- The Sportsman Channel series Amazing America will showcase Palin's 'red, wild and blue' lifestyle
- The channel appears in 32 million American homes and focuses on hunting, fishing and shooting
- Among its other offerings is a series starring rocker/libertarian Ted Nugent
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The Sportsman Channel said Monday it has hired Sarah Palin to be host of a weekly outdoors program that will celebrate her ‘red, wild and blue’ lifestyle.
Amazing America will debut in April and become the fourth reality show to follow the Palin brood, but faces an uphill battle if her previous attempt is any indication.
Palin’s 2010 foray into the genre, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, lasted for just eight episodes on TLC. And her family’s luck with reality TV hasn’t always been much better.
Mother of them all: Sarah Palin will debut in her family's fourth foray into reality television in April. Amazing America will document Palin's 'red, wild and blue' lifestyle and air on the Sportsman Channel
The Sportsman Channel is in some 32 million homes, less than one-third of American households with television, with programming geared to people interested in hunting, fishing and shooting. Palin's show will include a series of stories about personalities and activities in that vein.
‘It's very important to have somebody of her stature as a personality on Sportsman because it validates the whole category for everybody,’ said Gavin Harvey, network CEO.
The Sportsman Channel has ordered 12 episodes of the series to start. It's the first of a three-series deal between the network and the busy nonfiction production company Pilgrim Studios.
‘The network showcases a lifestyle that I love and celebrate every day and it's great to be a part of their team,’ Palin said in a statement provided by the network.
Mama bear: The show will be Palin's second reality series after 2010's short-lived Sarah Palin's Alaska on TLC
Punting her punditry? Since her failed bid for the vice presidency in 2008, the former Alaska governor has often worked as a commentator on Fox News Channel
Since her failed bid for the vice presidency in 2008, the former Alaska governor has worked as a commentator on Fox News Channel and was host of a short-lived series about her home state, ‘Sarah Palin's Alaska,’ that ran on the TLC network.
Last year, Palin’s husband Todd Palin competed in the low-rated NBC military-inspired competition series Stars Earn Stripes alongside actor Dean Cain, 98 Degrees singer Nick Lachey, and retired four star U.S. Army general Wesley Clark.
Sarah and Todd Palin’s daughter Bristol, whose unplanned teen pregnancy became fodder for Palin detractors during her failed vice presidential bid, twice appeared on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars--in 2010 and 2012.
She was voted off both times.
That same year, Bistol appeared in a Lifetime series Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp, which followed her life in Alaska as a young single mom.
Family affair: Sarah Palin's husband Todd competed in the low-rated NBC military-inspired competition series Stars Earn Strips
Bristol, too: The couple's daughter Bristol starred in her own reality series, Lifetime's short-lived Life's a Tripp
Maybe even 5 or 6: If you count Dancing with the Stars--on which Bristol has appeared as a contestant two times--the Palins have had 5 (or 6) forays into reality TV
The show attracted immediate criticism and multiple lawsuits and was quickly replaced in primetime with reruns of Dance Moms.
Owners of The Sportsman Channel tried and failed this year to buy its chief competitor, the Outdoors Channel, which airs in slightly more households.
The effort attracted some controversy because Leo Hindery Jr., a media executive whose company owns The Sportsman Channel, is a Democratic fundraiser and regarded warily by politically conservative outdoor enthusiasts who worried about what he might do to Outdoors.
Some of the content on The Sportsman Channel suggests they shouldn't be too concerned.
Besides the upcoming Palin series, Sportsman airs a series with conservative activist and rock musician Ted Nugent. Sportsman also airs a TV version of the National Rifle Association-sponsored radio show, ‘NRA News, Cam & Co.,’ each weekday and ‘NRA Guns & Gold,’ a show about guns styled after ‘Antiques Roadshow.’
Harvey said The Sportsman Channel has no interest in being politically polarizing.
‘It's not our intention at Sportsman to take any political position,’ he said. ‘This lifestyle, coast to coast, crosses every type of political spectrum.’
Another high profile show on Sportsman that ran this summer, Aporkalypse: 2013, was about the growth in the feral pig population.
Mama bear: Palin will join libertarian activist/rocker Ted Nugent, who also has a show on the Sportsman Channel
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