Almost 25 years ago, newlyweds Regis and Joy Philbin walked into a furniture store with no decorating scheme in their minds, but with cash burning a hole in their pockets.
They left with a huge yellow sectional-what Joy, in retrospect, calls her “biggest decorating disaster.”
“Like many young couples, we had to keep that sofa for awhile,” she sighs. “It showed every stain. I hated it.”
But these days, the native Chicagoan is not only more aware of the appealing possibilities in home decor-she’s making a living off them.
For the last five years, television viewers across the nation have tuned in to find Regis perched on a stool and bantering with his perennially chipper co-host on “Live with Regis & Kathie Lee”; now, they can flip the dial and discover Joy, settled into the tastefully upholstered sofa on the jasper-green set of “Haven,” which bills itself as the first syndicated TV show dedicated to home decorating.
Popularity growing
The half-hour series, which made its debut in April, airs locally at 10:30 a.m. Fridays on WGBO-Ch. 66. Though buried in graveyard time slots in many of the 100 markets in which it airs, “Haven” must be doing something right: The Home Furnishings Council, the marketing-oriented trade association that produces the show, has renewed it for another 13 episodes.
As for Joy Philbin, though her hosting duties require her to chat about everything from chintz to china closets, she points out that she never made a living snipping swatches.
“That’s what I love about the show-I’m not and don’t profess to be a professional interior designer,” says the host, who got the job after “Haven” executives spotted her on “Live” where she was discussing the renovation of the Philbins’ 10-room Manhattan apartment while pinch-hitting for Kathie Lee Gifford (who, not so coincidentally, happens to be the Home Furnishing Council’s celebrity spokeswoman).
“I’m learning along with the show. And when I talk to experts, hopefully I’m asking the same questions a viewer would.”
With its sneak-peeks at celebrity homes and snippets of straightforward news-you-can-use, “Haven” balances the fanciful and the practical: Viewers might get a tour of Richard Simmons’ black-and-white-spotted “Dalmation room,” followed by a segment on how to choose a cedar chest. And with the cancellation of ABC’s daily “Home” series earlier this year, “Haven” has a lot of elbow room: Except for “Martha Stewart Living” (seen locally at 11 a.m. Sundays on WBBM-Ch. 2), no other program addresses home decor outside the realms of public television and cable.
Though “Haven” is the brainchild of the furniture industry and doesn’t miss an opportunity to spur sales (viewers can call an 800 number for information on any of the products seen on the show), executive producer Robert W. Nightengale says it’s hardly an infomercial.
“We’re living in a very eclectic world, and so we’re not just selling furnishings,” says Nightengale, who adds that the show also has covered topics not directly related to the mass-market furniture industry, like antiques. “Our reason for being is marketing.”
Help in navigating
In recent years, trend analysts like Faith Popcorn ballyhooed the popularity of stay-at-home “cocooning” among Baby Boomers. But according to Nightengale, who is also president of the Home Furnishings Council, the long-range statistics aren’t as heartening: In 1970, Americans spent 1.2 percent of their disposable income on home decor; today, that number hovers around .7 percent-a difference of about $22 billion. But as those numbers have begun to gradually grow, so has the size of the home-decorating universe. Thanks to thousands of new products and fabrics, many of them computer-generated, consumers confront a bewildering thicket of choices.
“Haven,” of course, hopes to help viewers navigate them, and in Philbin’s case, it has done just that. She says hosting the show has given her a greater appreciation of the mood-altering power of color; recently she found the courage to paint one of her rooms red, a color she had always admired. And her husband has not only come to trust her decorating acumen (“Though he was very nervous when I started talking about a canopy over the bed; he was worried it might interfere with the television reception.”), he has even taken her show’s advice to heart.
“Regis saw our segment on media walls, and I think he got an idea from that,” says the host of “Haven” with some pride, “because now we have one.”
