Mike Rowe, the host for Dirty Jobs and narrator for the bulk of Discovery programming was a boon to the flagging corp just 8 years ago. A little known fact about Rowe is, despite being a professionally trained Opera singer (and why he initially sought employment with Discovery as a narrator/voice actor), he has multiple technical degrees in fields like engineering.
He trended the ratings of early versions the show "World's most dangerous jobs" and the appeal segments, such as outlandishly disgusting jobs or the cantankerous captains of the Bering Sea, and pitched the idea of Deadliest Catch and Dirty Jobs to the execs--essentially paving the way for their reality t.v. programming block and the host of other technical shows (like mythbusters) Rowe helped farm.
Last year he wanted to encourage Disc to do a series similar to what we see now on SyFy with FaceOff and the defunct "America's Next Inventor" with Engineers ("Top Engineer" or something such title) but pulled the plug seeing as cheapening the field and drawing more novice mall ninjas than they'd want. Since then, like the screenprint show (Phonebooth Galleria was interviewed for it, along with Joe King) and now knives, he's been trying to produce a show dedicated to those "preserved arts" in America.
I will try to find the articles, but there were a series of press releases about it on Discover's page this time last year.
Please note one thing though guys--you have the right to, and should ask for, consent forms to release intellectual property. They should have sent you notice of that in with the email--if they intend to track, trend, compare, or reference anything you send them, they have to give you a form not only giving your consent to use your intellectual property (and yes, something as little as opinion counts) but also releasing you from any liability.
