Channel Surfing

By Steve Johnson, Chicago Tribune Television Critic

"Tool TV": My favorite local infomercial used to be, hands down, "The Baird & Warner Home Show" on CLTV, which doesn't return to the Sunday morning schedule until Jan. 18. But this locally produced effort, a gussied-up, 30-minute ad for Berland's House of Tools in Lombard and Palatine, makes a strong play for my affections in its holiday episode, "Tools Not Ties", the first "Tool TV" I've seen.

As "B&W" does with other people's houses, "Tool TV" lets you gawk at a variety of muscular power tools without ever leaving your couch. If you've ever enjoyed two hours in a hardware store with nothing in particular to buy, you'll understand the appeal.

The show's host and Tim Allen equivalent is "The Tool Man," Berland's president Dwight Sherman, a seemingly no-nonsense guy who spends much of the episode in absurdist holiday headgear. I'm not sure all those implements -- routers and bandsaws and generators and more -- could be such splendid bargains as Sherman claims, but I'm not planning to spend $1600 on a table saw, anyway.

What makes this more than just salesmanship is the work of area communications executive Roger Bain, the show's writer, producer and musical director. Bain keeps the writing bright and crafts a song for more episodes. The new tune, produced in music-video style, echoes the episode title, calling for the loved ones of area males to gift them with items for the basement shop rather than the neck.

"Tool TV" airs tonight at 10 p.m. and almost every other night through the end of the month on WJYS-Ch. 62.

- back -