Feeding The Traveler’s Appetite

Why oh why, with over 100 million people in the U.S. with passports (up from just a few million in the 1980s), would outlets like the Travel Channel completely ignore international travel? In fact, Travel Channel is looking more and more like just another reality channel these days. Biggest sandwich in Vegas, best amusement park in Pennsylviania, Flip This Hotel, Baggage Wars, bla, bla, bla. This has nothing to do with authentic, life changing travel.

Well, the reality about reality programming is that it is the shortest distance between production and revenue these days. It’s cheap to do, and if done correctly can garner a decent if passive (some might argue brain dead) audience and thus advertising dollars and cable subscription fees.

But not trend, even one with such an attractive business model, can last forever, especially if EVERYBODY is doing it and all TV programming begins to look the same. Cutting the chord, Over the Top, these are just fancy words for saying that people are tired of paying big $ for programming that, well, kind of sucks.

Travel is one of those overlooked genres, probably because 1) It is big internationally 2) People still cling to the misinformed view that “Americans don’t travel” 3) It’s a bit expensive to produce (just ask our checking account) 4) People have old fashioned ideas about travel (you have to be rich, it’s dangerous, it’s hard, etc.).

We’re not out to change the world, or even this perception. We’re just out to feed a hungry audience some programming it’s been deprived of for far too long. If we end up being the next “big trend” then so be it. But until then, we’re off to the next destination and life changing experience.

Travel on!