Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Your Genealogy TV Show

Randy Seaver from over at GeneaMusings brings us this intriguing challenge this evening:

"Hey genealogy buffs sitting there in your pajamas (or whatever) on a Saturday Night - it's time for more Genealogy Fun!


Your mission, should you decide to accept it (and I REALLY hope that you will, because I know how creative my genea-readers are) , is to:

1) Create a Title and outline an episode of your own Genealogy television show. Be funny, crazy or serious, it doesn't matter!

2) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Twitter or Facebook.

This idea was prompted by a long thread on Facebook on Paula Stuart-Warren's page - her comment was:

"A new reality show -- the Housewives of Genealogy. Imagine the possibilities. Sitting at a computer, standing at a copier, scanning a document, attending a conference, data entry, and the big draw would be trying to top each other with stories of the horse thieves, murderers, farmers, shopkeepers, and soldiers in our past." And it took off from there... into cabana boys and all sorts of funny ideas.

Thomas MacEntee listed some candidate television show titles back in February with this post, spurred by Donna Pointkouski's post here, if you want some ideas to embellish upon."

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With that challenge before, I let my mind play a bit and I came up with the following:

My idea for a genealogy based television show would be:


“To Tell The Truth In Your Genealogy”.

A panel of judges [remember Kitty Carlisle? Tom Poston? Orson Bean? And Bud Collyer? – uh… yep , I think I just let you know how old I am!] sits before three podiums.

Contestants then have read by the host [who has to be Thomas MacEntee! Who else could host this show!] a series of clues about their ancestor.

Panelists would be Megan Smolenyak, The Footnote Maven, and let’s throw in Dr. Bill for good measure!

“The ancestor was said to have gold hidden in the well." Thomas clues the panelists.

“Was he an outlaw?” Megan asks contestant number one.

“Yes,” comes the reply.

“Was your ancestor associated with any banks?” asks the Footnote Maven of contestant number two.

“Yes,” comes the reply.

“Was your ancestor Jesse James?” Dr. Bill asks of contestant number three.

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!

“Dr. Bill, what made you guess Jesse James?” asks Thomas MacEntee.

“Well… contestant number three has a strong resemblance to the James family, which I’ve researched, and….”

“That’s all the time we have for now, folks!” Thomas breaks in.

“Stay tuned for our next episode of ‘To Tell The Truth In Your Genealogy’, when one of our contestants has a secret ancestor who wore Napolean’s tricorn on his wedding day!”

And the music swells while the image fades.

Hmmm… now I just need to gather up enough contestants with interesting ancestors to play this game, sponsors for prizes for those who pull the wool over on the panelists, and a network that will produce the show!

Hey, Roots Network, are you interested in a show???