Chip and Joanna Gaines, stars of HGTV's "Fixer Upper" KILZ

The housing crash affected far more than housing. Here's a story from The New York Times on what it did to a certain TV network and how that network flipped in response.

If not for the financial crisis, it’s entirely possible that American TV viewers would never have heard of shiplap or considered Waco, Tex., a cool place to visit.

Chip and Joanna Gaines, the hosts of HGTV’s hit show “Fixer Upper,” popularized farmhouse chic — and with it, shiplap, a cladding material that was once used for barns — as they went about their inexpensive but stylish home renovations.

The opening credits of “Fixer Upper” during the first season of the show.Entire neglected neighborhoods in Waco, the Gaineses’ home city, underwent a transformation during the five years the couple spent providing loving care to creaky old houses, including a gut job of a 100-year-old Colonial with warped and rotted floors and resident critters.

Mrs. Gaines was the brains, Mr. Gaines the brawn, and they drew in viewers partly because of the charming married-couple banter that punctuated their planning sessions and construction work. “Fixer Upper” was markedly different in tone and purpose from the flashy home TV shows popular in the go-go years before the crash. With their focus on family (the couple have five children), the Gaineses became unlikely stars by celebrating the virtues of responsible home stewardship, rather than trying to turn run-down properties into profit centers.

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