TOUGH GUYS RULE Loggers, truckers and fishermen are stars

By Maureen Ryan

Television entrepreneur Thom Beers gets the credit.

CHICAGO — 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 v rit 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.

“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.’”

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.”