Comments on: What Impact Will WDYTYA Have On Your Blog?

By: LOOKING4ANCESTORS

LOOKING4ANCESTORS — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:17:25 +0000

For those who are interested you can view the Canadian WDYTYA on YouTube featuring Stephen Page of Barenaked Ladies.
This was a very moving episode.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=6GnyG4oqQc8&feature=related

By: LOOKING4ANCESTORS

LOOKING4ANCESTORS — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:08:26 +0000

The Canadian version of WDYTYA was on CBC last year. http://www.cbc.ca/whodoyouthinkyouare/
It was a half hour programme featuring one famous Canadian per episode. I found the show to be quite entertaining and well researched. Janice Nickerson of Upper Canada Genealogy was one of the genealogists for the show. The genealogists working on these shows are up against deadline which make accessing records especially oversees a real challenge.
Unfortunately, CBC decided to cancel the show despite it being popular.

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:24:14 +0000

I can see myself blogging about the errors on the TV show. This will come from two fronts. Hopefully they hire good genealogists to do research, but if not, well–that’ll be fun.

Secondly, these types of shows are entertainment. So, the “aha” or “discovery” moment is necessary and the shows are edited accordingly. It is impossible to determine how much real research went to get to that moment. I felt frustrated watching either the PBS shows like Prof. Gates’ show on African-American genealogy or History Finders thinking I would do things quite differently. But that was based on the edited program and not on what might have been actually done.

I’ll also be blogging things like “been there done that.” If the show is a hit, then other writers and so on will be commenting and most of them in ignorance. So I foresee many, many corrections coming.

By: Schelly Talalay Dardashti

Schelly Talalay Dardashti — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:47:30 +0000

Hi, Thomas

It is not a rip-off, it is an official licensing agreement between BBC and NBC and WDYTYA has similar agreements in Australia and other countries. Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe on ‘Friends’) is the executive producer. Her physician father is a genealogist. The Kudrow and the Talalay are both from Mogilev, Belarus. i wrote about this most recently here, and included my past notices about this as well (last year when the first news broke).
http://tracingthetribe.blogspot.com/2009/01/lisa-kudrow-friend-in-family.html

I think our computers will overload as this series gets underway. What we need from NBC is a widget about the show to stick on our blogs.

By: Sarndra

Sarndra — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:24:00 +0000

It’s a direct rip off from the BBC’s WDYTYA. That’s a brilliant programme I hope it’s done as well for your television as it has been for the English. http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/