'THE HIGH LIFE' NBC riles Appalachia with 'hillbilly' pilot

CBS dropped plans for a similar show after protests.
PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- After months of Appalachian outrage over CBS' planned "Beverly Hillbillies" reality series, NBC has shot the pilot of its own rural-to-riches show without attracting widespread attention.
Tentatively titled "The High Life," the program follows a family that's transported from backwoods Appalachia to ritzy life in a Beverly Hills mansion.
NBC spokeswoman Kathy Kelly-Brown confirmed Wednesday that a pilot has already been produced, and the network is still considering the program.
"It seems like it's been somewhat of a stealth operation, keeping it quiet and springing it on us all at once so folks in the region don't have time to organize against it," said Ewell Balltrip, a former director of the Kentucky Appalachian Commission.
Balltrip, who found out about the show this week, said an outcry across the region kept CBS' "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" from ever getting made, and he's stunned another network has decided to move forward with a similar show.
"Programs of this type do nothing other than perpetuate negative stereotypes of residents of Appalachia and the rural South," Balltrip said. "Some folks may see it as entertainment, but for those of us who live in the region, it's not entertainment."
Stopped CBS
Political leaders, including members of Congress from Kentucky to Texas, had urged CBS to reconsider its hillbilly idea. And coal miners from Kentucky and West Virginia protested in May 2003 outside a shareholders' meeting at the New York headquarters of CBS' parent company, Viacom.
That makes the NBC proposal all the more troubling to Jim Webb, program director at the WMMT-FM, a Whitesburg radio station that bills itself as "The Voice of the Hillbilly Nation."
"They did this while CBS took all the flak," he said. "The majority of the people I know are just irate."
NBC spokeswoman Kelly-Brown declined to answer any other questions about the show or how it was produced. But an online casting application form for the show asks potential family members such questions as: "What are the best and worst aspects of living in your town?" "Are you comfortable out of your local environment?" and "If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money?"
Dee Davis, director of the Whitesburg-based Center for Rural Strategies, which took out newspaper ads attacking the planned CBS show, said advertisers should boycott TV shows that mock rural Americans.