Travel Show Dreams

I’m a big fan of travel shows.  Tony Bourdain, Samantha Brown, Globetrekker, Three Sheets, Departures, and so many BBC shows like Great British/Continental Railway Journeys.  And the world needs so many more of them!  That’s my opinion.  My dream is to have a show I can watch (optimally create) where I investigate the cultures of the world through music.

So I’m sitting here tonight watching an episode of Great Continental Railway Journeys where this geeky former member of British Parliament is in Germany seeing the sites and giving historical information.  Obviously it wouldn’t fly with American audiences because there’s no game or wow factor involved, but it got me thinking – who is doing anything like that back home?

Yeah Tony Bourdain did do one episode of Parts Unknown in New Mexico, and it was awesome, but nobody is really showing off the beauty and history of our treasures in a way like that.  Why not me?  How could I go about doing this in a way that would serve the duel purpose of being educational and fun to watch.

I think Zane Lamprey was onto something with his travel shows about drinking – Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy.  Yet something was missing that still didn’t make those shows really take off.  I guess shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race have done much better at getting viewers interested in travel and exotic places.  I just think that this genre of entertainment is hugely underrepresented in American media choices.

I’ll have to think about it a bit and try to figure out what that vehicle is that could succeed at it.  It would be cool if I had limitless resources.  Maybe I should imagine this as if I did and it would be more helpful.  Yeah pretend I have the budget of Bourdain that’s it!

I mean I just did a search on YouTube of New Mexico travel videos and everything is either super-cheesy stuff from the tourism departments or super amateurish videos.  It would not be hard to compete at all.  Hell I would do it for free –

I guess I need a solid idea and then if I can just create a pilot episode, I might have a shot right?

Until then – let’s brainstorm it out.  Any ideas would be much appreciated.