It’s a busy week for locals featured on unscripted shows “House Hunters” and “Mom’s the Bride.”
‘House Hunters’
First up, Washington, Pa., real estate agent Katherine Correa appears on “House Hunters” (10 tonight, HGTV), showing off homes to clients moving into the area from North Carolina.
“The opportunity came about when my clients, Elizabeth and Eric Sanders, reached out to the production company and expressed interest in being featured on the show,” Correa explained. “They went through an initial video interview process so the producers could get a feel for their chemistry and personalities. The production company found them fun, entertaining and loved their story, which helped them move on to the second phase of auditions.”
That’s when Correa came into the process.
“The producers wanted to learn more about my experience, my knowledge of the Pittsburgh and Washington County real estate markets, and my personality on camera,” Correa said. “Having worked as a Realtor for the past five years, I’ve built much of my business through social media by creating reels and fun, engaging videos for my clients and audience. I think the producers felt our personalities and dynamic together would make for a very entertaining episode.”
‘Mom’s the Bride’
While “House Hunters” is a long-running show, Hallmark streaming series “Mom’s the Bride” is in its first season.
Each episode follows an adult woman who is helping to plan her mother’s dream wedding. Frequent Hallmark Channel star Erin Cahill hosts the series, which filmed an episode in Pittsburgh last fall.
Producers for “Mom’s the Bride” reached out to local wedding planners, which is how bride Tara Kirby and her daughters, Deijah Swihart and Nadia Whitson, got invited to appear in the series. Kirby agreed to be on the show after thinking about the death of her father four years ago.
“We don’t have a voicemail of his anymore,” Kirby said. “Just being able to have this opportunity with my daughters — it’s something that they will always have, that I will always have.”
Kirby also appreciated the questions from “Mom’s the Bride” producers.
“They were interviewing and asking us questions about my relationships with my daughters, with my fiancé and they had some great questions that made me take a step back and think about my relationships with all three of them,” Kirby said. “The questions were a little bit more in-depth than what we talk about when we’re just talking.”
When it came to her November wedding day, Kirby said she didn’t notice the cameras.
“It wasn’t real intrusive or anything,” she said. “But again, getting ready for the wedding and stuff like that, when we did do a little bit of filming, it slowed everything down a little bit, and I feel like I was able to just take it in a little bit more. I wasn’t so task-oriented.”
Other Western Pennsylvanians featured in the episode that begins streaming May 28 include Sarah Leist, who owns and operates Grace & Petals, a flower preservation service, out of her Murrysville home.
Leist said “Mom’s the Bride” producers were looking for a flower preservation artist to help Kirby’s daughters make a gift of a pressed flower frame.
Leist filmed her portion of the episode at a Dormont florist for seven hours.
“They had a whole TV crew there, so these giant lighting setups and things that you’ll never see on TV were in the background,” she said. “Maybe for three hours I sat at a table with the daughters and Erin Cahill and we did our project for their mom.”
Leist taught the daughters the process of flower preservation before finishing the project in time for the wedding.
“It was very intimidating and overwhelming, but I will say that the Hallmark star, Erin Cahill, was the most professional and cheerful and kind — everything you would want a Hallmark star to be, or imagine them to be,” Leist said. “If I was ever going to have to be on TV, it would be the Hallmark Channel for sure. It was a great experience.”
Pirates’ TV tie-ins
In addition to a Dr. Robby (from “The Pitt”) bobblehead give-away at a game on July 25, the Pirates will have another TV tie-in this summer.
For the third game on July 26 during Yinzerpalooza Weekend, Pirates game attendees ages 14 and under will receive a plush Daniel Tiger (from PBS’s “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood”) dressed in a Pirates jersey.
Canceled
Fox has no plans to bring back “So You Think You Can Dance” after an 18-season run.
Starz canceled “Spartacus: House of Ashur” after a single season.
The fifth and final season of “All the Queen’s Men” debuts June 10 on Paramount .
Amazon’s Prime Video show “I’m a Virgo” will not return for a second season.
Ratings
The series finale of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” drew 6.74 million live same-day viewers, making it the show’s most-watched episode ever, per Deadline.com. (The series’ premiere in 2015 drew 6.55 million viewers.)
The two-episode premiere of “Yellowstone” spin-off “Dutton Ranch” tallied 12.9 million views within seven days of its release, making “Dutton Ranch” the biggest series launch in Paramount history, per Variety.
Channel surfing
Nationally syndicated morning radio show “The Breakfast Club with Charlamagne tha God” will be simulcast live daily on Netflix beginning June 1, becoming the streamer’s first daily live program airing each 6-9 a.m. weekday. … Timed to the 50th anniversary of the first midnight screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a new documentary, “Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror,” will be available via digital on demand platforms June 2, featuring interviews with Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Jack Black and Trixie Mattel. … Spurred, no doubt, by the success of “Michael” in theaters, Netflix debuts a three-part docuseries, “Michael Jackson,” June 3, about the singer’s 2005 criminal trial where he was charged with molesting an underage boy.