Framework and Ellen's Design Challenge: Furniture-Making as Spectator Sport

This is an interesting read about the show:

Craacck. There is nothing like the sound of splintering wood to make you jump up out of your chair. For Rahil Taj, a contestant on the Spike TV show Framework, the jolt was especially intense. When one of the show’s judges sat on the rocking chair he’d scrambled to make in 24 hours, “it f---ing broke,” as Taj put it. “That’s the worst thing that can happen.” Somehow, he wasn’t eliminated: Another competitor built a very boring stool.

Framework, airing on Tuesdays at 10 p.m., is one of two new shows seeking to dramatize the making of furniture. The other, backed and hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, is Ellen’s Design Challenge, playing Mondays at 9 p.m. on HGTV. Together, they represent the latest evolution of the you-make-it-we-watch-it lifestyle competition show, a genre that’s proliferated in the decade since Project Runway and Top Chef turned the making of dresses and meals into popular entertainment. It’s somewhat amazing that, Bob Vila aside, trendy furniture builders have gone untelevised this long.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-29/furniture-making-on-tv-framework-and-ellen-s-design-challenge

Here is also an interesting article: http://551eastdesign.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-smorgasbord.html