In watching a recent episode of House Hunters on HGTV, I was treated to brief scenes of the couple using Zillow:
Caveats:
-I know this is how people shop for houses today. I have done it myself.
-I would guess this means HGTV and Zillow are working together on the show in some capacity. (See a similar clip on ispotTV.)
-House Hunters tries (!) to show what looking at houses might look like.
Commentary:
Even though the scene was brief, I found it odd. It either seemed like obvious product placement (use Zillow rather than Redfin or MLS or other options!), uninteresting storytelling (watch people look at a screen!), or signaled some major change. As the couple then moved to driving around by themselves and looking at houses, I thought for a short moment that they would not even need a realtor: they had found listings online, arranged their own details, and would tour on their own. (Alas, the realtor just met them at the first house tour.)
While there is a lot of potential for HGTV and other similar programming to incorporate devices and screens (mainly smartphones and tablets) into their portrayals of finding property, there is a bigger issue at play for television and film: how can you interestingly portray handheld screens that so many of us are buried in on a daily basis within a story that has to move at a rapid pace? This is not easy.
