Funeral planning television is coming to a screen near you. A Good Goodbye TV, an educational and entertaining 12-episode series of 30-minute programs,will present expert interviews on “everything you need to know before you go.”
Host Gail Rubin brings a light touch to a serious subject. Like her award-winning book,A Good Goodbye:Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die,the television program will cover information most people don’t know about until faced with a death in the family.
“Talking about death and funeral planning issues on television enables individuals to discuss these topics with their families and take action,”explained Rubin,The Doyenne of Death® and a Certified Funeral Celebrant. “Each conversation will illustrate my motto:Talking about sex won’t make you pregnant,and talking about funerals won’t make you dead.”
By planning ahead and having a conversation,families can reduce stress at a time of grief,minimize family conflict,save money and create a meaningful,memorable “good goodbye.”Topics to be covered include funeral planning,cremation,cemeteries,green burial and eco-friendly funerals,life celebrations,pet loss,insurance,estate planning,reducing costs,end-of-life issues and much more.
The program will initially air on public access channels in Albuquerque (available in more than 100,000 homes) and along the Rio Grande corridor from Santa Fe to Las Cruces (690,000 households). The series will be offered nationally to 2,700 content-hungry public access channels across the U.S. Pay-per-view online downloads with 10-minute YouTube teasers and DVD sets grouped by topic will follow.
Ads incorporated in the initial 12 programs will enjoy exposure in all distribution channels. The series will debut with four fixed promotable time slots per week on Comcast Channel 26 and 27 in Albuquerque. Each program will have additional free repeats known as “freepeats.” There will be at least one future season rerun.
The anchor sponsor for the series is the FRENCH Family of Companies,including FRENCH Funerals-Cremations,FRENCH Advance Planning,Sunset Memorial Park,Best Friends Pet Services,Best Friends Forever Pet Cemetery and Cremation Society of New Mexico (CSNM).
FRENCH is the recipient of the National Funeral Directors Association’s 2012 Pursuit of Excellence® Award and a member of Selected Independent Funeral Homes.
A Good Goodbye TV offers a great avenue for appropriate companies to expand their consumer reach in a targeted way. The DVDs of the program can be used as an educational tool and in displays at trade shows.
“The interest that funeral homes,suppliers,and financial planners have shown in sponsoring the series is really encouraging. There’s really no TV show like this and as an advertising vehicle it targets interested consumers directly,”said Rubin.
The series producer is Sean Wells with Videotero,LLC. Filming will begin in February 2013. For details on sponsorship levels,visit http://agoodgoodbye.com/a-good-goodbye-tv-series/ to download more information.
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ABOUT GAIL RUBIN
Gail Rubin,The Doyenne of Death®,is author of the award-winning book A Good Goodbye:Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die (www.AGoodGoodbye.com) and The Family Plot Blog (http://TheFamilyPlot.wordpress.com). Host of A Good Goodbye television series,she’s also a Certified Celebrant and a popular speaker who uses humor and films to get the funeral planning conversation started. Rubin is a member of the Association for Death Education and Counseling and the International Cemetery,Cremation and Funeral Association. She’s Vice President of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue of New Mexico,helping to start conversations across religions. She is well versed in Jewish funeral and burial traditions.
This seems like a pretty good idea for a show. Death really sneaks up on people, and when it happens, a lot of people are unsure about how to handle the death and the funeral. I did some funeral planning in Lakewood Co last month and it was a real tough job. This show might be able to prep people for the inevitable.