Remodeled 'Spaces' trades new for old

The Rocky

Published January 30, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by TLC

Paige Davis returned last week as host of TLC's home-improvement show Trading Spaces.

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Two days! Two neighbors! A thousand dollars!

Those seven words were like the sound of cash registers - if cash registers actually still made noise - to the programmers at TLC.

So it doesn't take a degree in macroeconomics to understand why the cable network handed the keys to Trading Spaces back to Paige Davis, the chipper Broadway performer who can make Richard Simmons seem dour.

Think back to 2002, when the show was in the vanguard of home-improvement programs. Not just a curiosity in cable's hinterlands, it was the No. 1 cable show on Saturday nights.

One episode drew 9 million viewers, outperforming some of the network programming that evening.

To be fair, the ratings had already cratered when TLC booted Paige off the show in 2005 in favor of a "hostless" format ("It came out of left field and was done in a relatively brutal way," she told the New York Daily News).

But without Davis, the slide toward trivial afterthought became a free-fall, and soon the show was looking up at whatever was airing on the Oxygen channel.

So as of last week, Davis was back in business, once again telling brave neighbors to open your eyes and look at your room!

Davis isn't the only element of Spaces' "what's old is new again" formula for 2008:

What's the same

* Two teams perform makeovers on a room in each other's house for $1,000. The show's previous ploys to get a second wind - such as a bonus room with an extra $1,000 - are gone.

* The theme music and overhead cameras that capture the redesign mayhem in time-lapse photography are both back.

* Designers Doug Wilson, Laurie Hickson-Smith, Frank Bielic and Hildi Santo- Thomas have all returned to make a mess out of rooms.

* It anchors Saturday's lineup, airing at 7 p.m. in Denver.

What's different

* The two teams no longer are necessarily neighbors. And producers have gone out of their way to pick people who have a friendly ax to grind, like a divorced couple, warring mothers-in-law, a boss and his employee, an Air Force and Navy family or competing cheerleaders.

* In its salad days, Davis and company would crank out 75 shows a season. Now she's doing no more than 26.

* Old Spaces carpenter Ty Pennington is too busy coaxing crocodile tears from viewers of ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to return to the fold; a trio of carpenters will instead be swinging hammers this season.

* The original producers are history, replaced by the same team that guides Hell's Kitchen.

Coming up

More reality has gotten the green light to fill TV's yawning programming chasm:

* Top Chef is set to return to Bravo on March 12 with 16 new contestants, many of them either from New York City or San Francisco

* Celebrity Circus will put quasi- famous faces a la Dancing with the Stars alongside professional circus troupes. The three rings of inanity will debut on NBC this summer.

* Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List will be back for a fourth season on Bravo. This installment will also reportedly feature her new billionaire boyfriend, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. It's set to air in June.

* Tori & Dean . . . Still Inn Love is returning to the Oxygen channel for a third season even though Tori Spelling and hubby Dean McDermott have ditched their B&B and moved back to Hollywood. No word on when this installment - which will follow the couple as they try to find a place to live and a preschool for their child - will begin.

Two and a half problems

Wouldn't you like to peek inside the mind of a woman who thought marrying Charlie Sheen was a good idea?

Ryan Seacrest thought so. That's why he's producing a new reality show that will follow the life and times of Denise Richards.

But there have been a few road bumps to put this Beverly Hills freak show on the air. Namely, Charlie Sheen objects. The world knows all about his foibles and fetishes (think call girls and cheerleading outfits), but he's not happy about his and Richards' two daughters, 3-year-old Sam and 2-year-old Lola, being on camera.

A judge has had to step in, since Richards and Sheen have been embroiled in a lengthy battle over custody and visitation rights.

Seacrest - who has a production deal with E! - says not to worry.

"I don't know if the kids would necessarily be involved," he told OK! magazine. "It would be about her, if we do this, and her life. And what she wants to do with it, with her career."

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