It has been a landmark week for The Family History Guide Association.

On May 20 we received an unexpected email from “Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid,” a popular documentary series that runs on various PBS channels. Their research team had selected us as a potential partner for the filming of their new project: Roots Rediscovered – Exploring the World of Genealogy.

Needless to say, we got right back to them! Through several calls and emails we had the chance to elaborate on The Family History Guide’s mission and background, and how it could make for a compelling story to be shown on television. It took less than one week from the initial call, to working through the details, to signing the broadcast agreement. It was abundantly clear that the Viewpoint organization is efficient and focused in getting educational documentaries off the ground.

About Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid

From the Viewpoint website:  “The goal of the Viewpoint Project is to enlighten the audience by delivering diverse informational and educational documentaries by covering a variety of issues and topics. Viewpoint Project is on the cutting edge of the television documentary industry, producing top quality programming for Public Television … Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid features a creative team of tenured producers, writers, editors, and imaging specialists with over one hundred years of cumulative experience … The development team behind Viewpoint has received over one hundred Telly© awards over the course of twenty years in the industry.”

Viewpoint has produced educational videos for Royal Caribbean, Carnegie Mellon University, the National Civil Rights Museum, the University of Georgia, Del Monte Foods, MGM Resorts International, IBM Watson, Southwest Airlines, and many other academic and commercial organizations.

What This Means …

So let’s get down to the details. This partnership between Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid and The Family History Guide Association will create three new educational and informational video segments for television broadcast. Here’s a brief summary:

• Public Television Segment (3-5 minutes): This segment is above all else about education – education that informs viewers on the very latest topics and trends impacting the world. It will air in all 50 states. It is a 3-5-minute short-form documentary that bridges the gap between 25-min and 55-min shows. On average the segments air 45-60 times per quarter, so it will be distributed to roughly 60 million households, leaders in education and businesses.
• Corporate Identity Demo (5-7 minutes): This segment is a behind-the-scenes look at The Family History Guide Association and will be emailed to up to 1 million niche/targeted viewers requesting information about the Association.
• Educational “Commercial” Spot for the Major Networks (1 minute): The 1-minute educational commercial spot or “60-Second Documentary” will air once in every city nationally and an additional 400 times in the top 100 markets by population (e.g., New York, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Houston, L.A., Seattle, etc.). Viewership is roughly 84 million households and businesses. Viewpoint utilizes the largest channels in terms of viewership, such as FOX Business Network, Bloomberg, CNBC, The Learning Channel, and Discovery Channel.

The Plan

The first phase in the plan is creating the story material for the three video segments. Team members from both organizations will collaborate to capture essential and compelling information to present to viewers. When the story has been edited and finalized, the filming will begin. Viewpoint will provide an expert team of filmmakers and production specialists to record the raw footage.  Once the video has been edited to create the three segments, it will be reviewed and approved. The finished videos will be broadcast beginning about one week after approval, which should be sometime around September 2024.

We at The Family History Guide Association are beyond excited to be working with Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid on this project. Our hope is to raise awareness throughout the country about the importance of family history, the difference it makes in people’s lives, and how The Family History Guide helps people achieve their family history goals.

We’ll keep you posted on progress for this amazing project as we go. In the meantime, check out Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid online, of course The Family History Guide, and this teaser video we created: