According to a New York Post report, producer Mark Burnett says he is in discussions with TLC to bring “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” back for a second season next fall.
“The plan would be to shoot this in the summer of 2012,” he tells The Post.
New episodes of the outdoorsy reality series — which shows the former vice-presidential candidate fishing, hunting and dog sledding with her family — would not air until after the November presidential election.
“By the time we edit it, the election will be over,” Burnett says. “But I am sure the election would be mentioned [in the show].”
“It makes perfect sense, because that is what’s going on. But it would be again Sarah in Alaska, living with Todd and the family and having adventures juxtaposed with doing her Fox News bits and discussing whatever is going on.”
Burnet denied a Hollywood Reporter story from last week to the effect that TLC and other networks had turned down a new $1 million-per-episode spin-off series featuring Todd Palin husband on the professional snowmobiling circuit. Calling that report “totally inaccurate,” Burnett explained that the snowmobiling idea was proposed as only one episode of ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska’ rather than a series.
"One can just imagine the pandemonium that would ensue at the Emmy Awards ceremony..." * Mark Whittington notes that Gov. Palin may potentially become an Emmy Award winner for her "Sarah Palin's Alaska" series which aired last year on The Learning Channel. It seems that TLC has entered "Sarah Palin's Alaska" in four categories: cinematography, picture editing, music composition and best reality program, giving her four shots at taking home one of the iconic statuettes:
Just from an artistic quality standard, the show does deserve at least a nomination in these categories. From a Hollywood political standard, one cannot imagine any possibility that Palin's reality series would win anything. If there is one place where she is hated more than the newsrooms of America's lamestream media, it is Hollywood.
Of course, the hatred is not universal. Recently Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, not exactly in Palin's political camp, did stick up for her during the email kerfuffle. One suspects there a few in Hollywood who secretly like the Lady from Wasilla but, adhering to the politics that dare not speak its name in Tinseltown, remains pretty much silent about that fact.
One can just imagine the pandemonium that would ensue at the Emmy Awards ceremony this fall if Palin were to actually win Best Reality Show. It would be as if righty film director John Milius had won something for one of his movies. The rioting inside the hall would liven up an otherwise dull evening as the Mama Grizzly comes up to the stage to accept her award.
Whittington says simply the act of nominating Mama Bear could actually be a savvy PR move for Tinseltown. It would allow Hollywood to claim that it doesn't really hate conservatives. Plus, the buzz created by a nomination or two for SPAlaska would drive the ratings for the awards show into the stratosphere. Will Hollywood's PR addiction win out over its PDS affliction? Stay tuned...
Tourism is Alaska's second-largest industry, behind natural resource development and slightly ahead of the state's seafood industry, infusing nearly $2 Billion into the local economy annually. The more than 40,000 Alaskans whose livelihoods depend on tourism are hoping their most famous fellow citizen’s television show will attract Americans from the lower 48 to the land of the midnight sun:
In several new advertisements slated to run on cable stations through March, the Alaska Travel Industry Association includes scenes from “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” The promoters also show segments from “Deadliest Catch,” “Ice-Road Truckers” and images of wildlife, icebergs, mountains, kayaking and fishing.
Kathy Dunn, the ATIA marketing director, told the Associated Press that any and all Alaska press benefits the state.
“Obviously, any time you put Alaska in front of people, no matter the context, it’s a good thing,” Dunn said. “Exposure is always good.”
Alaska's visitor numbers increased in 2010, and that growth is expected to continue in 2011.
* The eighth and final episode of Sarah Palin's Alaska is scheduled to air January 9 on TLC, but the network is releasing the entire series on DVD.
The 2-disc set will sell for a suggested retail price of $19.98 and will be available in April. TLC's online store is also selling a 3-disc Special Edition for $29.95 that will begin shipping March 1. The extra disc features additional documentaries about the 49th State — but they do not involve members of clan Palin. Details on the special edition set are here.
The episodes on the DVDs are not numbered in the same order that they aired on TLC.
Also, Willow prepares to take her driver's license test * Gov. Palin previewed the next episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" Friday on Facebook:
Follow Me There... to Afognak Island!
Come along on another Alaskan adventure as we profile amazingly hard workers in the timber industry. Loggers are hearty and hardy, and the ones I know are true conservationists. I can’t wait for you to meet these lumberjacks!
During this Christmas season, do you ever wonder where you get many of your Christmas trees, firewood, packing boxes… shoot, just look around at everything timber touches and ask yourself who begins the production of these wood products? You’ll meet them on an exciting trip to an Afognak Island logging camp where our daughter learns even more about our family’s #1 lesson: tough work ethic and character will fulfill and sustain you.
Learn how the logging families live in such a remote part of God’s country and how they cherish the land that provides their livelihood. You’ll see how their reforestation efforts allow the forest regrowth rate to repeat a life cycle of new forest nearly every 20 years. These loggers actually care more about the sustainability of their forests than most anyone because they love their livelihood, they know America relies on our domestic timber industry for good jobs and economic security, they are inspired in the great outdoors, and many of them want their kids to get to grow up to be loggers. Basically, the good folks you’ll meet want to be allowed to do what they love to do and what anyone who lives among lumber and wood products rely on them to do for us.
In addition, come see Willow’s eyes open to a new rugged and rustic lifestyle. Her driving skills improve (?) before she undertakes a family’s rite of passage with an upcoming driver’s license test. Any parent can relate.
With only a couple more episodes to share, I promise you a fun and informative episode of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” this Sunday night at 9pm ET/8c on TLC. Follow me there!
A larger audience than Bravo's "Housewives" or most other cable shows * Moonbat bloggers and other leftist media outlets have been trying to paint "Sarah Palin's Alaska" as a flop, but TLC seems to be delighted with the series' ratings. And it's rumored that network executives are discussing a possible second season with Governor Palin. NewsBusters Associate Editor Noel Sheppard writes:
The gossip website Popeater reported Tuesday:
"3.066 million people turned in last week to see her episode with Kate Gosselin," a TLC insider tells me. "That is more people than are watching Bravo's 'Housewives' series or most other cable shows. For sure the network is doing everything it possibly can to convince Sarah to do another season, but at the end of the day it looks like it will all come down to money."
[...]
As for Palin, who Popeater believes is currently making more than $250,000 per episode, "when the show debuted to over 4.96 million viewers, insiders tell me she started talking about a new deal right away."
Popeater believes Palin could be looking at a significant raise to as much as $1 million an episode.
"One way to get out of a rut is to find inspiration in the great outdoors" * Gov. Palin posted about the next episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on Facebook:
Quads, Bogs, and Bones
Life is so unpredictable, and like my dad always says, it’s “too short to be stuck in a rut!” One way to get out of a rut is to find inspiration in the great outdoors. Activity and fresh air are energizing! Sunday at 9pm ET/8c on “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” we show you a few things that we find more fulfilling than staying indoors and sitting on the couch.
Plato said, “You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” So join us as we learn more about each other and what God’s creation has to offer, as we pack up the RV to go dog mushing, white water rafting, four-wheeling, and fossil hunting where we find evidence of ancient sea life on the high hilltops of the Last Frontier! Come join us as we experience more of Alaska’s amazing sights and meet a few more of our friends, including a very special friend we visit in this episode who passed on recently. This episode is dedicated to our old friend “Bones.” You can watch a preview of it here.
My early New Year’s wish for all is that inspiration and fulfillment will be yours in 2011. Remember that one way to find that is to get outdoors.
Also dog sledding and meeting Iditarod champions * From TLC, here's a preview of Sunday night's episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," in which the family goes white water rafting and ATVing:
Episode 6 airs Sunday night at 8 Central/9 Eastern Time on TLC.
"She bitched from the moment she got off the plane" * Ken Tucker at Entertainment Weekly:
"Last week, Sarah Palin shot a caribou; this week, Sarah Palin might have, at the very least, used a taser gun on Kate Gosselin and I doubt that even Aaron Sorkin would lodge so much as a complaint... Or as Sarah’s father said later of Kate, 'She bitched from the moment she got off the plane.'"
"She is resonating with a segment of society I never imagined would have a clue about her." * Larry Johnson at No Quarter:
"Democrats beware. All of your attacks on Sarah Palin and your attempts to demonize her or demean her intellect are likely to backfire. You know Sarah is a genuine phenomena when you are confronted with the fact that three boys with a chance to watch anything on TV choose to watch Sarah. How’s that for a Christmas story?"
* According to TV by the Numbers, ratings for "Sarah Palin's Alaska" Sunday night increased 11 percent over the previous week, rising from 2.78 million viewers to 3.1 million.
The moonbatosphere, which declares the series a "failure" if one week's ratings aren't as high as the previous ones, has been ignoring this latest turn of events. Go figure...
"Once again this episode shows that Palin is the real deal" * When Lorie Byrd heard thatKate Gosselin and her eight will appear on Sunday’s episode of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, she groaned, imagining Kate on a camping trip "whining and complaining about dirt and bugs and no bathroom," as some of the gossip sites would have us all believe. In a Big Hollywood op-ed, Byrd says if this episode was all about Kate, she doubted if she could have watched the whole thing:
Thankfully it wasn’t though. Sure there are the obligatory comments from Kate about how crazy all this outdoorsy, gun shooting, camping stuff seems to her. But this episode was really more about how much kids can learn from being exposed to the great outdoors. And about how experiences like that can bring families closer together.
Sarah’s father, Chuck Heath, is featured again in this episode. He is a retired science teacher and his house is like a nature museum — full of fun and interesting things for kids to look at and touch like beaver skulls and porcupine quills and stuffed animals (of the taxidermy, not teddy bear, variety). Kate’s kids appear fascinated by the things he shows and teaches them over the course of their visit. (Note to Mark Burnett: Give this man his own show. I could listen to him talk about wildlife for hours. He is a great teacher and is obviously passionate about the world around him.)
Before their Chelatina Lake camping trip, Sarah and Kate and Willow attend a “Learn to Return” class to learn about how to avoid and distract bears and, if necessary as a last resort, to shoot one. Sarah shows her pioneer woman calm and strength when she gets two kill shots on the simulated attacking bear. Once again this episode shows that Palin is the real deal. She grew up hunting and fishing and camping and comes across as the kind of person you would want protecting your family in a dangerous situation. Also, as in previous episodes, the viewer gets a great lesson in Alaska wildlife, both in the class and out in the wilderness on the camping trip.
There are indeed some great moments of misery from Kate, but whoever came up with the idea to put Kate and her brood together with Sarah and her clan has to be a genius. Some of the ex-Romney people who were with John McCain's campaign ginned up the tall tale that Gov. Palin was some kind of a diva. What better way to shoot that one down than put a real diva on the show to demonstrate the difference between diva and Sarah:
Five hours' worth * TLC will run five episodes of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" back to back in a Saturday night marathon tonight. It begins at 6PM Central with Episode 1, "Mama Grizzly." Episode 2, "Just for the Halibut" will be shown next at 7PM, followed at 8PM by Episode 3, "Salmon Run." The fourth episode, "She's a Great Shot," airs at 9PM, and then at 10PM, TLC will show "Just for the Halibut" again.
Good opportunity to watch and/or DVR any missed episodes. Remember to check the Blogs 4 Palin Unofficial Sarah Palin Events Calendar here for dates and times of all original and repeat episodes of "Sarah Palin's Alaska."
The show represents an authentic hunting experience with honesty and integrity * Hunter andauthor Pete Bodo finds that the most interesting discovery from the controversy over last Sunday's hunting episode of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” is how little most people who criticized it know about Alaska, guns, wildlife, and hunting. And no one knows less about such things than Hollyweirdo Aaron Sorkin, who doesn't even know the difference between a caribou and a moose:
I mean, I know Sorkin wrote “The Social Network” (OMG! 2 cool!) and all that, but boy, does he know zilch about animals (including, presumably, the ones that provide his Santa Monica dinners). I suppose he doesn’t understand that he’s a predator in his own right – who else would label a woman documenting a hunting trip with her father, Chuck Palin Sr., as a “witless bully?”
But never mind that. Friends have told me that even some hunters have criticized the show on various grounds. After watching the episode, I suspect it’s simply because those critics are among that distinct minority that hunts but also suffers from Sarah-phobia. The show accurately represents an authentic hunting experience; in fact, it does so with greater honesty and integrity that you find on your typical Saturday morning “antler porn” hunting show.
[...]
Palin also was ridiculed for emptying the five-shot magazine of the gun her father had provided for the hunt, after which she dropped the caribou with the first shot she took using Becker’s rifle. I confess to having felt a bit puffed up when, after Palin finally made her killing shot, I thought back to a previous scene, in which Chuck Palin took a tumble down a loose bank with his gear and rifle. “The scope (telescopic sight) must have gotten knocked off zero,” I thought (“zero” being the point were the bullet goes exactly where the crosshairs are centered) as Palin missed her fourth shot.
As we learned near the end of the episode, Chuck’s scope was indeed way off.
[...]
Some also objected to the way Chuck Palin worked the bolt after each shot taken by his daughter, interpreting it as a sure sign of her incompetence. Well, Palin’s obvious, basic familiarity with the rifle, and her decent form handling it, were sufficient to make me think that was nothing more than a typical “daddy knows best” moment. Hunters, guides, parents – we all get excited at the moment of reckoning. And only someone who’s never handled a rifle would suspect that Palin doesn’t know how to work a bolt. It isn’t rocket science, trust me on that.
But it’s depressing to have to parse the video episode this way. What, is Sarah Palin on trial here? The critics mostly demonstrate how woefully little they know about hunting, firearms, and the natural world in general, despite the “green” vows they’ve taken.
I’m a hunter, and to me Palin’s show was Emmy-worthy for its honesty, modesty, and it’s effective portrayal and celebration of the hunting experience.
"It seemed realistic to me, and I’m a pretty harsh critic of that" * Palin haters have been claiming the guv is no hunter, a bad shot, and everything but a child of God in the wake of Sunday's hunting episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Her supporters have pointed out the the gun she tried first likely had it's scope knocked out of alignment when her dad, who was carrying the rifle at the time, took a hard spill on rocky ground. They add that the first shot she took with another rifle, one which did not hit the ground hard, dropped the deer.
Politico decided to ask Nick Seifert for his opinion of Gov. Palin’s hunting skills. The outdoorman's credentials include hosting the “Straight Shooting” segment of “American Gun Dog” for five seasons and 12-years at Field & Stream and Outdoor Life magazines:
“Technically, it wasn’t perfect, but to me it seemed honest. Unlike a lot of shows that cut everything out, that was a fairly honest hunt,” said Seifert.
As for what was technically off, Seifert said Palin “shot a lot of times, it’s hard to say what kind of shot she is.” But Seifert noted that Palin “had a good rest, she was calm and she squeezed the trigger.”
“That’s the hardest part,” he said, “to calm yourself down when you are going to kill a big game animal. She did a good job there.”
[...]
Palin also took heat for the questions she asked her father about the gun kicking and when to shoot, but Seifert said that he has heard experienced hunters ask similar questions. “You don’t want to injure the animal,” he said.
[...]
Seifert’s conclusion? “It seemed realistic to me, and I’m a pretty harsh critic of that because I see a lot of unrealistic stuff out there on hunting channels. I thought it was an honest hunt and I thought there are a lot of people out there who would like to have that kind of time with their dad.”
But the haters won't listen to anything anyone says that doesn't tear down Sarah Palin. Try to get them to listen to Seifert's evaluation and they will put their hands over their ears and shout, "I can't hear you."
"I didn't know anyone ate dogs, tanned the hides, and made boots out of them" *
All that cocaine he snorted must have rotted Aaron Sorkin's brain. Either that, or he has morphed into Disney's famous character Pinocchio. How else to account for his bizarre assertion in a Huff-Posting that Gov. Palin didn't kill that caribou for food, just for fun? Good grief, last Sunday's episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" clearly shows her checking her depleted freezer's foodstock before the hunt and filling it with meat from the caribou she bagged afterward.
Even more evidence of the leftist producer's mendacity or brain damage (or both) is given by Sorkin's curious claim that he couldn't distinguish between Sarah Palin's hunting and Michael Vick's participation in a dogfighting ring, for which he was sent to prison for 18 months.
"So a leftwing Hollywood producer thinks there is no 'distinction' between harvesting healthy, wild organic protein to feed my family and engaging in dog fighting?" Palin said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "I didn't know anyone ate dogs, tanned the hides, and made boots out of them."
Here’s proof that Sarah had all her paperwork in order * The hateful left has long been spreading the lie around the moonbatosphere that Sarah Palin doesn't have the proper tags and license to hunt caribou. Time for the "reality-based community" to get yet another reality check:
Thanks to the production team’s diligence, here’s proof that Sarah had all her paperwork in order with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The entire episode was recorded September 1-5, 2010. This video was recorded on September 2, 2010, and the permits purchased were valid September 3-4, 2010, because of the no fly and hunt rule. Sarah shot her caribou on September 4, 2010.
We’ve heard that our friends at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game have been inundated with requests for copies of her hunting license and caribou tags. Hopefully, this post and video can put those questions to rest so these diligent state workers can focus on more pressing matters than disproving rumors.
Actrually, overloading government offices with bogus requests and inquiries is part of the left's anti-Palin plan. It's a modification of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, just as were the more than twenty bogus lawsuits and "ethics" complaints they swamped state offices with in Alaska when Sarah Palin was governor.
Also, TLC's blogger is much too gentle. These aren't "rumors" -- they're lies. Malia Litman and Politics USA should be ashamed of themselves, but these lying leftists have no shame. Their job is to destroy Sarah Palin, and they will tell as many lies as they think they need to in pursuit of their dark goal. But it's an article of faith that light drives out darkness. Don't ever hesitate to confront the darkness and shine a light! h/t: Ron Devito
"Why merely whine about being reminded where food comes from, when you can throw a complete temper tantrum? Sure, Palin is like Michael Vick because… well, because Aaron Sorkin doesn’t like either one of them. And Sorkin’s not a hypocrite for railing against the killing of an animal and then going out for a steak dinner, because that would make him a bad person... But look on the bright side: There’s no meat in a coca leaf!"
According to a New York Post report, producer Mark Burnett says he is in discussions with TLC to bring “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” back for a second season next fall.
