Consumers are interested in HVAC and indoor air quality (IAQ) according to the viewership numbers logged for a Designing Spaces cable TV home improvement episode featuring four Nortek Global HVAC equipment brand installations.
The 30-minute HVAC episode aired in August on the Lifetime Television national cable TV network and documented four Nortek Global HVAC contractor/dealers’ air conditioning and heating equipment installations. It was one of the more popular Designing Spaces episodes with over 350,000 viewers, according to production executives. “Understanding how HVAC systems function can be extremely intimidating to many homeowners,” states Arash Farsi, broadcast creative director at the Deerfield, Fla.-based, video production company Brandstar. “Our goal was to bring combine HVAC system education with tips on how to have an intelligent conversation with an HVAC professional.”
The video was also syndicated nationally to 150 TV stations and is now continuing its response with Internet visits to designingspaces.tv driven by social media promotions on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The show will air several more times on Lifetime Television throughout the fourth quarter of 2019 and syndication will reach more than 86 million households.
The featured contractors, locations and equipment during the episode are:
- Rusty Tensfield Heating & Cooling, Manchester, Tenn., Frigidaire FSA1BE split-system air conditioner
- My Guy Heating and Air, Carlsbad, Calif., two Maytag CSA1BE split-system air conditioners
- Valley Heating & Cooling, Athens, Ala., an Airtemp VQ7RE packaged heat pump in Athens
- Colony Heating & Air Conditioning, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Reznor UDAP unit heater
Four Nortek Global HVAC distributors–Partners Supply, Chattanooga, Tenn.; AC Pro, Oceanside, Calif., R.E. Michel Co., Decatur, Ala., and Plumb Supply Co., Cedar Rapids–helped coordinate logistics between their contractor dealers and the show producer.
Designing Spaces TV Host David Leon chronicled each installation with storytelling using consumer-friendly descriptions, and offered tips for aftermarket HVAC maintenance and service. More than 500 hours of video were shot and edited down to 30 minutes by a 12-person production and post-production team, according to Jennifer Giordano, a Brandstar project director. For Tensfield, who has installed Nortek brands since 2000 with his five-year-old company and previous HVAC contractor employer, videotaping presented some unconventional moments, such as applying make-up and aesthetically wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt in the three-hour sultry July attic scene. The typical four-hour retrofit also doubled in installation time due to additional takes and videotape set-ups. Surprisingly, he reports his Facebook page traffic is up 20 percent and website hits have increased since the taping, proving that consumers are interested in improving their HVAC and IAQ environment.