After a hard day at the office, more and more TV viewers are tuning in to shows about much more difficult jobs.
Gabe Ramirez, a contestant on NBC's "America's Toughest Jobs," climbs a tower on an oil-drilling rig.
What began with "The Deadliest Job in the World" grew into a whole genre of tough-guy job shows, from the Alaskan king crab catchers of "Deadliest Catch" to "Ice Road Truckers." Mike Rowe would find the worst working conditions in Discovery's "Dirty Jobs," and various other jobs would get a showcase — lumberjacks in "Ax Men," oil drillers in "Black Gold."
Monday night, NBC begins "
America's Toughest Jobs," a series that blends many of these shows and makes them a reality competition for newcomers who have never tried such feats.
Thom Beers, who nearly single-handedly created the genre with "Deadliest Catch" and extended it with "Ice Road Truckers," "Black Gold" and "Ax Men," said the NBC show, his first on a broadcast network, fulfills the wishes of a lot of people who have sent him mail over the years.
"Every time I would do a new series, I would always get these letters from people saying, 'My boyfriend wants to be a crab fisherman, and he thinks he can do that job,' or 'My girlfriend can be a truck driver,'" Beers told reporters last month.
"So I thought it would be really cool to give ordinary men and women from all walks the life, from all parts of the country, the opportunity to actually go in as a first-time employee, a first day, a greenhorn, and try these jobs out."
Most of the 13 who stepped forward for the competition — including a math teacher, carpenter, researcher and software vice president — were "people that basically spent their lives or their careers working in cubicles," Beers said. "People that basically were looking for a new opportunity, a new change in life."
Some were testing themselves, others sought adventure, still others were angling for the prize money: the combined salaries for all the jobs they were doing, totaling about $250,000.
And the economic picture didn't hurt, Beers said. "In these times ... people don't necessarily know if their job's going to be there tomorrow."
Besides that, he said, "a lot of people don't necessarily like their jobs they have now, but they got bills to pay. So they said, you know what? Why don't we go out and revisit those kinds of jobs that actually made America great, those great working-class-hero, blue-collar jobs.
"That's what these are: oil, driving trucks, fishermen. This is the backbone of America. This is what made our country great. It was great to get them out of that cubicle, that conceptual life that we're in, and get out there and get some real raw experience in a place with high stakes and high rewards."
Some got sick on the ride to the first job, catching crabs on the icy Bering Sea. Others got pretty beat up doing things that aren't normally on the list of jobs that made America great, such as rodeo clown.
"We experienced more contusions, massive contusions," Beers said. "I've never seen contusions on the side of the head before. I really haven't. And more broken bones, seriously, than I've ever experienced."
And still, there was that gumption.
"One girl said, 'You know what, you're going to have to carry me out in a stretcher for me to not win this competition,'" Beers said. "And we carried her out on a stretcher."
The reason the contestants felt so strongly is the same reason audiences tune in, he said: "high stakes, high rewards, and really, really unique locations."
There seems to be no end to these types of shows. Monday also sees the end of one about a tough construction site, "L.A. Hard Hats" on the National Geographic Channel, which will air another show, "World's Toughest Fixes," on Sept. 28, in which troubleshooter Seth Riley fixes huge electric turbines and installs 360-ton generators for various customers.
"Project Xtreme" begins Thursday, Sept. 25, on the DIY network, featuring contractor Jason Cameron looking at New York's most extreme job sites, from an HD screen in Times Square to changing bulbs atop the Empire State Building.
NBC will buy another show from Beers, "Shark Taggers," for next summer. (It and "Toughest Jobs" are co-produced by Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun, who were entertainment division heads for Fox and ABC networks respectively.)
Why so many extreme-job shows?
"I think it taps into a desire to return to a certain frontier spirit as you watch these shows," said Charles Nordlander, History Channel's vice president for programming and development and executive producer of "Sandhogs," about crews that dig tunnels for water mains and subways under New York City, starting Sunday, Sept. 7.
"America's Toughest Jobs" airs at 9 p.m. Monday night on NBC.
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