Amy Grant's new reality show is so sweet that you may need to brush and floss after watching it. In the pilot for Three Wishes, making its debut this fall on NBC, the Christian-pop singer and a crew visit a small California town to do three life-changing deeds. They arrange an operation for a girl whose skull was shattered in a car accident. They help a boy get adopted. And they build a new football field in honor of a high school coach with leukemia. Grant dispenses hugs by the bushel, sheds tears and pulls out her guitar, twice, to sing her single, Takes a Little Time: "It takes a little time sometimes/ To get your feet back on the ground."
In another verse, which she doesn't sing on camera, the lyrics continue: "You can't fix this pain with money." Don't be so sure. Alongside Three Wishes, several shows new and old are opening their wallets—and those of their corporate sponsors—to fix problems with dramatic windfalls and melodramatic tear jerking. The clear inspiration is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the surprise ABC hit in which carpenter Ty Pennington and a team of contractors rebuild houses for families with disabled kids, parents in Iraq or crushing debt (throwing in new cars and scholarships too) while organizing volunteer help from the neighbors. "People ask us how they can help," says executive producer Tom Forman. "It reminds us what good people we really are."
TV crews are lining up around the block to offer a good deed and a good cry. Heart-tugging giveaways have long been a staple of talk shows, but Oprah Winfrey upped the stakes last season with staggering bonanzas: new cars for an entire audience and gifts worth about $15,000 apiece for an audience of teachers. The Today show's "Live for Today" feature has sent a Salt Lake City, Utah, mom to sing on Broadway and an 81-year-old woman to the Kentucky Derby. Even Mark Burnett, producer of Survivor and The Apprentice, is developing a series in which Touched by an Angel's Roma Downey and Della Reese help people through problems.
Meanwhile, ABC, the chief beneficiary of make-a-wish TV, will rub that lamp several more times. On The Scholar (Mondays, 8 p.m. E.T.), 10 honor students vie for a college scholarship worth as much as $240,000. On this summer's inspirationally themed Brat Camp, troubled kids have their lives turned around by counseling. And for viewers who like to see heartstrings tugged literally as well as metaphorically, next season The Miracle Workers will give away medical care. A man gets treatment for severe tics so he can hold his baby again; a boy gets cochlear implants to hear his mother for the first time. Says executive producer Justin Falvey: "There are thousands of people suffering enormously and unnecessarily out there."
The networks call this phenomenon a reaction against mean reality shows and in favor of ones on which good things happen to nice people (see also American Idol). "We started off in a cynical place," says Three Wishes executive producer Andrew Glassman. "We explored what happens when animals attack and human beings are treated like lab rats in a social experiment. But people seeing wishes and dreams come true will always resonate." And ABC reality chief Andrea Wong points to network research that shows people are looking for programming to feel good about amid news of war and terrorism.