We’ve seen Mike Rowe covered in dirt before, but sometimes the most entertaining moments of Dirty Jobs are when the cameramen and producers get involved and get dirty. This afternoon, Mike Rowe shared a photo of Troy demonstrating how dirty his job can really be.
Troy with Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs
This past week Mike Rowe and the crew of Dirty Jobs spent some time filming in North Dakota, a state never featured on the series. They filmed multiple segments which may air when the show returns to air this fall.
One of the projects Mike helped out with was a radio tower in Dickinson. Mike worked with the Great Plains Tower company in the construction of the radio tower.
Former Stark County Emergency Manager Gary Kostelecky has been involved with the construction project for almost seven years and said the existing tower was something that needed to be replaced, but the TV coverage was a bonus.
“It’s good publicity for the area,” he said. “Dickinson and Stark County don’t always get that opportunity, so when they called and asked if they could film, I thought why not?”
Jeff Wettstein with Mike Rowe
Sticking with North Dakota, Mike Rowe and the boys also helped Moorhead Public Service workers perform maintenance on the plant’s water softening basin, a catch-all for the muck that forms when minerals are removed from Moorhead’s drinking water.
The day of shooting was a memorable one because it happened to be the last day on the job for Jeff Wettstein, who was retiring after 36 years of hard work at Moorhead Public Service. He’s pictured above, alongside Mike Rowe.
I woke up this morning to great news on the DVD front. Discovery is cutting DVD prices on several award-winning DVD sets, including Life, Planet Earth, Human Planet, and Blue Planet.
If you’re interested in getting some of these DVDs as far as 70% off, I recommend checking out the Discovery’s Earth Day Sale today because it’s a one-day only sale.
Discovery has brought weekend repeats of Dirty Jobs back after getting viewers caught up with Deadliest Catch repeats. This Sunday, April 17th, the “Bug Detective” episode of Dirty Jobs is set to re-air. In it, Mike Rowe joins Purdue University’s DECOMP team to dig through pig carcasses searching for maggots and other insects.
Below, you can find a few preview videos for that episode.
Today, Discovery Channel announced their new list of programs slated to debut. The list includes several new shows and of course renewed commitments such as Dirty Jobs, MythBusters, etc.
You can find the official list below:
SPECIALS
FROZEN PLANET
From the award winning team behind PLANET EARTH comes the ultimate portrait of the earth’s polar regions. The Arctic and Antarctic remain the greatest wilderness on Earth. The scale and beauty of the scenery and the sheer power of the elements – the weather, the ocean and the ice – is unmatched anywhere else on our planet. The Poles are also home to many of the most charismatic of animals: much of the most spectacular scenery and animal behavior have never been filmed before. FROZEN PLANET is the ultimate portrait of these great, awe-inspiring wildernesses.WHERE’S MY MAMMOTH?
WHERE’S MY MAMMOTH? is the definitive natural history of one of the most iconic animals that ever lived. Thanks to climate change, the Siberian permafrost is melting, revealing vast quantities of woolly mammoth remains. This is a detective story that travels from the permafrost of Siberia to the Asian rainforest, and from the sci-fi world of genetic research into a brave new world of virtual zoos.SHARK WEEK
Every summer they return, slashing through a sea of competition to rack up new ratings successes. Grab your scuba gear and climb into the cage, because it’s time for SHARK WEEK! Great whites. Hammerheads. Whale sharks. This consistent audience pleaser never fails to reveal remarkable new insights into these magnificent and elusive creatures.RETURNING SERIES
DEADLIEST CATCH
Alaskan crab-wranglers fight the most dangerous working conditions, including 40-foot waves and 80-mile-per-hour winds, in the gripping 10-part series DEADLIEST CATCH. Far in the Bering Sea’s frigid waters, 250 boats tempt fate and nature in “The Last Rodeo” season trying to bring in a season’s catch of the highly coveted and lucrative Alaskan king crab.AMERICAN CHOPPER
What was once a family business is now a family feud. All bets are off for what new fireworks await in AMERICAN CHOPPER: SENIOR VS. JUNIOR. Paul Senior builds world famous custom bikes at Orange County Choppers, while Paul Junior operates his competing shop, Paul Jr. Designs, just a stone’s throw down the road, with brother Mikey and former OCC employees firmly by his side. Will the family be made whole again? And what new out of this world build assignments will they take on to stretch their teams creatively and mechanically?DIRTY JOBS
Host and everyman Mike Rowe gets the grimy scoop on downright nasty, but vital, occupations in DIRTY JOBS. Rowe could be processing smelly seafood in a fish factory, collecting bat guano for prized fertilizer or cleaning septic tanks to maintain a fresh-smelling environment. His apprenticeship never ends as he learns from those who keep our world running smoothly.MAN V. WILD
Adventurer Bear Grylls is put to the ultimate test. Left in the middle of nowhere, Grylls employs his encyclopedic knowledge of nature to scavenge for food and keep his body in order. Headache? Grylls searches for pain-relieving plants. Hunger? He eats maggots in the Rocky Mountains or a fresh-killed zebra on Africa’s savanna. No matter the climate or locale, Grylls is up to the task.MYTHBUSTERS
Back and better than ever, MYTHBUSTERS continues its mad scientific quest to discover the truth behind popular myths and urban legends. Hosted by quirky special effects experts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, and Tory Belleci, Kari Byron and Grant Imahara, this mentally tantalizing series takes on the myths and uses modern-day science to show what’s real and what’s fiction.MAN WOMAN WILD
Myke Hawke is a former Special Forces survival expert. His wife Ruth is a TV journalist. Together, they take on some of the most forbidding and remote locations around the world. Dropped into each spot they must survive as a team for four days and nights, with only a knife and the clothes on their backs. As they test their will and their marriage, the two find common ground standing up to nature as husband and wife in the wildest places on Earth.DUAL SURVIVAL
The Odd Couple of Survival! Military-man Dave Canterbury and naturalist Cody Lundin have very different ideas of what it takes to survive in the wild. DUAL SURVIVAL takes these two survivalists into the most forbidding terrains in the world where they must overcome all obstacles in order to survive using intuitive tactics and finely tuned skills. Finding food, water and shelter are nothing compared to their toughest challenge of all: getting along.STORM CHASERS
Changing weather patterns, colliding air masses and 700,000 square miles of flatland create the ideal conditions for storm chasing. It’s become the annual rite of spring for a motley collection of scientists, enthusiasts and eccentrics. Follow extreme filmmaker Sean Casey and thrill-seeking meteorologist Reed Timmer on the trail of Mother Nature’s deadliest and most violent creations.AUCTION KINGS
From vampire killing kits and T-Rex fossil teeth, to pink Cadillacs and hot air balloons, each half-hour episode of AUCTION KINGS follows Atlanta auction house owner Paul Brown and his team as they hunt for and sell some of the most unusual items in America. Get to know the sellers, then watch their rarities hit the auction block as Paul and his intrepid crew dazzle bidders for top dollar. AUCTION KINGS is a roller coaster ride filled with thrills and disappointments, where one person’s trash becomes another’s treasure … and you never know if it’s buyer or seller who’ll get the deal.HOGS GONE WILD
HOGS GONE WILD explores the escalating national problem of free-roaming wild hogs. Because their reproduction rate is unbelievably high (two hogs and their offspring can produce thousands of their kind), controlling the population of these aggressive and unruly beasts is crucial to mitigate costly damages and physical danger. The current estimate on wild hogs is six million, with some of them growing as large as 700 pounds. In the United States, millions of dollars of damage is caused per year for business, farm and homeowners.SWAMP LOGGERS
Fourth generation logger Bobby Goodson is one of the rare breed of swamp loggers working the dangerous and murky North Carolina marsh in search of high value timber for everything from paper products to construction grade lumber. This family-owned operation employs nearly a dozen swamp veterans including Bobby’s son Justin Goodson and brother-in-law David Mueller. As the company works through the cold, wet winter and into the scorching summer, they battle extreme conditions, overcome mechanical breakdowns, face personal health crises and deal with the constant push to grow the business during a time of economic uncertainty. Through the ups and downs, the crew of Goodson’s All-Terrain Logging works together to maintain their reputation of being the best swamp loggers around.AMERICAN LOGGERS
One family. Thousands of acres. Endless challenges to keeping their business afloat. Meet the Pelletiers – nine brothers balancing family feuds with nature’s harsh realities as they timber harvest in Maine’s rural northwest backcountry. Throughout the year, the Pelletier brothers run monster trucks along the legendary logging route known as the “Golden Road,” a desolate thruway serving as sole passage between the farthest outskirts of rural civilization and a breathtaking unconquered wilderness that constitutes the single largest swath of unprotected forest east of the Mississippi.NEW SERIES
PENN & TELLER’S SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE
Vegas show-stopping iconoclasts and world famous anti-Magicians, Penn & Teller bring their unique vision of the world to Discovery. Aided by a series of spectacular stunts, Penn & Teller reveal the SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE, answering the big, urgent questions of the modern world such as: Can you lift a 5000lb car with human hair? Does cursing help with pain management? And did ancient aboriginal Australians really create a cure for snoring? But there’s a twist: Each episode presents up to ten amazing stories, but one of them is a lie. A multiplatform audience will play along to guess the fake – and only at the end of the show will it be unmasked.BEST IN THE BUSINESS
Pitting farmer against farmer, fireman against fireman, florist against florist, BEST IN THE BUSINESS is the ultimate battle of job-skill supremacy that celebrates the crème de la crème of the American workforce. Each episode showcases three average American jobs -stonecutters, shelf-stockers, sheep-shearers – and turns the spotlight on the not-so-average people who take their profession to the next level. Meet mechanics who can change a tire in less than 10 seconds, grocery baggers who fill a bag in seven seconds flat and big-rig drivers that can parallel park faster than you can throw your minivan in reverse!SWAMP BROTHERS
Meet a different breed of brothers: Robbie Keszey is an exotic animal expert and Stephen Keszey is a former city slicker learning the ropes. Together they run Glades Herp Farms, Florida’s largest reptile sanctuary and exotic reptile dealership. The brothers make their living breeding and caring for hundreds of slithering, poisonous and sharp-toothed creatures – but their passion is being on call 24 hours a day to respond to animal emergencies across the state. From a 300-pound boa constrictor to rogue bobcats pillaging local farmland, the brothers make it their business to track these animals down, capture them and return them to a safe environment – without losing life or limb in the process. For the Keszeys, it’s all in a day’s work.LIFE ON A WIRE
Nik Wallenda comes from seven generations of daredevils and famous circus family “The Flying Wallendas.” Nik is a daredevil for the 21st Century and along with his dad, who supervises the rigging and safety, he performs death-defying stunts. We follow his whole family (mom, dad, wife, kids) as they engineer and execute their life’s passion.
The more I hear Mike Rowe talk about working in trades and “alternative education”, the more I find myself agreeing with him. Without going into detail, I’ll let Mike do the talking…
You can find more videos featuring Mike on at Vimeo, courtesy of Big Communication.
I was surprised this weekend when I learned from Richard Huff over at NYDailyNews that Mike Rowe’s contract for Dirty Jobs is expiring next year. Understandably, Mike is in that awkward position of considering letting it expire or put together a new contract for another ‘X’ number of years.
“It’s just the weirdness of it,” he says, “to sit in the president’s office of a major network and having that president lean in and say, ‘We’ve been thinking about it, we have your next project, and it’s ‘blankety, blank, blank With Mike Rowe.’”
Rowe says the idea of having a show built around him can be flattering, but he also realizes that big networks won’t give him the kind of nurturing he’s had at Discovery. So it would be a gamble.
“There’s a ton of opportunity,” he says. “Personally, I feel the themes around jobs, and the themes around the business I’ve been able to build, are more interesting than replacing Charlie Sheen – not that I’ve been offered that.”
I won’t even pretend to know what Mike has been offered by Discovery (or any other network for that matter), but I would love to see him continue his work at Discovery. It would be awkward to see him elsewhere. It reminds me of Josh Bernstein moving from History Channel to Discovery and that didn’t work out for him.
Mike has been considerably more successful since his move from History to Discovery. I can’t really see a reason to end a relationship that seems to benefit both he and Discovery rather well.
I think Dirty Jobs has been a great help in cementing Mike’s public image of that “every man” we often think of him as. It has also allowed him numerous spokesperson opportunities and he’s on various committees for job creation and growth… not to mention the fact that he’s been to Washington a couple of times in order to speak to our congressmen about jobs.
Let’s all hope he and Discovery are able to work things out and come up with a reasonable deal to continue one of our favorite shows, Dirty Jobs.
As we mentioned earlier in the week here, Mike Rowe has been tapped to narrate the Discovery Channel version of the Discovery/BBC co-produced Human Planet documentary series which is slated to debut April 10th. Chris Higgins from Mental Floss was fortunate enough to coax Mike away from America’s many warehouses, farmhouses, henhouses, outhouses and doghouses for an interview on the subject of his new show.
Here’s a (VERY brief) portion of the interview. I recommend clicking this link for the interview in its entirety.
Higgins: John Hurt narrated the BBC broadcast of Human Planet.
Rowe: That’s correct. The BBC version is also much longer than the American version. They did 8 hours, we’re only doing 6. Studies have proven that British viewers are lot more patient than American viewers.
Higgins: So who’s better, you or John Hurt?
Rowe: John Hurt is annoyingly good. Shockingly good, actually. When I watch him act, I am humbled. When I listen to him speak, I weep. And yet, I am thrilled and eager to usurp him whenever possible. Professional narration is a cruel and nasty business, and as this series clearly illustrates the most deserving characters don’t always prevail.
Higgins: I remind you, Hurt played the crazy space bazillionaire in Contact AND Kane (the first guy to get an Alien on his face/bursting from his chest) in Alien.
Rowe: Right. But both of those performances pale next to his work in The Proposition. Best Australian western ever. Rent it. Watch it. Be amazed.
It was just last week when I mentioned Human Planet and Deadliest Catch as being excellent shows to watch in the near-future and as it turns out, Mike Rowe has signed on to narrate Human Planet.
Here’s the official press release:
MIKE ROWE TO NARRATE EPIC NEW SERIES HUMAN PLANET, PREMIERING APRIL 10 AT 8PM ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL
April 4, 2011
(Silver Spring, Md.) – Discovery Channel today announced Mike Rowe will lend his legendary baritone voice as narrator for its awe-inspiring new six part series HUMAN PLANET, a majestic portrait of people’s incredible ability to survive and thrive in our planet’s most extreme environments. The BBC/Discovery Channel co-production makes its U.S. premiere on Discovery on Sunday April 10 at 8PM e/p with the episode Rivers and Oceans.Rowe is best known as host and creator of Discovery’s DIRTY JOBS WITH MIKE ROWE as well as the voice of DEADLIEST CATCH and host of AFTER THE CATCH. But Rowe is no stranger to natural history – he narrated the Discovery Channel/BBC co-production WILD PACIFIC in 2009.