The viewing audience is not privy to where each property is located along with the amount being asked and paid for each property. The series was originally hosted on-screen and narrated by Suzanne Whang through 2007. She died in 2019 after expressing pride at diversity of house hunters featured on the show. In 2008, the show was narrated by Colette Whitaker. The current (2019) narrator, Andromeda Dunker, began voicing the show in 2009, but does not appear on screen. A January 2016 "Washington Post" article said that the "milquetoast" and "proudly formulaic" series was "one of the most unlikely and unstoppable juggernauts on TV," consistently attracting 25 million viewers per month, nearly all through household television. Calling "House Hunters" "HGTV’s no-risk crown jewel", another "Washington Post" commentator noted that, paradoxically, the show was "low budget, incredibly formulaic and lacking any prestige or even a host". HGTV is said to have referred to itself as "shelter TV", not only because it deals with homes but also because, according to a professor of cinematic studies, "it feels like you can protect yourself from other things going on in the world". In 2019 another "Washington Post" commentator reported that millennial and Generation Z viewers make up a significant portion of HGTV’s audience, and though its unscripted programming is "decidedly uncool", it is "endlessly appealing" and offers "both an escape from global chaos and a window into the seemingly distant fantasy of homeownership". Characterizing the show as "an on-screen utopia" that has included buyers of varied age, race, sexual orientation and location, it presents "people from all backgrounds seamlessly achieving the same domestic goal of purchasing a home". The show's 26 first-year episodes (1999) grew to 447 new episodes in 2015, with the number of new episodes tripling between the 2005 peak of the real estate bubble and the 2009 end of the Great Recession. As of 2016, fifteen camera crews were recording new U.S. episodes at any given time, with another 25 teams of directors, camera chiefs, sound technicians and local fixers producing "House Hunters International" episodes. The average episode is filmed in three days, and costs a small fraction of the US $2 to $4 million typically spent on an hour-long TV drama. The show’s ratings and "safe predictability" attract advertisers, especially those targeting homeowners.