By now you have likely heard the news that Tarek and Christina of HGTV’s ‘Flip or Flop’ are getting a divorce. It’s a weird situation where she is apparently diddling their contractor, he marched off into the woods with a gun, and is apparently dating anything that moves since they split.
That’s all fine and good, whatever, shit happens, people need to get away from someone and sometimes a marriage doesn’t work out.
But what’s weirder is there is nothing from HGTV about this whole situation.
If you’ve watched HGTV at all since the news of the couple having problems broke, you would have no idea anything was wrong. Every night the channel airs multiple commercials for the show touting that new episodes are every Thursday night at 9 p.m.
And a Google search of the show only brings up the news about the couple’s divorce and other gossip, not one word from HGTV about the couple, the future plans for the show or anything.
It’s insanely odd.
It’s almost a bit like any time the NFL has some major scandal, but with even less talk about it. The NFL will at least mention whatever scandal there is on one of its dozen pregame shows, then never talks about it again.
HGTV hasn’t even done that, in fact, the only thing I could find that had comment from HGTV at all was story story from The Wrap.
“We admire and appreciate Tarek and Christina’s great work on ‘Flip or Flop,’” an HGTV spokesperson told TheWrap. “When it comes to matters related to their own family, we respect their privacy and honor any decision that works best for them and their children. HGTV is currently airing episodes of ‘Flip or Flop’ and the series will continue production as scheduled.”
There is zero substance to that. This isn’t some small thing where he or she wanted a break from the show for a bit, this is the two main people of one of your biggest shows going through a breakup that probably brings an end to the show in the near future, but the channel acts like it’s business as usual and will keep showing the new episodes, and hope that you just forget that a someone messy divorce of the stars is underway.
As of now there are four episodes left of the “current” season, and then the “new” season, which starts Jan. 19, will consist of eight episodes. So essentially, HGTV has 12 episodes, or three months of the show, before they need to figure out how to address the divorce and the show.
And then there was this from the the New York Daily News:
Tarek and Christina are also hoping to continue “Flip or Flop” together despite the divorce.
There’s good reason for wanting that to happen, from both sides. According to The Wrap, ‘Flip or Flop’ is the second most watched show on HGTV, behind only ‘Fixer Upper’ totaling nearly 3 million viewers for new episodes in 2016.
That amounts to big advertising dollars for the show and the channel, and in turn, big paychecks for Tarek and Christina as they lie to you and tell you that the all white cabinets and quartz counter tops look “so good” and that it will “really impress buyers.”
The couple reportedly makes $10,000 per episode so you figure around 24 episodes each year is a cool $240k, and that’s before the money they make on the houses and whatever appearance, speaking fees and endorsements they receive.
So yeah, both parties want to try and keep this gravy boat rolling.
So to make a long story short, when you flip on HGTV tonight or whenever and see an add for new episodes of ‘Flip or Flop’, remember what’s actually going on, and that you are probably watching some of the last episodes of the show.