NEWS > BUSINESS > EMPLOYERS DIRTYING UP JOBS TO APPEAR ON HIT TELEVISION SHOW

EMPLOYERS DIRTYING UP JOBS TO APPEAR ON HIT TELEVISION SHOW

September 6 2009

Sacramento, CA – In the four years since its debut Dirty Jobs has become one a collection of massive hits for the Discovery Channel. Alongside successes such as ‘Mythbusters’ and ‘Deadliest Catch’, ‘Dirty Jobs’ has thrust the channel to the top of the reality ratings heap. The show has also made a full-fledged star of former voice actor Mike Rowe making him one of the most recognizable personalities on reality TV. With no end in sight to the success of the show Discovery is betting heavy on the dirty show and so too are small businesses.

Such is the case with a small food processing plant in Sacramento which is now facing an investigation after accusations that they deliberately made the work environment dirty in an effort to appear on the show. The plant’s owners are currently being questioned by city and state officials and parts of the processing plant have been temporarily closed as the investigation proceeds. Though Discovery Channel and the producers of ‘Dirty Jobs’ are not currently part of the investigation
the incident is raising questions as to the safety of the program and the impact it might have on small businesses looking to be featured, something especially important in the flustered economy.

“We can confirm that a small independent food processor is currently under investigation. We will not reveal specifics of the investigation until it has been concluded but we can confirm that the owners had recently applied to be a part of the ‘Dirty Jobs’ television program. We do not at this point know if the two issues are directly related,” said a spokesperson for the Sacramento Department of Health. “We have found conditions that are not conducive to healthy food processing or preparation in this particular facility. We were informed that something wasn’t quite right from a former employee who notified our department of certain abuses occurring on the plant. We will follow up with more details when they are available.”

Scrape TV News has learned that the plant in question is Gibney Foods which provides food primarily to Burger King. Insiders suggest that the plant was previously quite clean and orderly but in recent months has fallen into disrepair. It is believed that Burger King dramatically reduced orders in the facility in reaction to the soft economic conditions.

“The harsh truth is when you are on TV you get a lot of attention. That is true for individuals and it is true for companies. There are people who are still living off the business that they garnered as a result of being featured on ‘Dirty Jobs’ and I can imagine that more than a few would be looking for the same opportunities especially in this economy,” said Scrape TV Business analyst Ken Green. “Appearing on a hit television show would be a boon to any struggling company no matter what field they are in at least in theory. Displaying to the world how dirty your food processing plant is might not be the best strategy and it appears that it didn’t pay off
in getting attention from the producers. The question though is how many other companies will try the same thing but successfully.”

The show has featured more than one hundred jobs ranging from maggot farming to bridge painting, all of which are considered naturally dirty. It’s as yet unclear how many of those jobs may have been much cleaner before the show came along.

“The first rule of news is that you report it, you don’t make it. While it’s unlikely that
producers have had a direct hand in dirtying up certain jobs it is likely that they encouraged certain elements of the dirtiness. I’m sure many places don’t sweep up for a few days and leave rotting things lying around to just get the perfect dirty feel for the episode. That of course hurts the honesty of the program and could harm its integrity long term,” continued Green. “The question remains as to how many dirty jobs there really are in the world. Ultimately they need to keep the show going and eventually they will run out of naturally dirty jobs and start to make jobs at least a little less clean than they would naturally be.”

Discovery officials made no comment on the particulars of the incident but did state that to their knowledge all the jobs featured on the program were filthy.    

William Ashford, Business Correspondent

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