Jean Perry, Neighb News Correspondent
The courtroom TV program “Caught in Providence,” filmed inside the real-life courtroom at the Providence Municipal Court where the kind-hearted Judge Frank Caprio is more often than not forgiving the traffic violation tickets of a single mom with money problems or a veteran who has fallen on hard times, was doing all right when it was aired on a community access channel for a while. But it was Fairhaven’s John Methia who, during the early years of social media, made the show a viral sensation making Judge Caprio a household name all over the world.
While he was still the operations manager of ABC Providence Channel 6, Mr. Methia, who has 45 years working in the TV business, was, among other things, in charge of the production of the Jerry Lewis Marathon. Part of that task involved recruiting local celebrities and notable people to appear on the marathon to solicit donations, and Judge Caprio was one of those notables.
“He was one of our go-tos,” said Mr. Methia, and in 2018 Mr. Methia approached Judge Caprio’s brother, Joe Caprio of CityLife Productions, who was producing the cable access program that had gained quite the cult following since its inception in 2000.
Mr. Methia began editing the three-hour long program into a 30-minute show fit for TV and airing it twice a week on Channel 6. The show got more and more popular. And when it hit social media, the show was well-received.
Soon after, he helped launch the program further into the 21st Century social media scene through his joint venture with partner Steve Aicardi, Sociable!, a predominantly social media and broadcast TV production company. As managing partner and executive producer, Mr. Methia would edit scenes into bite-size snippets from the show. The pivotal moment came when the first post caught the attention of 10,000 viewers and it quickly caught on.
“First you got 10,000 views, then it went up to 50,000 views, the we got to the point where we were getting tens of millions of views,” said Mr. Methia.
Eventually, a national syndicator reached out to him after seeing the success of the show on Facebook and wanted to bring “Caught in Providence” to national TV.
The company produced two half-hour shows a day and when they had 250 episodes, enough for two seasons the show aired nationally.
Mr. Methia’s son, Jared Methia, has been a part of this Fairhaven father-son team behind the huge success of the feel-good traffic violation justice program. That made the news that “Caught in Providence” was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for outstanding legal/courtroom program for 2021 an extra feel-good event to celebrate.
Both Methia men knew they had an extraordinary and unique production in their hands, but even before the surprise of the Daytime Emmy nomination, Mr. Methia recalled how Jared started to catch on to the success of the show while attending a Bruins game at TD Garden.
“He said there was a person behind him and he heard them talking about one of the cases on the show. And he said, ‘Dad, how weird is that?’” said Mr. Methia. “I said, ‘Actually, what are the odds that he was the only guy talking about the show and you just happened to hear him?’”
Although they didn’t win the Emmy, the nomination, was a great honor, said Mr. Methia.
“It was up against some very, very highly-produced, big-budget shows,” like Judge Judy, The People’s Court (the winner), and Divorce Court,” said Mr. Methia. “But we thought we had it, to tell you the truth, because our show is unique. This show is about as unorthodox as you’re going to get in a Hollywood network court TV show — and because it’s real people.”
The awards show was filmed without a live audience and aired on June 25, so all the nominees had to pre-record an acceptance speech in the event they were announced as the winner.
Due to the pandemic, the Methias were not able to walk down the red carpet, a moment the two were so deserving of, but the success of the show is evidence of their own success, and also the sheer power of the ever-expanding social media frontier. On Facebook, Sociable! Now has 10 million followers, and every video post of “Caught in Providence” is seen by millions of people. Surprisingly, said Mr. Methia, most of those views are from outside the US.
“It seems to come from other countries that don’t have the judicial system that we have,” said Mr. Methia. “The reaction is something like, ‘You mean to tell me that you can go in front of the judge and the judge would side with you?’ Think about that premise,” he said. “That’s what draws a lot of folks to [Judge Caprio]. And it’s his compassion. He’s a great guy. And he could, certainly, if he chose, he could have moved to a bigger court, so to speak, easily, like to the Superior Court. But he chose to stay, and, I mean, the Municipal Court is the smallest court in the state.”
The show was hit bad by COVID-19, closing down courts and therefore stopping any further production.
“Then the whole mask thing,” said Mr. Methia. “We tried it; it didn’t seem to have the same feel when…You really couldn’t see the emotion.”
The Methias are back in production now, but no new episodes have yet been released. Judge Caprio is still behind a pane of Plexiglass, “So it’s not the best,” said Mr. Methia, but Judge Caprio is back to taking his time with the public, coaxing out that “story” behind the hardship of their traffic violation or long string of parking tickets.
The Methias are also working on other projects, one of them being a ‘biopic’ documentary on Judge Caprio, which is in the pre-production funding stage.
Mr. Methia called “Caught in Providence” the “little show that could.” It started without any Hollywood production companies and with a judge that nobody had ever heard of before, said Mr. Methia.
•••
Click here to download the entire 7/29/21 issue: 07-29-21 RecallElection
Support local journalism, donate to the Neighb News with PayPal.