Occasionally when discussing NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” with other genealogy enthusiasts they express dismay that only celebrities are featured on the show. Usually these people find it ironic and maybe a little unfair that celebrities like Tim McGraw (who will be featured this Friday at 8/7 central), Steve Buscemi and Rosie O’Donnell are getting free research when they have plenty of money and could afford to pay to have their research done. I can certainly see the reasons behind this frustration, but if you think about how “Who Do You Think You Are?” can benefit the genealogy community as a whole, it’s pretty easy to get past being frustrated.

First of all, it’s important to remember that Americans love celebrities; it’s the reason magazines like People and Us Weekly are so successful. Even if you aren’t particularly interested in celebrities, other Americans are. I think it would be great if a show could feature regular people tracing their roots, but the fact is such a show just wouldn’t have the same mass appeal.

With that said, mass appeal is not only the key to a successful show, but to that successful show greatly benefiting the genealogy community. Look at it this way – as “Who Do You Think You Are?” reaches a larger audience, more people enter the genealogy market. Of course, that’s great for genealogy companies and professional genealogists, but it also impacts other genealogy enthusiasts.

As more people become interested in genealogy, more companies selling genealogy services and products will also enter the market. This means greater competition, which means better quality services and products – all of which will benefit the genealogy consumer.

Resources will also become more widely available. When companies or organizations contemplate microfilming, digitizing or indexing any given resource, one of the major factors they consider is the demand. (Of course there are other things to consider as well like cost, the availability of the records, and who has the rights to the record.) With demand being one of the biggest considerations, and with demand in general going up, the resources you’ve been waiting for are much more likely to become available.

I’m not saying that “Who Do You Think You Are?” is the magic bullet that will fix all the problems in the genealogy world. I do think, though, that when it succeeds in introducing lots of people to our hobby/obsession, then it’s accomplished more than most television shows.