After years of inspiring me to spend a sizable sum on my own holiday lighting systems without having the room for all of it, ABC’s The Great Christmas Light Fight is celebrating its 10th season of spreading holiday magic and cheer.
The series, which traverses the country every holiday season sees judges Carter Oosterhouse and Taniya Nayak take viewers to the biggest and brightest holiday displays around the country where the families show off their stunning homes for a chance to win $50,000 and the coveted Light Fight trophy. The show, now in its 10th season, sees families make use of everything from their incredible technological know-how, musical talents and holiday theatrics to create eye-opening and jaw-dropping displays. Across 59 episodes, over 230 displays, and almost 3 million dollars in prize money awarded, the show has quite the fan following and continues to inspire new generations of holiday decorators hoping to get their home on the show for their chance at that fancy Light Fight trophy.
I recently had the great fortune of being able to sit with an executive producer of the show, Brady Connell, where I tapped his amazing memory to discuss the past 10 seasons of the show, including some highlights from the current season, and what lies ahead in the future. He even gave me a bit of insight and some fun stories from behind the cameras, a look at the casting process, and shared his hopes for a Halloween incarnation of the show.
Tony:
Ten seasons of The Great Christmas Light Fight. What are your thoughts?
Brady:
I know, it's crazy. We never in a million years thought there were even enough Christmas lights like this in the country to even go a couple of years. When we first got the order, I thought okay, we'll fill this programming hole that ABC had that winter, and maybe we'll get another year out of it, but then we'll probably run out. And here we are, 10 years later, and we're still going strong…And there's more people coming in every year.
Tony:
Oh yeah. I'm noticing that, yes. I realized from the earlier seasons too, not a lot of people knew what it was, like “oh, it's a lighting competition, right?” And now it's like we're on “The Great Christmas Light Fight, woo!” So the first season you had five episodes, and then the second season, that's when you started the six episode seasons.
Brady:
That's right. And we had to figure it out that first year. What does a Christmas lights competition show look like? How could it possibly be fair? We have big light shows and music driven, technology driven light shows, and we have good old fashioned incandescent light static shows. We've got blow molds and all kinds of things. So how do you make it fair? We just decided, let's just throw them all in a hat and let the judges decide.
Tony:
In 10 years alone, or 10 seasons, I should say, I control (my own Christmas lights) with my phones and I got those four years ago, and now people are writing their own software to use these lights. In that kind of time span, how do you evolve the competition and everything with that kind of technology boost?
Brady:
Yeah. Well you'll see in Season 11, Which is next year, which we're shooting now, so we're a year ahead. Just the other night we shot something that I've never seen before in 10 years, blew my mind. It'll be on season 11, and it's technologically driven. I was like, wow, I can't even imagine not having at least one of those or more per season from now on. So yeah, I think it's one of those shows where we're lucky that there's technology evolving because it brings something new to the series each season.
Tony:
You see more traditional stuff like DIY displays or even just static stuff with maybe a little figure here, and then we jump forward to, in this season, which apparently was last year based on the filming schedule, a guy who built his own ride in a garage?
Brady:
Yeah, those guys were great. I specifically went to that one because I wanted to just see it. This is Disney and you're a big Disney guy, especially a theme park guy. They actually, they've been huge fans their whole life. They're still young, they're only in their early 20s.
Tony:
Yeah, I could tell there's a big Imagineering influence there. I didn't want to say it and call out the synergy, but go on.
Brady:
Yeah, I know. And everyone thinks that we do that on purpose, we don't. It just so happens that a lot of the people that are interested in Christmas lights, of course, are fans of Disney. So they actually called, I don't know who it was, some old guy from Imagineering to find out what was the basic technology for rides back then, and they told them that you take two tires and put them horizontally to grab the track, and then they laid the track down and they created this whole little ride for Carter to take, and he was blown away. He's like, "Oh my gosh. Where is this show going next?"
Tony:
I went to a backyard haunted house a couple of years ago at Halloween. I know, not quite Christmas…And they roll up this Westward Ho wagon without the cover and they're like, "Everybody get in." And I grab my friend's hand who was taking me to this place, I grab her by the wrist like, “what are you putting me in? What are you subjecting me to?” And I have to ask what Carter thought when they made him get in the vehicle of this homemade ride?
Brady:
There is a certain amount of trust going on, isn't there? They do a lot of things. They've gone into people's homes and they just have to just go with it. But you got to figure with a Christmas show, no one's going to do anything too bad.
Tony:
Yeah. I was like, “did somebody go first?” like Brady, did you jump in and go and then Carter?
Brady:
Yeah, that's true. In my policy for my whole life, I've done a lot of competition shows, and my policy is I do it, try to do it myself before I ask someone else to do it. But they were great, I'm glad you saw that one because those two, the Pratt Brothers, and they helped us lead off the series this year. They were terrific.
Tony:
Yeah. The Disney eyes caught on, like oh, there's a Small World clock, there's this, this, and then they're like, "Oh, we're going on to …" What was it called, Candy Cane Lane or Sweet Treat, something like that?
Brady:
Yeah. That's right.
Tony:
And I was just like, "What? They built a ride?"
Brady:
I know. And the weird thing is that when I go to these homes, I have to remind myself this is just a regular house. It's just a normal suburban house. So somehow they convince their parents to clean everything out of the garage, completely transforming the garage into a ride. This ride went through, it was Peppermint Lane or something and Marshmallow Way or whatever it was, and you might as well have been at Disneyland, seriously.
Tony:
It was incredible. Now, I know we've talked about that one a lot, but over 10 seasons and 59 episodes, 235 displays. What's the one that just sticks in your head after all this time?
Brady: Yeah, that is tough. That is a really tough question to answer. It's so funny. I look at this garden of lights. It's flowers. Apparently there were 8,000 of these flowers that she hand made.
Tony:
Oh wow.
Brady:
So I'm actually less impressed with technology as I am with heart. When someone puts so much time and effort into something because the Christmas spirit has just taken them over and they want to share it with their community. That is when I have the most lasting reaction. And this was Evelyn, she's up in Utah, I think it was. She made this by herself. She hand made every single one of those flowers, and I use it as my Zoom background just because it still means a lot to me, and that was like three years ago.
Tony:
Okay. So that's the one?
Brady:
Right now, yeah. Yeah. It's so funny, you would think it would be the castle that was gigantic. There have been a couple of those where you can't even see the house, it's completely covered.
Tony:
The ones that kind of caught my attention (is anything animated with) music. One display syncs it up with the music, but the music didn't fit. So I wondered if you guys couldn't get the rights to the music or something.
Brady:
That's very possible. We do let the families use whatever music they want when they present it to the judge because we want them to be able to put their best foot forward and we would never prohibit them from doing that just because of music clearance. So we have to do some post magic, honestly. We have to shoot it in such a way that we can put new music in and hopefully it doesn't completely damage the impression of the display, but the judges do see exactly what the families want to present.
Tony:
Good, good. Now over 10 seasons, You've given out almost $3 million in prize money. Do we ever know, do they invest back into these displays, and do we see them again or will we see them again maybe?
Brady:
Well, the only way you would see them again is if we ran out of lights and we didn't have new amazing things to put on. Then we might go back and be like okay, let's do a rematch episode or [inaudible 00:08:43].
Tony:
Greatest Battle of the Stars or something.
Brady:
Yeah, right, best of. We have actually considered doing a rematch episode of families that didn't win. Have four of them who have changed their displays so much over the last years that being on the show would feel like it was new, but it was another chance for four to compete. But during the casting tape, we even asked them, so what are you going to do with the 50,000 if you win? They're like, "Well, we'll probably put it back in the display because we've already spent a fortune on it."
Tony:
Even now I see the casting saying, "Do you think you have what it takes? Apply now. What are the main things you guys look for when casting?
Brady:
Oh yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, it has to be the display, right? We're unusual, we're different from all the other reality shows out there. We're not casting the people first. We're casting their display first. I hate to say it, but we pretty much cast the display and then whatever comes along with the display is what we put on the show. Which I think is really neat because we have had such a broad spectrum of people on the show, from all different parts of the country, from 47 different states. People who are shy and quiet who would never be on a reality show ever in a million years, and sometimes they come across just fantastic as it's so genuine. So we're looking for something new and different first. That's actually not that easy, but we have had success constantly finding new and different. We put the word out to the community too, to tell them that please, if you're going to spend money on a display, try to do something we've never seen before because that increases your chances of getting chosen.
Tony:
Now, also it's called The Great Christmas Light Fight, but we've seen displays that celebrate other holidays. I know there was a Diwali one recently as well. Is that something you also kind of keep an eye open for?
Brady:
Totally, totally. It's the holiday spirit. We do call it Christmas Light Fight, but nobody is off the casting list. We have had several Jewish families on, which has been great. You see the dreidels and the menorahs and that's fantastic. And yeah, we did Diwali, and there's a Buddhist family that will be on next year, which is pretty cool. So anybody who has a display in their front yard during the holidays is fair game.
Tony:
I need to know the answer: Is there a blooper reel somewhere where there's like a Clark Griswold moment, where like okay, here we go! And then nothing happens?
Brady:
We surprisingly have not had that many of those situations, which you'd think would happen all the time. In the earlier years it did happen a few times. On the very, very first season it happened once and it was so bad that they couldn't be on the show. We couldn't put it on the show. So that has only happened that one time. Several other times there have been full on like “uh-oh, that's not supposed to happen” and they panic. They put the kids down and they run around and take time to solve it, and that has made the show a few times, where we let them sort of play it out because that's real, right? It's a live judging situation and you have to be ready when the judge gets there, and if it goes on for several hours then we kind of would have to call it, but that hasn't happened again since the first season. Usually they figure it out. We had one fire one year…The judge had to go in there and help see if there was a fire in the back. Anything can happen with electricity, right?
Tony:
What judge was it?
Brady:
That was Michael Moloney, so that was, I think it was second season… We had Sabrina Soto and Michael Moloney the first two years. And then Carter Oosterhouse and Taniya Nayak have just been fantastic for the last eight years.
Tony:
I think all the hosts are great, but I feel like Carter is actually genuinely passionate about what's going on.
Brady:
Yeah, he admits that he's really impressed with DIY, when someone does something themselves and they make it, or they use a windshield wiper motor to turn the snowman's hands or whatever. He's like, "Ah, that's really cool." So he loves all that stuff, but he also knows he has to step back and take a look at the lights as a whole, and their use of color, and the use of lights. And Taniya also has her favorite things, but they try to keep it in sync so that a family wouldn't necessarily win just because they have that.
Tony:
Going back to the DIY idea,, there was a full recycled display where everything was recycled materials.
Brady:
Yeah, a lot. Even just the other night, just this past Monday night, the Gingi house was a couple guys who literally, they just took stuff out of the trash and they said stuff, they said pipes laying on the side of the yard and they turned them into lollipops. That's so fun too. I mean, they could go out and buy things, but it would not be as unique, right? If you just transform something into something else.
Tony:
Yeah. Is DIY on the scorecard or …
Brady:
It isn't officially, and actually there's very little on the scorecard. There used to be a little bit more of a scorecard. We wanted them to keep track of everything, and then we sort of pulled that away and it's a little bit more. I mean, there is a number at the very end of the day, but it's not like there's 20 categories and you go down and you give each thing a number. We sort of leave it more up to the judge on an instinctive level, and then they do have to justify it though. They have to justify everything and they actually talk to a lawyer. And by the way, it's 100% the judges' decision. It's really important that everybody knows that. ABC's not involved, we're not involved. The judges go and then they reflect on the four that they've seen, and then physically they decide which one they want to give the trophy to and we fly them back to that location and surprise them.
Tony:
So they really do go back? I was watching, and I'm not going to lie but I said out loud, "I really think they filmed them all in alternate scenarios."
Brady:
Yeah, and that was asked of us early on. Actually there was even an article on another website where they heard through the grapevine that that's what we did, and we would never do that. We would never ask a family. I mean, maybe other shows would.
Tony:
“Pretend you've won”
Brady:
Right, so “now just pretend you won, and now pretend you lost, and then we'll tell you later.” Then they have to sit for months and wait, that it just doesn't work that way. So no, we fly the judges back and we always have. And they don't know until the moment the judge actually says it to them. They don't know that they've won. It's really when they're on camera they find out.
Tony:
But they know you're coming back for something?
Brady:
Yes, we do have a little ruse here and there, and we have visited families who have lost in the past. So they don't necessarily know that we're coming back to tell them that they won, but it's very possible that that's what's happening.
Tony:
We figured there was some kind of at least production element because they're all wearing matching outfits. Is that just a regular occurrence?
Brady:
Right, and I even tell the producers. I'm like, "Don't have them completely dress up, because then it looks like they really know we're coming and they're going to win." But it's like what you're wearing right now, you're wearing a nice sweater and you'd be wearing that on a Christmas night.
Tony:
After 10 seasons, how are you amping it up or the 11th?
Brady:
Let's see, That's a good question. We feel like we've settled in. We've always had a really strong format of the show. So I'm always, as a television producer in reality television, I've always said, "Hey, once you've got your format, trust the format." And just let people do their thing within the construct of this format. As long as we have a strong casting team, which we do and all the time, they go out and they put the word out. We're actually now casting for season 12, by the way. So we're two years ahead.
Tony:
So you're shooting 11, casting 12 right now?
Brady:
That's right, and airing 10. So there's actually three things happening during the Christmas holiday.
Tony:
You're working three years ahead. Yeah.
Brady:
That's right, and that's because of course we want people to videotape their homes this year so that we can then cast them. If the show officially gets picked up for season 12, then we would tell them in July that we want them to be on the show, and then they would be filmed next year in 2023, but that would be held until 24. So that's a long process. We can also encourage people too. We can, not give them hints or tips necessarily, but we just say, "Hey, in the past it's really been helpful when people have decorated their roof, for example, or put things on the front lawn because it sort of fills the frame." Really from a television point of view we sort of give them guidance, but it's up to them to take our thoughts and take it to the next level.
Tony: Have you ever had hiccups, because when you work with that kind of three year window where you've had people cast, apply and “oh, let's pick them!” but now they might be in a different house or something like that and you can't do it?
Brady:
Yes, or even a death. I hate to say it, or a death could happen where-
Tony:
I didn't want to make it too grim, but yeah.
Brady:
No, a year goes by and things happen. Yeah, and we have alternates. So we do have a certain number of alternates around the country each year in case something like that happens and they decorate their home on the schedule that we would need them to in order for them to be done in time for us to film them as an alternate and get them still in that holiday season.
Tony:
So what's that schedule like to make them decorate their home?
Brady:
Usually, the first day that we could show up anywhere is like Halloween. Believe it or not, we shot Halloween night this last year. So October 31st, November 1st is usually the beginning of our filming, and then we film for six weeks. You can imagine the schedule because we have Taniya and Carter zigzagging the country, and then we have four crews zigzagging the country and they all have to meet up at the right time. So these families are given a date by which they have to be ready to show their display to the judge. So based on that, they're told that pretty early. Based on that they might start weeks in advance and some of them start months in advance. Some of them have their lights up from the previous year. All they have to do is turn them on.
Tony:
Turn it on, yeah. That was my grandfather's method.
Brady:
Oh, that's great, just leave them.
Tony:
Just leave them up, yeah. “I'm not climbing that ladder again.” The October 31st house, part of me wants to ask if that was in Orlando, that's where I'm at. October, Halloween night, midnight, everything goes from Halloween to Christmas all over town, not just the theme parks.
Brady:
That's funny. It's like an instant change. No. It was actually a farm in the middle of nowhere. So that was why it was okay to do it on Halloween. We normally wouldn't shoot on Halloween night, but we did a Halloween show. The second season we did a Halloween break, it's called The Great Halloween Fright Fight, and still pitching that, still trying to get ABC, or Disney+, or Hulu, or somebody to bring that, because that actually has, as you mentioned, has I think more possibilities than Christmas in terms of the number of haunts that are around the country. There's thousands.
Tony:
Yeah. I literally said I was at a backyard thing, which itself has expanded now. They bought a piece of property and made it bigger, but that's Halloween.
Brady:
And the parks do a lot of Halloween stuff, don't they? They still do a good job of Halloween, but the Osborne lights aren't up anymore in Florida, which is too bad. I guess that was somebody's personal crazy display that Disney bought or acquired and now it's gone.
Tony:
That could be a precursor of the show because that was the pinnacle for a residential display and then they moved it into the residential street neighborhood of (Disney’s Hollywood Studios), Then they got rid of that for a stunt show and they moved it into the city backlots and then they got rid of the city backlots for Star Wars Galaxy's Edge. They had no place for it to go.
Brady:
Got it. Got it. Well, maybe they'll bring it back because I think there are a lot of people who've been on our show who were inspired by the Osborne house.
Tony:
Oh, I'm sure. I have no doubt about that, because even then, I think it was 2007 is when they started programming them to dance to music and stuff like that. You see that all over social media now, and I was going to ask about that. You have the proper casting methods, but do you ever see a family on social media and just go, "Hey, we like this"?
Brady:
Totally. There are a lot of families who think they're not good enough to be on the show, so that's not good because we want everybody to apply and then let us be the judge of that. Then there are people who just don't want to be on television for whatever reason. Then there are people who just want to do it for their community. They're just doing it for their community and that is perfectly fine with them. So they have no reason to ever do anything else. So we do find stuff like that online. Our casting team will find it and then they have to go after them. And it might be somebody else's video, somebody was driving by and took a video and they don't even know where it is in the country. So they're like little sleuths online trying to figure out what this display is and where it is and contacting the family ultimately and encouraging them to apply for the show. We get a lot of nominations too. A lot of people who are out in their own neighborhood seeing places and they'll go online and nominate a family down the street, which is kind of fun.
Tony:
Yeah. Again, we were watching recently (and thought), “do they ever talk to the neighbors” and get the neighbors input on this, and is it negative or is it positive?
Brady:
For sure there have been a couple of times I've been out there and we learned in advance that there was a particular neighbor, so do not go on their lawn and we literally put up caution tape around the family's property. But that is very, very rare. I would say literally 99% of the time the neighbors are so supportive because it's usually families and kids. There have been generations of people in a neighborhood who come to this one light display that's been up for 40 years and they're so supportive of it. So I would say in general, even though people think oh my gosh, I hope I never have anybody like that living next door to me, it's pretty rare. In general, the neighbors are very supportive, which is great. HOAs can be tough sometimes. HOAs, because there's a whole board who has to talk about it, and if there's one person who's not thrilled about the traffic, then that causes a bit of a stink, but we can usually work around that.
Tony:
Yeah. We have, I don't know if you're familiar with a town called Celebration.
Brady:
Yes.
Tony:
Just south of Disney, yeah. And there's a street, Jeater Bend and it started at one house and then it became boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and now the whole strip is in on it. Part of me is like this is really cool, the camaraderie, and the community, and everybody getting in on it. And then it's also if you were on the next street over where the traffic backs up, that's the frustrating neighborhood part.
Brady:
Right, you don't get any of the glory.
Tony:
Yeah, exactly, and then you're probably seeing exactly how we thought, like oh they must hate this and they're going to be the grumpy ones that complain. And Celebration is a huge HOA.
Brady:
I can imagine…So I forgot what year it was, it might have been season four, season five, we did a neighborhood episode. It was neighborhood versus neighborhood, and Jeater Bend was one of the three neighborhoods. One in Glendale, Arizona, and another one in Hawaii. And they all competed against each other, and they had all their lights synchronized together. In Arizona, Carter had to go up on a hot air balloon to be able to see how it all worked together. So that was getting pretty crazy.
Tony:
I love that it's not a helicopter. “We didn't set up a drone.” It was “Let's get a hot air balloon!”
Brady:
Right. But you'll see Jeater Bend, you'll see Celebration on that episode. We also did a neighbors versus neighbors episode. Totally different, where side by side neighbors competed together against other side by side neighbors.
Tony:
After all this time though, and we kind of talk about it and you have a good memory, is there anything that'll still surprise you? Are you ready for more surprises? You kind of talked about a little bit in season 11, you saw something you never saw before.
Brady:
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you it's drones.
Tony:
Okay!
Brady:
I'm sure there's some reason I shouldn't tell you that, but it was drones, so it did surprise me. I have to say, when I saw them, they sent the tape in and I was like, my eyes were bulging, like the future of Christmas, Christmas lights. It did surprise me. I didn't see that coming. I should have, because we work with drones all the time, but the way they were synchronized, and the music, and the beauty of it, I was just like, wow, this could really take us into a new direction.
Tony:
And that goes back to the Pratt Brothers, like we were talking about- in how you've seen over 10 seasons, the park influence from Disney. As they evolve, you notice it comes home too. Like (my own Christmas lights) I got because they were the same models used at other Orlando parks and that way I can control and program them. So definitely I feel like it's an umbrella effect or just when somebody else does it, it starts cascading down. How do I get my hands on these pieces of equipment and materials and everything like that? But then you have, again, I'll point at the flowers, the DIY ones, where it's just I'm not going to go big and bad, I'm going to go classic. I know there was Chanel in Vegas.
Brady:
Amazing. We barely had room for the camera to follow. Brian by day and Shannel at night. Her hair was so big she couldn't even fit through her hallway. That's very funny. Yeah, I recommend people watching that one. That was on the first night this year.
Tony:
Yeah. I was like, “That's not a house, that's the Christmas Store.”
Brady: Seriously. We have never seen an interior like that. I don't think we ever will. There's no way anybody could do bigger and better than that on the inside of the house.
Tony:
And as long as they please Carter or Taniya.
Brady:
Yeah. They can do pretty much … In the early years we had more rules. It was like we only gave 21 days to do it and then we were trying to figure out the very first season we were going to have a finale. We were going to have winners of each episode compete against each other at a common place and have them put lights on a fake house. It was a really bad idea. But then just over time we were like, why are we doing that? Why are we putting restrictions on them? We want to see the coolest, best lights in the country, so just do whatever they want.
Tony:
Well, it all looks great. I like the show a lot. I try not to watch it too much because then I start getting ideas.
Brady:
I'd like to apologize to all the parents out there because you can imagine sitting there watching the show with your kids and you don't have very good lights. When my kids were young, my kids are now 17, they were watching the show when they were seven years old. They're like, "Dad, you work on this show and you put one string of lights out there?" So sorry parents out there.
Tony:
I just want to thank you for your time, Brady, so much so. I look forward to the 11th season coming out next year, and now the 12th season beyond that, so we'll see.
Brady:
We appreciate you watching…It's a feel good show and we just love it. It's become a holiday tradition for families to watch each year, and I’m happy to be working on it!
The holiday festivities conclude in the final two back-to-back episodes of The Great Christmas Light Fight, on Monday, Dec. 12th (8:00-10:00 p.m. EST), and next day streaming on Hulu.