description.

But we’ll go there anyway — with television critics who’ve got the skinny on Jay Leno’s new show … “NCIS: Los Angeles” … the sci-fi “FlashForward” … and the big question: is good comedy making a comeback on network TV?

This hour, On Point: grab your popcorn, we’re hitting the couch for some quality tube time.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jacki Lyden, guest host

Guests:

Aaron Barnhart, TV critic for the Kansas City Star.  Here are his predictions on what people will watch.

Maureen Ryan, TV critic for the Chicago Tribune.

Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

 

CBS-TV newsman Walter Cronkite is seen at work in 1977. (AP)

Post your comments below

For almost twenty years at the height of the American Century, from 1962 to 1981, the news came from Walter Cronkite.

He was the nightly CBS anchor. And he was more than that. In a time when Americans got their news — collectively, almost communally — from the Big Three television networks, Cronkite could seem like the plain-spoken voice of God. His simple “that’s the way it is” had Olympian authority.

Now he’s gone, and an age seems gone with him. JFK. Vietnam. Man on the moon. And the news as we knew it.

This hour, On Point: Walter Cronkite and televison news, then and now.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from College Park, Maryland, is Lee Thornton, professor of broadcast journalism at the University Maryland. She worked for CBS for a decade, until 1982, and began in New York working in the newsroom with Walter Cronkite. She then moved to the Washington Bureau, where she covered Jimmy Carter as White House correspondent.

From Baltimore, we’re joined by David Zurawik, television and media critic for the Baltimore Sun, where he writes the blog “Z on TV.” His Cronkite obituary ran on Saturday, and he’s blogged about the response to Cronkite’s death here and here.

From Ossining, New York, we’re joined by Peter Boyer, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of “Who Killed CBS? The Undoing of America’s Number One News Network.” In June last year, he wrote about Keith Olbermann and how TV news is changing.

And from Hanover, N.H., is Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

There’s Farrah Fawcett, who died yesterday after a long and heroic battle with cancer (we got the alert in the middle of our editorial meeting). I’m told by our intern Abbie Ruzicka that “Farrah Fawcett hair” is literally a term of art in the hair world:

And then, of course, there was Michael Jackson, who died late in the day on Thursday. The first album I ever bought was “Thriller.” On Facebook and Twitter last night, about a million other Gen Xers said the same thing. Here’s a classic moment in an interview with producer Quincy Jones, not long after they’d finished “Thriller.” Check out the live snake Michael has in his hands:

Post your comments below

If you’ve ever wondered who makes America’s popular culture pop and sizzle and shake on cable TV, think Lauren Zalaznick.

She’s a hot-as-a-pistol rising media mogul. President of NBC Universal Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks. The boss at cable networks Bravo and Oxygen. The power behind “Top Chef,” “Real Housewives of New Jersey,” “Tori & Dean,” and the charmingly-named reality weight-loss show, “Dance Your Ass Off.”

Who comes up with this stuff? She does.

This hour, On Point: A conversation with pop culture mogul, Lauren Zalaznick.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Lauren Zalaznick is President of NBC Universal Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, overseeing the cable networks Bravo, Oxygen and the women’s web site iVillage. She also heads up Women@NBCU, a sales and marketing initiative to target women viewers.

Strar Trek - movie scene

Forty-three years after Captain Kirk and Spock and Bones and Scotty and the starship Enterprise first hit television screens in a burst of 1960s deep space idealism, Star Trek is back, in movie theaters, in what critics are calling the “ultimate prequel.”

Kirk’s a baby and bad-boy up-and-comer. Spock’s old and very young. The Enterprise is on its maiden voyage. And it’s pretty great.

This hour, On Point: Leonard Nimoy — Mr. Spock himself — joins us for a sweet fresh blast of Star Trek.

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Leonard Nimoy. He played Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series in the 1960s and in six subsequent feature films.  He returns as Spock Prime in the new Star Trek film.

From New York we’re joined by Steve Daly. An entertainment writer and film critic, he contributes to Newsweek and Entertainment Weekly.  His article “We’re All Trekkies Now” was on the cover of Newsweek’s May 4 issue.

Joining us from Columbia, S.C., is Ina Rae Hark, professor of English and film at the University of South Carolina and author of “Star Trek” in the British Film Institute’s “Classic TV” series.

More links:

The official website for Star Trek (2009) is pretty slick.

You can watch full episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, on the CBS YouTube Channel.

Here’s an essay by former Star Trek writer Leonard Mlodinow on making The Next Generation.

Check out “Highly Illogical,” the video for a Leonard Nimoy song first released on his 1967 album “Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space.”  You can hear more of his music at his MySpace page.

Screen shot from Hulu.com.

Post your comments below

And this just in: American television viewing is at an all-time high.

The latest Nielsen report shows household TV viewing at a record eight hours and eighteen minutes a day. The average American household now has more televisions than people. And many more ways to watch, beyond the television: on the PC, the laptop, the iPod, the cell phone — on Hulu.

Maybe it’s the recession … that we can’t afford to go out. Maybe it’s that screens are everywhere. Maybe television viewing’s triumph is traditional TV’s last hurrah.

This hour, On Point: The triumph of screens, and where TV goes now.

You can join the conversation. Are you watching more? And in more places? More ways? Are your viewing patterns and relationship with TV, with video, changing? How? Tell us.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Frank Rose, contributing editor at Wired magazine and author of the blog Deep Media.  He’s working on a book, “Welcome to the Hyperdrome,” about how story-telling is evolving in the Internet age.

James Poniewozik, TV critic for Time magazine. He writes the Tuned In column, about pop culture and society, as well as the Tuned In blog.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture, including “Cyberia,” “Media Virus,” “Playing the Future,” and “Coercion,” winner of the 2002 Marshall McLuhan Award.

More links:

Here’s the Los Angeles Times on Nielsen’s new “three screens” report: “Television, Internet and Mobile Usage in the U.S.” Read the full report here (PDF).

See Frank Rose’s Wired article “Free, Legal and Online: Why Hulu Is the New Way to Watch TV.” The New York Times’s Virginia Heffernan also wrote about Hulu in a recent column.

Here’s the dramatic set-up for the new HBO series “In Treatment”: you’re a fly on the wall in the psychotherapist’s office.

For one half hour, every night of the week, a patient walks in, sits down and talks. A young gymnast too close to her coach. A Navy pilot who accidentally bombed an Iraqi school. A couple in counseling over an abortion. A beauty, falling for the therapist. A therapist himself in therapy.

This hour On Point: Actor Blair Underwood, director Rodrigo Garcia, a real therapist and you put the show — and the country — on the couch.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Rodrigo Garcia, executive producer, director, and writer of HBO’s “In Treatment.”

Blair Underwood, an actor, he plays the role of Alex, an arrogant Navy pilot who mistakenly bombed an Iraqi madrassa, killing innocent students.

Dr. Glenn O. Gabbard, professor of psychiatry and psychoanalysis at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, author of “The Psychology of the Sopranos” and “Psychiatry and the Cinema.”

There was an amazing intergenerational moment on air last week, as former NBC TV news anchor Tom Brokaw faced cable talker Chris Matthews in the egg-on-the-face aftermath of the media’s New Hampshire miscall.

Clinton had won, not Obama as predicted, and Brokaw suggested that just maybe America’s political pundits were going to have to cool their jets, and let voters vote before calling the ‘08 elections.

“Then what do we talk about?” Matthews essentially replied. “Plenty,” said Brokaw.

This hour, On Point: Tom Brokaw on the ‘08 race, and getting campaign coverage right.

-Tom Brokaw

Guests:

Tom Brokaw, former anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News. His new book is “Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the ’60s and Today.”

Juliet Eilperin, national political reporter for The Washington Post.

Mickey Kaus, author of the Kausfiles blog covering politics and the media for Slate magazine.

When it comes to network TV news, we are not in Kansas anymore. We’re far from the high, proud heyday. This weekend, NBC News anchor Brian Williams will host Saturday Night Live. We wonder if Walter Cronkite will be watching.

For a solid string of decades, the networks’ evening news was the glamorous national campfire, where Americans gathered everyday to get the news. Now, we’re all over the place — from You Tube to Colbert. But the Big Three are still battling in their shrinking pond.

This hour, On Point: Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz on the last great television news war.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Howard Kurtz, media reporter for The Washington Post and host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” his new book is “Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War.”

Douglas Rushkoff, lecturer on technology, media, and popular culture at New York University and author of “Get Back in the Box: Innovation From the Inside Out” and “Coercion: Why We Listen to What ‘They’ Say.”

Captain of the punditocracy Chris Matthews came up the hard way in Washington. The hard-charging host of MSNBC’s daily talk-fest, “Hardball,” started life in the nation’s Capitol as a Capitol Hill policeman — a starch shirt, gun-on-hip security guard.

But that was before he worked for Jimmy Carter and Tip O’Neill and, more lately, spent his days dogging politicians all over cable TV.

Chris Matthews talks fast, talks loud, and wants you to know he plays hardball with the high and mighty. Now he’s turned life coach and says: model your life on the politicians.

This hour, On Point: TV talk man, Chris Matthews.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show,” and author of the new book “Life’s a Campaign.”

It’s a hot new TV show about young Americans straining to launch their lives in an uncertain time. And it’s not premiering on TV. The new show, called “Quarterlife,” will premier this fall on the Web. The Internet. Not on the big screen in the family room, but the little ones, all over.

TV and television-style content is pushing deeper onto the Internet and computer screens. It’s old style — like “Lost” and “24.” But it’s also new, like “Prom Queen” and “Funny or Die.” Don’t know those yet? You may soon.

This hour, On Point: TV goes to the web — and change happens.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joseph Menn, media reporter at the Los Angeles Times.

Mark Kvamme, partner at Sequoia Capital and board member of funnyordie.com.

James McQuivey, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.