Nahant biz owner focus of new reality TV show

NAHANT – He’s a successful business owner whose presence is requested in the homes of Boston’s elite and he’s generating buzz as a television star after filming the first season of a reality show.Nahant resident Greg Keane is a mover, but he’s not a shaker.”You don’t realize how bad potholes are until you’ve got a 3,000-pound ice sculpture of Neptune on a crane,” said Keane, the co-owner of DeathWish Piano Movers.But moving the ice sculpture from Brookline to the North End was easy compared to some jobs.The company specializes in moving jobs that require a little more creative thinking.”If it’s generally easy, people don’t call us,” Keane said.Which makes the company ideal for reality television. Especially in a city like Boston.”Movers throughout the country hate Boston,” Keane said. “The streets are the first thing, they won’t let you into the Back Bay with a tractor trailer, for instance. Then you put up with the cops and the neighbors screaming at you (as you unload), then you face a stairway that you can’t even get up.”Christopher Stout of Notional Productions in New York City thought this sounded like a fantastic idea for a reality show. He pitched the idea to Keane, who agreed to let Stout visit the movers in September 2009 to film a “sizzle clip” to entice studios.Stout had heard about the company from a colleague and was looking for a show that would appeal to a male demographic interested in big and complicated engineering equipment. Interestingly, that was not the show he saw when he visited DeathWish Piano Movers.”I was initially a little disappointed, it was not the show we expected.” he said. “But when we got back and put a tape together, it was more personality based and it got a great reaction.”Keane said that he didn’t think the stuff they did was that exciting, so he was a little surprised when, a year later, Stout called and said that the Travel Channel had picked up the show.Stout returned in September 2010 to film a pilot episode.Three days into filming, Keane said that the Travel Channel decided they had a hit and ordered a full season of 10 episodes.The series, DeathWish Movers – Stout said they dropped the Piano in the company’s title so that the name would fit better in TV Guide – premiered on Wednesday, March 16 at 10 p.m., but is currently off-air while the Travel Channel arranges a new time slot.Keane said that the Travel Channel had decided not to schedule the show opposite the popular A&E show Storage Wars, which he said was one of his own personal favorites.”The Travel Channel said they are really excited, but they may have been overconfident,” Keane said.But he said he was encouraged by the decision to film a full season. “We understood it was unprecedented,” said Keane.Also unprecedented, Keane said, was the ease with which the filming progressed.”The producers started trying to come up with scenarios for us, but we said just follow us around,” Keane explained. “I didn’t realize that most of those reality shows aren’t real.”Some of Keane’s most memorable jobs involve hoisting a 165-pound Great Dane into a third-floor apartment to recuperate after the dog was hit by a car. And Keane said the company’s 18 to 25 employees commonly get calls from somewhat sheepish customers who haven’t planned too well.Clients in Weston had built a new house featuring a 3,000-pound bath carved from a single piece of Italian marble, but they realized too late that there was no easy way to get it into the bathroom.The movers brought it in through a third-floor window.A boat builder in Somerville had spent three years building a boat in his loft. But delivering the boat to its buyer required removing sections of the building’s wall.In fact, moving pianos are routine. Keane said that they can move a piano in 30 minutes and, during the busy season, they move about 12 a day. He said the average job pays anywhere from $300-$500.Employee Joe Allonby said that the secret to successful piano moving is to ask very specific qu