Contestants tackle 'America's Toughest Jobs'

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Viewers have taken a ride with "Ice Road Truckers," tagged along for "Deadliest Catch" and gasped at the work of loggers on "Ax Men" and the oil men on "Black Gold." Now executive producer Thom Beers, the man behind all those series, takes bits from each of them to create NBC's reality competition, "America's Toughest Jobs" (9 p.m. EDT Monday).

In "Jobs," 13 people -- eight men, five women -- will venture out of their safe, comfortable careers (investment banker, recruiter, Wall Street executive, model, software-company executive) to try their hands at logging, oil drilling, bullfighting, bridge painting and driving monster trucks. At the end of each episode, their boss for that particular job will tell one contestant to hit the road. Josh Temple (TLC's "Backyard Nation") is the host.

In Monday's premiere, the contestants go crab fishing in the Bering Sea.

Beers said he was inspired to create this series after years of hearing viewers, who have watched his shows, saying they want to be crab fishermen or truck drivers.

"The timing seemed right because (we're in) these times where people don't necessarily know if their job's going to be there tomorrow (and when) a lot of people don't necessarily like their jobs they have now," Beers said.

"Why don't you go out there and revisit those kinds of jobs that actually made America great, those great, working-class, blue-collar jobs. That's what these are. ... It was great to get (these contestants) out of that cubicle, that conceptual life we're in and get out there and get some real raw experience in a place with high stakes and high rewards."

At the end of "America's Toughest Jobs," the winner will get more than $250,000. To come up with that number, Beers said he was inspired by the Parade magazine survey of what people in different professions earn. He takes the starting salary from each job performed on the show and throws it into a pot that the ultimate winner will take home.

Beers said his past cable series have been successful because they strike a chord with American viewers who are in the midst of a changing zeitgeist.

"In the old days, it was the action heroes, movie stars, who were our heroes. Then for a really weird little while, politicians and bankers and people that made a lot of money were our heroes," he said.

"Since they took all of our money with them and left us broke, we're standing around going, 'Who are our heroes today?' I think what's happened is we're starting to look within ourselves. We're trying to remind ourselves what made America great. It was the fact that we did stuff with our hands. We created stuff. We worked. We didn't just basically think it and outsource it. I think that's changing."

(Contact TV editor Rob Owen at rowen(at)post-gazette.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)