Just thought I'd give a shoutout to a guy I knew from grad school. He graduated with a Masters in Industrial Design from NCSU a few years ago. Now he's the main host of the new show "Smash Lab" on the Discovery Channel. (http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/smash-lab/smash-lab.html)

Guy's name is Chuck Messer, he's one of the co-founders of a design firm in Durham called Tackle Design. (http://www.tackledesign.com/)

Show officially starts on January 16th at 10pm, but there was a sneak preview episode a couple of days ago, that I'm sure will be repeated before then. It's apparently already been picked up for a second season, and is the largest budget show ever produced for the Discovery Channel (from what I've been told anyway).

Seems pretty cool, a bit in the line of mythbusters.

Pretty cool seeing a NC Stater making it on national television!

12/28/2007 11:26:59 PM

will def watch. i love the discovery channel so much

12/28/2007 11:30:10 PM

'tis on my "to do" list

12/29/2007 2:01:40 AM

Quote :

"Seems pretty cool, a bit in the line of mythbusters."

...Which is why I was interested in watching it even before I knew of the NCSU connection

12/29/2007 2:05:57 AM

i was going to not believe this post, but then i saw it was Noen.


but like everyone else in this thread, i think we wanted to watch it before we knew the connection

12/29/2007 2:19:04 AM

nice find...thanks!

12/29/2007 3:04:25 AM

Yeah, it definitely helps that the show is pretty damn cool regardless. I'd have been upset if it was some new Trading Spaces or What Not to Wear.

12/29/2007 3:41:07 AM

thread of the week

12/29/2007 5:38:19 AM

I saw most of the rhino lining episode earlier in the week. Some of the "testing" wasn't exactly well thought out. Left too many variables.

12/29/2007 9:26:02 AM

cool, makes me want to watch the show even more

12/29/2007 9:35:38 AM

they should have given the money to increase mythbuster's budget instead

12/29/2007 1:48:17 PM

that name rings a bell...any pictures of Chuck Messer?

12/29/2007 2:25:03 PM

^this was on the discovery website :


looks like a pretty cool show.

12/29/2007 3:47:27 PM

word

12/30/2007 1:26:43 AM

message_topic.aspx?topic=507708

12/30/2007 2:23:32 AM

looks a bit like a UK TV show, brainiac:

http://www.skyoneonline.co.uk/brainiac/

not sure if there's a US equivalent

1/1/2008 6:18:35 AM

does this come on sometime soon on a rerun?

anyone got an mpg or mpeg file or avi of this?

[Edited on January 1, 2008 at 7:46 AM. Reason : .]

1/1/2008 7:45:33 AM

Quote :

"thread of the week "

1/1/2008 1:15:35 PM

Dont think there's any reruns of the sneak preview, but its only two weeks or so until the first real episode.

1/1/2008 4:57:51 PM

is he the same dude on the little video advertisement during basketball games? i remember something about minority report in his resume?

1/1/2008 7:05:06 PM

^no, that guy was design school kid

1/1/2008 7:17:48 PM

Chuck went to design school as well. Which is kind of retarded, since he's the "Engineer" on the show, but he runs an Industrial Design firm

1/1/2008 7:19:24 PM

this is so cool

I love the discovery channel

I'll add this to my "must do" list

1/2/2008 1:48:03 AM

the sneak preview of this show was pretty horrible

1/2/2008 2:56:14 AM

come now people, must we forget the illustrious JOHN TESH?!

1/3/2008 2:26:42 AM

Good thing time warner finally added the Discovery HD channel..

pleasant surprise..

1/4/2008 4:25:22 AM

This show sucks.

2/2/2008 11:10:10 PM

The Mythbusters wouldn't settle for some of the flawed experiments they use for this show. Their hurricane-proof structure tests really annoyed me when their initial experiment featured a structure with no floor. When the front wall collapsed in the wind, I thought it was apparent having a floor would have given them a better baseline. Wrapping the structure in carbon fiber didn't help much since the front wall still gave away from the ground up.

2/3/2008 1:05:48 AM

this show is god-fucking-awful

2/3/2008 1:29:53 AM

and that chick has a ridiculous overbite

2/3/2008 1:32:34 AM

damn everyone is a critic....how bout you get your own show...hope this dude doesnt read tww

2/3/2008 1:43:27 AM

I'm almost certain the curly haired guy and the chick are banging each other.

2/3/2008 2:36:07 AM

from the little ive heard from the "inside", most of the reason this show sucks has to do with editing and the production company. Knowing Chuck and knowing the backgrounds of the other hosts, it really pains me to watch this every week.

Three of them are pretty damn intelligent people, who would certainly not conduct themselves as they are being portrayed on the aired episodes. So I'm not sure what's going on, but I do pray to God it gets better

2/3/2008 4:09:50 AM

you're right, if this got picked up for a second season, its cause the producers found something to exploit. cause it was a whole bunch of failure on the one i saw

or let me rephrase it in ncsu terms

IT WAS AWESOME TILL HALFTIME

2/3/2008 4:34:03 AM

I'll give it a chance for a while longer. That's why DVRs are great. The VP of Creative Content/Talent wants feedback on the show: http://blogs.discovery.com/smash_lab/2008/01/an-open-letter.html

^^ Production companies like to do that. My cousin was one of the writers for the Cavemen tv show and basically said the ABC guys changed everything he had and it ended up not being the show he envisioned. I don't even think he liked the end result very much.

2/3/2008 12:55:45 PM

Quote :

"Some of the "testing" wasn't exactly well thought out. Left too many variables."

Pretty much agree 100% here. I saw the episode where they did the crushing concrete as a vehicle arrester. That was pretty much completely retarded how they carried out the science experiment. They aren't doing anything with any sort of real or scientific basis either. Who's going to carbon fiber a house? Why did they carbon fiber what was basically a play house and blow fans at it?

They need to take a more scientific approach to their problems and solve problems in a way that might be useful and still meet their "smash lab" vision. They could present something like a difficult situation where somebody has to choose between driving off a bridge or directly into a car in a head-on collision. Come up with a basic way to make intruder-proof glass for your car or something. If they have the biggest budget they could at least show up the people that do mythbusters.

2/3/2008 1:14:55 PM