I'm not real sure why Extreme Makeover: Home Edition started including celebrities on the show, but it has to have helped their ratings. I suppose you can only watch Ty Pennington help so many families in need. Rebuilding different houses every week is interesting, but for some reason once you add in a family in need in that house and explore all their troubles every week, it seems to get a little rote.
This is why the show needed to start bringing in celebrities. What's most impressive, though, is the celebrities they have chosen to bring in. They're not getting one big name and a bunch of B, C, and D celebs, they're getting big names every week. So far this season, Extreme Makeover has brought in The Muppets, Mary J. Blige, Selena Gomez, Patrick Dempsey, David Duchovny, Kellie Pickler, Clint Black, Ashley Tisdale, Patricia Heaton, and Five For Fighting. That's an impressive list.
Now this week, they brought in David Cook to make an appearance on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. An American Idol winner! We knew this guy would be willing to help out a family, too. His own family stepped it up when he was competing in the final weeks of American Idol. His brother was dying of cancer and needed an expensive medical flight out to see David at the finale. The family and their friends sold Live Strong bracelets to raise money for this, but sadly by the time the finale rolled around, although David made it that far, his brother was too sick to travel, even in a special medically equipped flight, and he passed away last year.
Regardless, all of that plays into the type of person David is. He spoke on Extreme Makeover of watching someone you care about suffer, after watching his brother slowly die from cancer. He stepped it up this week to chip in to help the family of this girl who credits him as one of her favorite singers. The young girl has a rare blood disease and her family's home was infested with mold, so the job was to rebuild the house and eliminate the mold. David not only chipped in with the actual rebuilding of the house, he also came up with a plan to sell pillows combined with special live strong bracelets to raise more money. And of course, he also chipped in a guitar signed by him to raise money as well.
All those celebrities mentioned before certainly did a lot to bring up ABC's ratings for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, but I'm guessing the star power behind David Cook did a lot. ABC tapped into something great here that is going to do them well. They tapped into not only big name celebrities that people wanted to see, but also celebrities that want to help out, not just promote their latest project. If the show was on the bubble this season, I think they have certainly saved it.
For more on David Cook, see SirLinksALot: David Cook, and for more on American Idol, starting this week, see Reality Shack and SirLinksALot: American Idol.
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Comments: 10
Cathy Wood Jan 20, 2010, 1:11am EST
Hi Laura,
Thanks for your wonderful review of the Extreme Makeover show. It was very touching.
Adam Cook's friends did sell bracelets in his hometown through the efforts of a local radio station trying to raise money to fly Adam to Los Angeles in April 2009, before the finale. A corporation donated the plane when they heard how Terre Haute had rallied around this cause.
Adam Cook did get a medical flight to Los Angeles and was in the audience for the American Idol finale in May. I was there and I met Adam and his wife. They weren't on camera, and didn't sit in the front with the rest of David Cook's family, so it was easy to assume they weren't there. People Magazine erroneously reported that Adam would not be able to travel for the finale, so this is probably where you got the idea Adam never made it. Because Adam's first flight to Los Angeles garnered too much media coverage and it was viewed as an invasion of the family's privacy, a friend of the family told a People Magazine reporter Adam wouldn't be there. But that was just a ruse so the media fanfare wouldn't accompany Adam's second flight to Los Angeles. Adam, his wife and his children quietly flew to Los Angeles and joyously watched David win American Idol.
Adam's medical flight to Los Angeles for the finale didn't happen because of bracelet sales. It started when one fan believed they could raise the money to pay for a plane, inspired by the friends of Adam who'd worked to get Adam to Los Angeles in April. That person was me. Because of the invaluable help, donations and encouragement of Toni Senecal (formerly of Fox News in NYC, now on WPIX), Maureen and Steven Van Zandt, Vickie Wallace of Old National Bank in Adam's hometown, one of David's friends named Ho, David's father and stepmother and other fans who worked tirelessly with me to contact as many online, TV and radio outlets as they could to help get donations, and all the fans who donated their hard earned money to the cause, together we were able to raise $24,000 in one month and received four plane offers. An anonymous donor paid for the plane when he read about the finale campaign, and the money we raised went to help pay Adam's medical bills.
I just thought you'd like to know the whole story.
Nothing was being handled already and nobody was being deceived. The anonymous plane donation came very late, about 4 days before the finale. I don't know who it was positively that donated the plane but I have a strong hunch. I had gotten 4 legitimate plane offers before then but they weren't being considered for reasons I am unsure of. We were plugging away trying to raise the money until the end, when we finally heard he was getting the plane offer. On a Terre Haute news site, there was an article and video about how the fan driven effort had finally raised enough money to fly Adam to LA, but that's not what ended up happening because the anonymous plane donation wasn't accepted until so late.
Hope this clears up your questions. It's hard to remember everything exactly. The important thing I wanted you to know was that Adam did get to LA for the finale and that it was a fan driven effort, not a family/friends of family effort.
Good night!
If you bought the bracelet from someone online before the finale, it had to be the David Cooks Rocks bracelet, because the Grey Matters bracelets weren't sold online until after the finale. Jamie's bracelets were purple.
There wasn't too much out there online about Adam getting to LA after the finale was over, but there was some info. Meredith Viera spoke briefly about it and the anonymous plane donor on The Today Show when David made his first appearance, if I recall correctly. I remembered this morning that David did an interview saying that Adam was tucked away in the back but was at the finale as well.
The finale fund drive was fairly well publicized as well. You just missed it somehow. I didn't get around to posting about the fund drive on every Cook board, and some boards thought the whole campaign was an invasion of family privacy (even though I had family permission) and wouldn't promote it. The "dash" board was one of them (but they have been great in helping with post-finale fundraising efforts for the Cook family).
The website I created to inform people of the campaign was called http://helpbringadamback.com, but of course it's down now. You can google it if you want. I think you'd get more than a few hits. I also created a message board where fans could post about the ongoing effort since the AI boards (where I started the campaign) weren't allowing any discussion of it. It's still up, but inactive of course, and Jamie first posted about her bracelets there. http://helpbringadamback.yuku.com/
Here's an article about the finale fund, and Jamie Silver's bracelets are added as an update at the end:
http://realitytvmagazine.sheknows.com/blog/2008/05/05/american-idol-fans-give-back-to-david-cooks-brother/
There was coverage on Fox Kansas City website and on Fox NY, on TV and on their website, about the finale fund effort. I can dig that stuff up if you're interested. Most of David's fans watched the Fox KC website pretty closely while AI was on. I don't know how you missed it, but at least now you know what really happened. Better late than never!