‘He-man’ TV programming reigns supreme

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How often can you say you admire a reality TV star?

Not too long ago, reality programming was the shock to the system that the TV industry needed. Outsize characters - real people who acted in admirable, selfish and surprising ways - made hits of shows such as “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race” and “The Real World.”

Now those shows are limping along with lower ratings and little buzz. Broadcast staples such as “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” are showing their age, and the “Real World” franchise is, at this point, an excuse for MTV to film drunken young people cavorting in hot tubs.

Enter the loggers, the truck drivers, the grizzled fishermen in ice-encrusted parkas.

These burly dudes may not, at first glance, look as if they’re ready for their close-ups, but television entrepreneur Thom Beers has made them the stars of a successful string of he-man programs. The reality shows churned out by Beers’ Original Productions champion hard work, camaraderie and perseverance over the willingness to wear a bikini and humiliate oneself on camera.

Beers’ shows are among cable’s most successful fare, and he recently struck a deal with NBC to provide 30 hours of programming, starting with the fall series “America’s Toughest Jobs.” “Deadliest Catch’s” fourth season, which is airing on Discovery Channel, nets an average of 3.5 million viewers. And the Season 2 premiere of “Ice Road Truckers” hauled in 4 million folks. It’s History channel’s highest-rated series ever.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Beers’ “stars” is that none of them ever wanted to become famous. And they’re not in it for the money: The drillers and roughnecks on “Black Gold,” which premiered June 18 on truTV (formerly CourtTV), were paid the going rate by the oil companies they had signed on with (experienced oil rig workers can make more $75,000). Beers’ Original Productions did not pay them.

“They’re going to have pretty much what they had before, with the exception of a little bit of fame that will maybe last them through a couple of six-packs and couple of girlfriends,” Beers said in a phone interview from his L.A. office. “I like that about them - that it’s authentic. We don’t go to casting and say, ‘Give me actors from L.A. and put them on an oil rig.’”

With the advent of Beers’ shows, “carefully controlled and scripted reality programming is giving way to the simplicity, truth and honest-to-goodness reality aspects of the Original Productions branded story-line,” according to a news release from the company.

It’s true that tough men would be drilling for oil in West Texas even if Beers hadn’t shown up with cameras. That said, Beers, like other reality TV producers, knows that TV-friendly story lines - whether they occupy one episode or stretch over an entire season - don’t often arise out of thin air.

And fly-on-the-wall cinema verite is certainly not the house style at Original Productions. Booming soundtracks, breathless narration (often by Beers himself), time pressures and danger are hallmarks of his shows. Though Original Productions doesn’t “stage” what happens, there’s careful shaping of the narratives that viewers see on TV.

The key to any Beers show is the casting - that’s really the “gold” that he’s searching for before cameras roll. Though the crews featured on “Black Gold” existed as working teams before Beers began casting, he traveled to more than 30 different oil rigs across Texas to find the three crews that he felt would make the show work dramatically.

Ask any fan of “Deadliest Catch” - and I have been asking, given that it took me a while to understand the appeal of this engaging but repetitive show - and he’ll say that crusty old sea dogs on the show, not necessarily the possibility of witnessing death by crab pot, keep them tuning in. Beers knows this, and casts certain “archetypes,” as he put it, accordingly.

“There’s the wise old boss, the young kid dying to break in, that one slacker that reminds you of how bad things can be in any workplace,” Beers said. Another staple of Beers’ shows is the “ticking clock,” as he calls it. “You need a beginning, a middle and an end,” Beers noted. “You need a structure to hang the story on. With ‘Ax Men,’ it’s a season. When the ice road melts, there ain’t no more ‘Ice Road Truckers.’”

For “Black Gold,” Beers made sure all the crews started drilling the same day, so their progress could be charted as a “race” to strike oil. He made sure the drilling rigs were different - one of “Black Gold’s” story lines revolves around a new rig that’s prone to breakdowns.

When it comes to the ticking clock, “Black Gold’s” narration states that the crews have 50 days to strike oil. That deadline was partly influenced by the budgets of the oil companies that were paying for the rigs and crews.

But Beers said he also told the oilmen that he wanted each rig to drill three different holes, and 50 days was the amount of time they said they would need to do that.

“We did create more drama out of that, yeah, but at the same time, (the workers) get bonuses if they get the holes done quicker,” Beers said.

“Deadliest Catch” weathered some controversy in April when a story by the Hollywood Reporter revealed that footage of the fishing boat Wizard being hit by a wave and footage of a leak inside the boat - scenes that were intercut with each other in the show’s Season 4 premiere - were actually shot on two different days.

“The Wizard was struck by a big wave, and that wave caused the leak you see in the show,” Discovery president John Ford told the Hollywood Reporter. “The thing we didn’t have on camera was the actual wave that struck the Wizard.”

A different wave, filmed on another day, was shown instead, and a production memo in which a producer mentioned “re-enactment footage” surfaced. But Ford said the memo was an early draft that was discarded, and he defended “Deadliest Catch” as “100 percent authentic.”

The bigger danger is that Original Production’s macho programs could start to seem as repetitive as the tasks the men perform.

“I’d much rather have TV networks full of his shows instead of VH1 and MTV’s allegedly unscripted shows,” said Andy Dehnart, editor of RealityBlurred.com. “The tragic part is that the rush to duplicate the success of ‘Deadliest Catch’ has led to carbon-copying the format so fast that it’s getting diluted and risks boring us. So far, none of its successors have managed to match ‘Deadliest Catch’ in the cast and narrative department, and that’s critical.”

Beers’ successful focus on working men such as “Catch’s” Sig Hansen and “Trucker’s” Hugh Rowland has made him one of the most sought-after producers in television; he has more than a dozen shows on the air or in production. But he’s still pursuing success in the one arena in which he has, by his own admission, failed in a “pathetic” way.

It would be diplomatic to say his reality programs about women have not caught on (like everyone else in America, you probably missed “Ballroom Bootcamp” and “Twister Sisters”). Beers isn’t diplomatic about it.

“I crashed and burned,” he noted.

“I understand machines and drinking Jack Daniels and guys. I don’t have a clue when it comes to women.”

But Beers is in the process of hiring someone to run the division of his company that makes shows about women, he said.

And he has another ambition: To get David Mamet’s agent to return his calls. Beers would love to do a project in the ultimate-fighting arena with the playwright and director, whose most recent film, “Redbelt,” grew out of Mamet’s interest in martial arts.

Why Mamet? “He’s a genius. His stuff is about manly men,” Beers said.

No wonder Beers thinks they’d hit it off.