Local Producer Kimberley Greenwell Talks Excitement of New TV Show Airing This Spring
There is no place like your home sweet home.
Whether you’re looking for a new home or need tips on renovating your home, “My Southern Home,” television show is your home coach. The show airs in Louisville, KY on CW 58 Sunday at 10 am. and in Nashville, TN on MYTV 30 on Saturdays at 10 a.m. A new show will begin airing in Lexington, KY on April 2019. The show is created, hosted and produced by Kimberley Greenwell and features information from builders, contractors and home improvement vendors.
Greenwell, originally from Bardstown, KY, resides in Louisville. She is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University. After graduation, she worked for Landmark Community Newspapers for a year and a half, then worked for WAVE-TV 3 for seven years. She was recruited by Borrell Associates to be an interactive media consultant. She helped television stations launch their internet ads. She also taught their interactive ad platforms and helped them sell ads. It was work that prepared her for her own show.
“Basically, all that background has enabled me to do what I have been doing right now,” she says. “I would never have thought back then that I would have my own television show. It wasn’t something that was in the front of my mind.”
During the time she worked at Borrell, the market fell out of the industry. She was laid off. While she was laid off, she decided to start her own company, KAG Media Consulting, LLC. Around 2011, she landed a contract with the Home Builders Association of Greater Louisville. She helped them with member-to-member marketing, advertising and public relations for their big events – Homearama and the Home, Garden and Remodeling Show. Meanwhile, WBNA 21 was looking for a home show host.
“Towards the end of 2014, out of the blue, I got a call asking if I wanted my own television show on WBNA-21 in the home industry,” Greenwell says. “And I was like, ‘Of course I do!’ It kind of fell out of the blue but everything that I had done up to that point made the position for me. So, I started meeting with WBNA-21 and we came up with the name “Your Kentuckiana Home.” I basically started the show from the ground up for them. The first show of “Your Kentuckiana Home” aired in April 2015. Last summer, some creative issues prompted Greenwell to go to the general manager to express her interest in managing the show and he agreed.
“So basically My Southern Home was born,” she says. “Your Kentuckiana Home” stopped airing in July of 2017 and the first episode of “My Southern Home,” under my company’s ownership (KAG Media Consulting, LLC) and my leadership began in August 2017.”
Southern in the show’s title refers to the region.
“What was cool, the Friday before the first show Vinny Barber with the Barber Cabinet Co., called me and said, “Hey, would you be interested in bringing the show to Nashville and Lexington? And I said yes, I would, so before the first show had aired I had expanded already,” Greenwell says. “It took me a while to get to those markets because at the same time I was launching My Southern Home, I was also starting the first reality television show that aired in Louisville, called Renovating Kentuckiana.
“It was the first reality show which aired in Louisville that was shot at our station about home improvement. The beginning of this year I had an hour block of home improvement television that was all mine. The first from 12 to 12:30 was My Southern Home, the second from 12:30 to 1 p.m. was Renovating Kentuckiana. It was pretty exciting. I did five programs since July. I sell the show, host the show and produce the show. Kyle Haskins, who is amazing, is my videographer and gripper. He knows how to shoot the show so beautifully.”
At one point they were shooting two shows – “My Southern Home” and “Renovating Kentuckiana” at the same time. They only did season one of “Renovating Kentuckiana.” Greenwell says it was too intense maintaining the Nashville market while trying to get the Lexington market off the ground. Since Greenwell is both sales person and host, most of the Louisville clients know her. In Nashville, she had to make herself known. She did this by joining the home owners’ association, attending community meetings, getting involved in the community and sponsoring events all the while building relationships.
“When I enter a market, I start becoming a part of the community,” she says. “That promotes relationship.”
The off-camera relationships transform into on-air ease.
“I make it a point before we go on camera to talk to clients about what they want to talk about,” Greenwell says. “So, they kind of know, we’re talking about things that they talk about every day. My goal is to help them tell their story.”
Everyone who is on the show pays to be on it. In Louisville and Nashville, 12 companies are profiled. Sometimes it is more than12 because companies may split up their segment with builders and remodelers. Greenwell tries to arrange the show so that competing businesses don’t follow each other. Each client’s segment is their time to shine, she says. Greenwell’s favorite thing about producing the show is helping her clients tell their story and helping them grow their business.
“I always tell my clients, this is your opportunity to tell your story,” she says. “My responsibility is to ask the right questions to help them tell it.”
Greenwell wants to help people renovate. She says there are little things that can be done to satisfy the craving for something new. For example, she suggests buying a brand-new shower curtain and some towels ($50). It completely changes the bathroom, giving you something new.
She urges people to build a home — cost is the same as an existing home.
“New construction is something we talk about often on the show,” Greenwell says. “When you think of buying a new home, and I even do this, you always think of an existing home. You don’t think of building your home. You think it is too stressful or you think it’s this or you think it’s that. You think you need all this money and you don’t. You need the same amount of money that you need to buy an existing home. It’s just a different type of loan. And lots of companies make it easy for you.”
The goal is for the Lexington show to start in April 2019. The Louisville and Nashville shows’ new season will start March 2019. The show runs two seasons a year: Spring is March, April and May and Fall season is September, October and November. Reruns of the previous season are aired in the summer.
“I am so proud of my show,” Greenwell adds. “I am so happy this opportunity has been given to me. I am just grateful that I was able to create this kind of program. I want people to watch the segments and take something from it that is going to help their lives a little bit.”
