TV Show Idea

Maybe it was the idea of Nerd TV, or maybe it was just me watching too much G4 TV, but somehow I came up with the idea for a new televison show. Allow me to share...

We in the programming world already have the concept of cookbooks, why then don't we have our own cooking show? And that's what I'm suggesting, a programming cooking show.

You could imagine that you would have a regular host who would be given a particular programming or development task. He would then work with an expert in the field to solve the particular problem. And just in the case of a cooking show, you would show the interesting parts (maybe the design session, maybe some iterative development, or even testing), and skip past the boring stuff. It could turn into a show where craft of programming is discussed and shown, and not simply an interview about some now very rich or poor geek.

I could imagine that the assignments could cut across many areas of the development world. Samples might include: make a web forum board, develop a program for an embedded system, customize eclipse, get rid of red-eye from a photograph, run a design session for a very large project.

The better metaphor for this show may be one of those home-improvement howto (This Old Project, maybe?)

Who would watch? Well, geeks and programmers, of course. But I could imagine that you could pick certain well known episodes to cover lighter topics such as excel macros, or tweaking MS-word that more of the general public would follow. Also, if done right, it could almost take on a car-talk audience, which may just watch to see the banter and may not even be interested in the details of the subject.

So that's the idea. Would you actually watch it? What would you change about it to make it a better show?