Inspiring Television

I'm not normally able to watch television on Friday Night, but I have sometimes recorded a show on NBC called Who Do You Think You Are?". When you have free hour (even via DVR), you should definitely take the time to enjoy one of the episodes. No matter how serious of a genealogist you are, it is very interesting to watch various well-known personalities as they follow the trail to find their ancestry.

One spoiler alert: I've come to the conclusion that the most recent episodes have become more of a blatent advertisement for Ancestry.com. This distracts a little bit from the exceptional concept and intriguing story lines. My beef with their overt efforts to sell their product is related to my previous posts objecting to the quote "you don't have to know what you are looking for." Actually, you do! As we've discussed several times before, you should never assume that you can just type names into a search engine and instantly retrieve your family tree. There is a lot of "off-line" work that needs to happen before you can verify online discoveries.

To be blunt, the show sometimes provides an overly optimistic representation of how actual genealogy searches usually proceed. They usually use the services of professional genealogists - which I think is a very good thing. However, the ease with which the "star of the show" is able to find their family is a reality TV representation of the actual time-staking (trial & error) data mining and long-term commitment to genealogy searches required to find family roots. But I'm not naive - how could anyone make a show entertaining if it took several weeks to locate one name? The time lapse between the beginning and end of the episodes isn't immediately obvious, so we may just be watching the highlights. I'll admit that gives me a great feeling to watch people as they rediscover the amazing stories of their family's past.

Despite my criticisms above, I highly recommend the show - usually broadcast starting at 8 PM in the Eastern Time Zone on Fridays (check your local NBC listings). No matter what, you will be inspired to keep looking for your roots. For every famous person who had the resources to find everything in the space of a one hour TV episode, there are many other "regular" people who will find the same results with some serious dedication (and time). The show should remind you to never quit searching. Happy hunting!