Dirty Jobs
Dirty Jobs logo
Format	Reality television
Starring	Mike Rowe
Opening theme	"We Care A Lot" by Faith No More
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	87 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	60 Minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Discovery Channel
Original run	November 7, 2003 – present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Dirty Jobs is a program on the Discovery Channel in which host Mike Rowe is shown performing difficult, strange, and/or messy occupational duties alongside professional workers. The show premiered with three pilot episodes in November 2003. It returned as a series on July 26, 2005. The episodes shown on the European Discovery Channel sometimes include scenes that were not included in the U.S. version.^{[citation needed]} There is also a European edition of the show, hosted by Danish goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel. Image File history File links Dirtyjobslogo. ... // This article is about the genre of TV shows. ... For other persons named Mike Rowe, see Mike Rowe (disambiguation). ... We Care a Lot is a 1987 single by rock band Faith No More. ... FNM redirects here. ... This is a list of Dirty Jobs episodes. ... Discovery Channel is a cable and satellite TV channel founded by John Hendricks which is distributed by Discovery Communications. ... is the 311th day of the year (312th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Discovery Channel is a cable and satellite TV channel founded by John Hendricks which is distributed by Discovery Communications. ... For other persons named Mike Rowe, see Mike Rowe (disambiguation). ... is the 207th day of the year (208th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Peter Bolesław Schmeichel MBE (IPA: , born 18 November 1963 in Gladsaxe, Denmark) is a retired Danish professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper, and was voted the Worlds Best Goalkeeper in 1992 and 1993. ...

An Australian version of the show commenced airing on the Nine Network from October 7, 2007. Dirty Jobs is a reality/factual program on the Nine Network, based on the American version of the same name, in which hosts Jo Beth Taylor and Ben Dark are shown performing difficult, strange, and/or messy occupational duties alongside professional workers. ... The Nine Network, or Channel Nine, is an Australian television network based in Willoughby, a suburb on the North Shore of Sydney. ... is the 280th day of the year (281st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ...

The appeal of the show is the juxtaposition of Mike Rowe, a well-spoken man of television with a sharp, sarcastic, self-deprecating wit, the blue-collar situations in which he's put, and the colorful personalities of the men and women who actually do that job for a living. Look up juxtaposition in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A blue-collar worker is a member of the working class who performs manual labor and earns an hourly wage. ...

Format

A worker takes on Rowe as a fully-involved assistant during a typical work day, during which he works hard to complete every task as best he can despite discomfort, hazards or situations that are just plain disgusting. The "dirty job" often includes cameraman Doug Glover and field producer Dave Barsky getting just as dirty as Rowe does. Rowe frequently takes on-camera jabs at "Barsky" (as he's most often referred to in the show), regarding Barsky's penchant for setting up scenes where Rowe will encounter the most dangerous and/or dirty part of the "dirty job" as part of a great camera shot; when a safety officer finishes going over the rules and regulations for the "Billboard Installer" job in the third season and hands Mike a log to sign to acknowledge receiving instructions, Mike mutters the words "Dave...Barsky" as he signs his name.

Mike Rowe often makes jokes about his jobs and describes them as "dirty jokes". But he almost never makes fun of the workers themselves. Indeed, Rowe and the show consistently respect these people for taking on the jobs that average people would never touch, and the show always begins with the following quote from Mike Rowe, usually spoken while in the midst of a particularly dirty task:

"My name is Mike Rowe, and this is my job: I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty—hard-working men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us. Now... get ready, to get dirty."

Rowe frequently makes note of the cheerfulness of his hosts - the dirtier jobs are often filled by happy workers.

History

The show is a spin-off of a segment host Mike Rowe once did on a local San Francisco program called Somebody's Gotta Do It. After completing a graphic piece on cow artificial insemination, Rowe was inundated with letters expressing "shock, horror, fascination, disbelief, and wonder". Rowe then sent the tape to the Discovery Channel, who commissioned a series based on this concept.^[1] Dirty Jobs is now produced by Craig Piligian (executive producer) of Pilgrim Film & Television. The Discovery Channel executive producer is Gena McCarthy. A spin-off (or spinoff) is a new organization or entity formed by a split from a larger one such as a new company formed from a university research group. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... AIH redirects here. ... Discovery Channel is a cable and satellite TV channel founded by John Hendricks which is distributed by Discovery Communications. ...

Mike has stated in recently aired promos (done alongside a large sow) that he originally wanted to honor his father, and grandfather, by bringing fame to the less-than-glorious careers.

Episodes

Main article: List of Dirty Jobs episodes

In July 2006, the show aired two special episodes to kick off and wrap up Discovery's annual Shark Week, of which Mike Rowe was the host. The episodes featured him in a number of jobs related to the animals, some as outlandish as shark repellent tester and shark suit tester, both of which necessitated his jumping into a shark feeding frenzy. As a pun on Discovery Channel's "Shark Week" theme, the two episodes were named "Dirty Jobs That Bite" and "Dirty Jobs That Bite Harder" for the opening and closing hours respectively. This is a list of Dirty Jobs episodes. ... The Discovery Channels Shark Week, which first aired in 1987, is a week-long series of feature television programs dedicated to facts on sharks. ... A shark suit is a body-cover suit made of chain mail worn sometimes by scuba divers to protect against shark bite. ... Feeding frenzy is an ecological term used to describe a situation where oversaturation of a supply of food leads to rapid feeding by predatory animals. ...

In late August of 2006, the show reached a milestone with Mike Rowe's 100th dirty job. This was commemorated with a special 2 hour long episode which mainly showed Mike's day with the U.S. Army's 187th Ordnance Battalion at Fort Jackson, and included bloopers plus an "about me" segment of Mike's crew. At the end of the episode, Mike Rowe and Dave Barsky had a guitar/banjo duet and performed a song about the 100 dirty jobs. A 2-hour 150th job special aired in early December 2007, which combined footage of Rowe's 150th job (working on a yak and bison farm in Montana) with footage of a party held at a San Francisco junkyard where people featured in past Dirty Jobs segments were reunited with Rowe. This article is about the current U.S. Army post. ... For other uses, see Yak (disambiguation). ... Species †B. antiquus B. bison B. bonasus †B. latifrons †B. occidentalis †B. priscus Bison in winter. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ...

Submissions

Each episode ends with a segment, usually shot at a previous dirty job, where Rowe tells the viewers that the show's continued existence depends on viewer submissions of suggestions for additional dirty jobs, and instructs them to go to the show's website for details on how to submit ideas (this segment is, however, usually edited out of the Canadian broadcasts of the series on Discovery Channel Canada). Rowe has often noted on-screen and off-screen that without viewer contributions, the show would be lost; Rowe originally concocted a list of a dozen jobs that could be featured in the three episodes that served as the show's pilot, and within days after the first episode aired, viewers flooded Discovery Channel with e-mail and video featuring their own dirty jobs, a tradition that has kept the show going ever since. As Rowe explained to Craig Ferguson on an episode of The Late Late Show in July 2007 about his original cache of jobs for the pilots, "I haven't had an original idea since then".^[2] Craig Ferguson (born May 17, 1962) is a Scottish television host based in America, stand-up comedian, writer, and actor. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Unaired segments

According to roadkill taxidermy artist Stephen Paternite, Dirty Jobs filmed a segment featuring him in 2003, which was ultimately cut by the Discovery Channel as "too gross". The segment follows Mike Rowe and Paternite as they gather and skin dead raccoons, which Paternite will eventually turn into art pieces. The segment is available to view on Paternite's website,^[3] and on YouTube, under the name "Too Gross for Discovery".^[4] In an interview on The Late Late Show Rowe also mentioned that there were several segments which they have chosen not to air because they were too disturbing, including a "body farmer." Even aired segments can be heavily edited, such as the "skull cleaner" segment, the final aired version of which Mike has likened to "The Sound of Music with the songs edited out" because parts of it were deemed too graphic for television.^[5] For the professional wrestler known as Roadkill, see Michael Depoli, for the movie marketed as Roadkill in the UK and Australia, see Joy Ride, for the Supernatural TV series episode, see Roadkill (Supernatural). ... A mounted snow leopard. ... Stephen Paternite (American born: 1952) multi-media artist ( known for his Roadkill artwork ) received his initial art training in the early 1970s at Cooper School of Art, Cleveland, Ohio In 1973, Paternite published 2 limited edition portfolios of serigraphic prints, entitled Six Clouds volume 1 and volume 2 In... For the river, see Raccoon River. ... YouTube is a popular video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. ... For other uses, see The Sound of Music (disambiguation). ...

There is also an episode produced in 2006 wherein Rowe visited his doctor while producers Piligian and Eddie Barbini try several dirty jobs themselves. The episode, entitled "Mike's Day Off," was not aired in the United States and is not listed in the official website, but is only available as a DVD-exclusive episode (bundled with the episode "Skull Cleaner") and a downloadable episode in iTunes.^[6] The episode has been aired however in some local Discovery Channel feeds such as those of Southeast Asia and Australia. This article is about the iTunes application. ...

Music

The show's theme song was originally Faith No More's "We Care A Lot" which features the lyrics, "Oh, it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it". In the first half of 2007, it was replaced with a generic theme song due to rights issues; older episodes aired at the time had their introductions reedited. Mike Rowe has said "Bottom line, the rights to 'We Care a Lot' were either not renewed on time, or not properly acquired in the first place".^[7] Although the network has not issued any statement clarifying the situation, "We Care A Lot" returned as the show's theme song beginning with the June 26, 2007 episode and has been retained on subsequent DVD releases of earlier episodes. FNM redirects here. ... We Care a Lot is a 1987 single by rock band Faith No More. ... is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ...

Season 2 commercials for the show feature the song "Dirty White Boy" by Foreigner. Season 3 commercials feature Rowe sharing the stage with a pig positioned on a rounded white pedestal, with nondescript formal-sounding light instrumental music in the background. Head Games is the third album by American rock band Foreigner, released in 1979 (see 1979 in music). ... Foreigner is a hard rock band formed in New York City in 1976 by veteran musicians Mick Jones and ex-King Crimson member Ian McDonald, along with then-unknown vocalist Lou Gramm (Louis Grammatico). ... A statue of Henry IV of France on a pedestal Pedestal (from French piedestal, Italian piedestallo, foot of a stall) is a term generally applied to the support of a statue or a vase. ...

Rowe often sings on-camera during the segments as part of a sardonic hat-tip to his days as an opera singer. During the candy making segment in episode 34 ("Fuel Tank Cleaner"), Rowe discovers that one of the candy makers makes a confection called "opera fudge" and ask if she sings opera during the making of opera fudge, then belts out an unidentified segment of an opera in Italian. During the cow pots segment of episode 47 ("Poo Pot Maker"), Rowe imitates the singing gondoliers of Venice while paddling around the liquid holding lagoon on the Freund farm: "'O Sole Mio/Don't know the words/I've paddled for hours/In ponds of turds..." In a 2007 episode set at Prince George's Stadium with Mike spending the day doing the "dirty jobs" associated with groundskeeping and dugout maintenance for the Bowie Baysox minor league baseball team in Bowie, Maryland, Mike ended the segment singing the National Anthem prior to the game and throwing out the first pitch. O sole mio is a globally famous Neapolitan song written in 1898. ... It is the home of the Baltimore Orioles AA affiliate in the Eastern League, the Bowie Baysox. ... The Bowie Baysox are a class AA affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. ... Motto: Growth, Unity and Progress Location of Bowie in the State of Maryland Coordinates: Country United States State Maryland County Prince Georges County Established 1916  - Mayor G. Frederick Robinson Area    - City 41. ... The Star Spangled Banner is the national anthem of the United States. ...

When Mike reads the very last piece of viewer mail in the viewer's choice episode, he was asked if he could sing the Dirty Jobs Theme Song because his online bio says that he used to be an opera singer. So he explained that one night, as they sat on "Foley" Creek (actually "Folly" Creek, but he has a tendency to pronounce it incorrectly), after a night of oysters and drinking (likely during the Oyster Harvester segment of the shrimper episode), he, Juke Joint Johnny and Sam (likely Silky Sam) jotted down some lyrics and the "official, unofficial Dirty Jobs Theme Song" was born. This shortest version of the song clocked in at just under a minute in length, and it varies a bit from later versions, but it is fun in that it was less planned than the later ones.^[8] This is a list of Dirty Jobs episodes. ... This is a list of Dirty Jobs episodes. ...

At the end of the pipe organ specialist segment of the geoduck farmer episode, Mike Rowe sang what he called the Dirty Jobs Anthem.^[9] Rowe reprised this moment in the "Leather Tanner" episode from the third season on an antique piano at the tannery. The baroque organ in Roskilde Cathedral, Denmark The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by forcing pressurized air (referred to as wind) through a series of pipes. ... This is a list of Dirty Jobs episodes. ...

At the conclusion of a two-hour special edition commemorating Mike's 100th dirty job, he and field producer Dave Barsky faked a guitar/banjo duet, featuring an extended version of this anthem which ran a little over two minutes in length (Rowe actually sang all the parts while Rowe's friend Matt played all the instruments).^[10] The extended song differs slightly from the shorter versions which aired previously, and even the words that are similar vary somewhat. Mike performed the song again with slightly different lyrics on the 150th Job Extravaganza with the Burning Embers.^[11]

Promotion

Discovery Channel issued the following statement in its publicity of the program: Discovery Channel is a cable and satellite TV channel founded by John Hendricks which is distributed by Discovery Communications. ...

In the feisty Dirty Jobs, host and everyman Mike Rowe gets the grimy scoop on downright nasty occupations. The featured "foul play for pay" could be processing smelly seafood in a fish factory, collecting bat guano for prized fertilizer, combing creek bottoms for edible wildlife, or cleaning septic tanks to maintain a fresh-smelling environment.

Since Mike Rowe began appearing in Ford pick-up truck commercials in 2006, the show has made tongue-in-cheek references to these ads. In the "Billboard Installer" episode, Mike jokingly quipped that he wasn't sophisticated in the ways of the advertising business, while standing in front of a Ford advertisement mounted on the billboard he had just helped to erect. Over the end credits of the "Wild Goose Chase" episode, Mike comments that as a Ford spokesman, the show is contractually obligated to mention Ford at least once in each episode. For other uses, see Everyman (disambiguation). ... The Chincha guano islands in Peru. ... Spreading manure, an organic fertilizer Fertilizers (also spelled fertilisers) are compounds given to plants to promote growth; they are usually applied either through the soil, for uptake by plant roots, or by foliar feeding, for uptake through leaves. ... “Ford” redirects here. ...

DVD releases

Discovery Channel has released 35 episodes on DVD.

is the 28th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Era (or Anno Domini), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 247th day of the year (248th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 36th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Era (or Anno Domini), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ...

References

Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 249th day of the year (250th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Logo of the St. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 78th day of the year (79th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... YouTube is a popular video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 297th day of the year (298th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 163rd day of the year (164th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 163rd day of the year (164th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 297th day of the year (298th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Era (or Anno Domini), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 126th day of the year (127th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 78th day of the year (79th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 78th day of the year (79th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 78th day of the year (79th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 78th day of the year (79th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 78th day of the year (79th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• The Worst Jobs in History

The Worst Jobs in History is a television series hosted by Tony Robinson on Channel 4. ...

External links

• Discovery.com Dirty Jobs Website
• Pilgrim Films Dirty Jobs Website