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ButAntiques Roadshowhas never won an Emmy.
Antiques Roadshowis not cool.
It is not trendy.
Clips fromAntiques Roadshowdo not go viral.
Withvanishingly few exceptions, the celebrities ofAntiques Roadshowdo not break out into a broader cultural awareness.
The expert asks the guest questions.Where did you get it?
How much did you pay for it?
Are there any family stories about it?
Maybe its an egg warmer?
At home they just call it the egg warmer.
And then, the magic.
(Like tulips or hyacinth, the expert adds.)
If the guest has a matching pair, the set could go for more than twice that much.
the guest replies, happily.
Antiques Roadshows hypnotic effect is not an accident.
But that field report is gone now.
We learned from our ratings, thats when you like to go to the bathroom, Bemko told Vulture.
I dont want to make TV for people to go to the bathroom.
What viewers want fromAntiques Roadshowis more appraisals, so Bemko has figured out how to provide them.
In those snapshot segments, you could catch a glimmer of slyness inRoadshows editing.
An expert tells a woman that her enamelware tray is really quite special.
But not special enough to be on TV?
but Bemko passionately believes in the irreplaceability of expert knowledge.
What our experts offer that theyve made look easy, is decades and decades of experience, she said.
At a time when the biggest resource on the internet is false information,Antiques Roadshowoffers the truth.
Yes, itisa Faberge.
No, it is not a Tiffany lamp.
The shows producers are ruthless in their fact-checking, too.
The level of fact-checking is especially impressive because none of the shows experts are paid.
I dont know how wed get all that money!
a guest will inevitably gasp at the reveal of a five- or six-figure valuation.
The guests come to theRoadshowlooking for information or validation.
Money could change hands; fortunes could be made.
But this never happens on the show.
Its what the viewers come for, too.
ThenAntiques Roadshowgives us their names, and tells us about them.
It is a procedural about finding lost stories.
One of Bemkosfavorite moments from the show is from 2007, in an episode filmed in Orlando.
That LBJ photo is iconic, but Stoughton is rarely credited with taking it.
But my favoriteAntiques Roadshowmoments are the smaller, stranger, more surprising objects.
A perfect-condition miniature salesman replica of an icebox.
The holy grail of Hot Wheels cars.
Ceramics that were partially turned into glass by the Hiroshima bombing.
A hardtack biscuit from the Titanic.
A book of early-20th-century original mugshot photos.
It may never beAntiques Roadshows year to win an Emmy.
The show will never be the cool, politically pointed, buzzy new thing.
Voting for it will never feel like making a statement.
It will never feel of-the-moment.
It will always feel like some old, half-forgotten, ubiquitous entry in a crowded reality-show category.
A show thats been banging around the TV attic for years.
A show your grandparents had.
A show that, come to think of it, might be worth reconsidering just out of curiosity.
A show that maybe does have some worth.
A show that might actually be pretty rare.
A show that might even be a treasure, if you look closely.
