Alaska Themed Reality TV Programs

Cafe Society
1

There appears to be many various programs on the air presently and recently centered around Alaska. Why is this? Is Alaska paying to “promote” thier state. It would seem to me that many of these programs could effectively be done in other states?? Any ideas on the reason behind the emergence of Alaska themed programs…

Examples of Alaska themed programs include -
Flying Wild Alaska
Gold Rush Alaska
Sarah Palin’s Alaska
The Alaska Experiment
Alaska Wildlife Troopers
Alaska State troopers
and others ???

2

Nebraska Corn Detasslers! just doesn’t have the same panache.

3

Reality shows are a fairly recent phenomenon in terms of pop culture appeal. They have existed for a long time but not in such great numbers spread across so many channels. They depend on finding something exotic and unique in (mostly) American culture like the mating patterns of overly tanned Italian Americans in Jersey Shore or life aboard a fishing boat. Alaska is exotic yet American so it is an easy fit for a producer looking for something unique. Sarah Palin certainly has certainly helped a great deal with that. There have never been many famous Alaskans for such a unique and huge place so it didn’t have the PR to catch on that well in the American mainstream media. The confluence of those factors helped it gain much better attention.

We are only talking about a matter of degree here and a pop culture one at that. Books, magazines, and travel shows have covered Alaska quite well for a long time. The widespread introduction of reality shows is what is making it a more popular sensation. If you want to produce a reality show, you want to go for the most extreme thing you can. I am sure that the police have to do crazy things in Iowa too but it just looks better on TV in Alaska.

4

Moving to Cafe Society.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

5

Are these all produced by the same company? It could be that they are up there anyway and might as well crank out a few more shows. Coming soon: Alaskan Pharmacy, Ice Road Streetwalkers, and Juno McDonalds.

6

Maybe the other shows are trying to make people forget Sarah Palin? No?

7

You left off the Deadliest Catch. I agree it’s partly because Alaska is considered exotic, most Americans have never been there. When I visited there the one thing that surprised me was they made a big deal about natives vs. people who moved there.

They are not all produced by the same company , for example Gold Rush is done by a British group. The Palin show is done by the guy who does Survivor.

8

It’s TV shows for guys.

You know the other 50% of the market they’ve been ignoring during the previous decade.

The two shows I loved watching they isn’t on your list. Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers.

9

These “science”/“educational” channels seem to follow trends. A few years ago, when Robot Wars was on, they all gravitated to various kinds of home-brewed mechical mayhem. One show hit paydirt in Alaska so they all seem to have headed up there.

10

Because TV producers don’t have a lot of imagination and often imitate shows that are already on the air.

11

There are Alaska Natives, native Alaskans, and everybody else. The first are Inuit, the second are those non-Inuit-but-born-there (like me), the third are recent arrivals.

12

Sarah Palins legs.

13

I’d be curious to know if most Alaska programming takes place in the tourism off-season. If so, maybe there’s a glut of them this time of year to nudge people to make plans to fill up those cruise ships during tourist season.

14

Deadliest Catch is filmed in the fall and winter. They show it in the spring and early summer. Alaska tourist season is obviously summer.

15

“Come to Alaska, she’s not in charge anymore!” would make a great tourism slogan.

16

There are many more than that. Some short over and more t come. There is a homesteader one finishing up filming here in Homer. Another proposed one they are casting is about fishwives. Kinda lame because many women fish up here.

Alaska is mysterious and full of myth. Just in my drinking thread it brought up much of this. If I was from Jersey the thread would hadifferent bit different.