Well, so far since the series began I found there are more and more Junkaholics. JYW now has a tremendous following. We organize and resevere our Wednesday nights specifically for JYW. It is sad but true. We are all out of the closet as admitted junkaholics. It is also pretty sad when we know the complete dialogues to the commercials.

We are now contriving to build our own contraption. Without edit and time constraint. We will docuement times, strategies, goal and stuff used.

The JYW syndrom is hitting world wide and it would be nice to see a Canadian version. I'm sure we would have enough entusiasts. We would have niether shortage of resources nor volunteers.

I'm sure any one of us has, at one time or another, been to an autowreckers to get that one part. It has certainly entered your mind to dream up what you could put together given the chance.

Can anyone here creat a Canadian website for JYW? Ya never know what might happen.

I just heard an echo from the other side of the room as I was writing this and it was....." I found a prop, eh????"

Cheers Jerry

-- Jerry Johnson (jjohnson20@home.com), January 14, 2001

Answers

Great idea, but you have to look at the whole picture. When you start to think about it, a show like JYW (would the Canadian version be Scrap-Yard wars?) costs a bundle to produce. The yard is not a random part of any junkyard. It is full of "virgin junk" that has not had the valuable bits removed. That has to be bought, collected, and somewhat organized.

The other major expense is filming. I've seen the NERDS estimate of how many people (paid) were on site during the shoot. You have a fire brigade, and ambulance, likely about 8 camera/sound crews, producers, hosts, caterers, and behind the scenes tool/supply people. How about editing? You end up with about 60 hours of tape from build day to put into 40 minutes? That must be a chore!

I'm sure it is cheaper to produce than many TV shows, but I'm not yet convinced that the audience is there to support it. It has a cult following amoung Sci-Fi readers, Engineers, Slashdot readers, and many gearheads, but I'm not certain that there is broad appeal yet.

TLC has over 10 times the viewer base to support a show than a Canadian specialty channel. You are then left with the two major networks. You want to convince CBC to show it? Worth a try!

-- Michael (Canadian P.Eng.) (michael@mks-tech.com), January 15, 2001.