Production co. meets reality TV

Lindsay Sandham

With reality TV seemingly taking over the airwaves, media companies

are looking for innovative ways to cash in on the phenomenon.

Costa Mesa-based Magellan Media tapped into the trend last year

when it began producing behind-the-scenes footage for various

homebuilding companies featured on ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home

Edition.”

The show, which is going into it’s third season, documents the

re-construction of a needy family’s home, a project that would

normally take four months but is completed in less than one week.

Homebuilding companies donate their time, materials, employees and

services to build, or in some cases re-build, the houses. With such

rigid time constraints -- the builders are given five days and nine

hours to complete the project -- it takes at least three times the

number of employees and some creative building techniques to get each

project done.

Although the work is charitable, the homebuilding companies were

not getting any media coverage, which was focused instead on the

emotions of the family having its home rebuilt. So a representative

from HomeAid contacted Greg Jacobs, founder and co-owner of Magellan

Media, last August about working with homebuilding companies to

document the projects.

HomeAid, a national nonprofit that builds and renovates shelters

for the temporarily homeless, got involved with “Extreme Makeover:

Home Edition” by connecting the show’s producers with quality

homebuilders.

“It’s been a great version of corporate programming,” Jacobs said

of the behind-the-scenes videos they produce for homebuilders.

Magellan’s specialties are 30-second television commercials,

high-end movie trailers and corporate programming, so naturally

Jacobs agreed to work on these projects.

The companies -- Centex, Pardee Homes, Beazer Homes, Standard

Pacific, Shea Homes and Taylor Woodrow -- use the behind-the-scenes

videos as promotional and marketing tools for their products by

displaying them on their websites, at trade shows and as showroom

marketing.

Jacobs said the concept of entertaining corporate programming is

new to most construction companies.

“We took something that was somewhat secondary to them and made it

first tier,” he said. “We approach the project as if we were

approaching a network TV project.”

“The challenge is finding the differences from one homebuilding

company to the next,” co-owner of Magellan Media Brent Loefke said.

“They all build homes, but they all do it differently.”

Jacobs, who has spent his entire life working in TV production,

founded Magellan Media in August 2002 when he decided to leave the

family business in Colorado and start his own in Orange County.

“I had the gift of gab. I knew the business. I had a phone and a

Rolodex,” Jacobs said of his start-up days. He said the first couple

of years were tough, but last year the company did $3 million in

business.

Jacobs hooked up with Loefke, the company’s “creative side,” in

2003. He attributes a great deal of the company’s success to that

partnership.

“His creativity and my business sense were a perfect match,”

Jacobs said. “I get the business and then he makes it interesting.

He’s what took us to the next level.”

Loefke, whose commercials have won many awards, said his work at

Magellan is different from what he’s done in the past.

“We had an opportunity to start this thing and thought it was time

for Orange County to have a creative house,” he said. “So here we

are, taking a stand in O.C.”