Things Only The Biggest Fans Of Dirty Jobs Know

There’s no one way to hatch a hit TV show. Some are treasured brainchilds of a driven artist, some are calculated out in the offices of network executives, and some are amorphous, shifting and growing with time. What became the Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” started out as a beer-fueled conversation in a San Francisco bar between a recently hired host and a local CBS affiliate producer.

The host was Mike Rowe, who tells this story on his personal website, and the producer was James Reid. With executives at the affiliate putting the pressure on for new segments on the series “Evening Magazine,” Rowe seized on the idea of being put into demanding situations above his pay grade, inspired by George Plimpton’s “Paper Lion.” Reid’s contribution was a choice to eschew anything glamorous and instead go to local workers in blue-collar jobs. The inaugural episode of the segment, then called “Somebody’s Gotta Do It,” focused on a zoo employee who had to drive a truck full of animal droppings.

“Somebody’s Gotta Do It” became a local success, but within a year, new management decided the segment didn’t fit their desired viewership. Rowe wanted to expand the concept anyway, and he pitched it as a segment for “Good Morning America,” leading with an episode on artificially inseminating cows. They, and other networks, all passed until Rowe got in touch with old colleagues at Discovery.