• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 8 hours ago

The HGTV team that makes up titles for TV shows is sitting around brainstorming one day over a title for a new home-buying show.

The show is about buying homes on the beach (or near one) for less money than one would think. 

HGTV already has one called “Beachfront Bargain Hunt” that has run for a long time. Great title.

But now, there’s a new show that takes up the same theme. So, the team is kicking around ideas and someone comes up with a title derived from the slang language of the streets -- “Cheap A$$ Beach Houses.”

Then everybody looks at each other, and especially at the team leader at the end of the conference table who seems especially pleased, and because of that, everyone falls in line with it. Thumbs up. Great job, guys. What’s for lunch?

A show with a title like “Cheap A$$ Beach Houses” makes it sound like a cheap-ass show, which is something we already know about many of the shows on HGTV.

This is why we marvel at them in the first place. Take “House Hunters,” which has been around since 1999. The episode count is said to be north of 2,400 now. 

It is simplicity personified. The show consists entirely of regular people and a real estate agent touring ordinary houses to buy. And then, at the end of each half-hour show, they buy one. 

It is one of the great concepts of all time -- predictable, relatable, inexpensive. Does that make “House Hunters” a cheap-ass show? Well, if that is the kind of language one prefers, I guess so.

But to me, calling someone or something “cheap-ass” sounds like a pejorative. Like someone might say to a friend who never volunteers to split the check when they eat out, “This is the last time I’m going out to eat with your cheap ass.” 

In the premiere episode of “Cheap A$$ Beach Houses” -- which the TV Blog previewed earlier this week -- no one calls any of the houses on view “cheap-ass” houses or uses the phrase at all.

Episode One took place in Virginia Beach. The potential home buyers were a 30-something couple with a dog, no kids. 

The show differs very little from “Beachfront Bargain Hunt,” although “BBH” (acronym for “Beachfront Bargain Hunt”) is more family oriented.

So here we are. Instead of titling a show “Beach Houses for a Song” or something else just as melodious, we have “Cheap A$$ Beach Houses.”

Where is the art in that? In “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens described Ebenezer Scrooge as a “flinty old pinch-penny.” Calling him a “Christmas cheap-ass” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

“Cheap A$$ Beach Houses” premieres next Wednesday, December 3, with two back-to-back episodes at 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Eastern on HGTV.

Photo credit: HGTV