The Weather Channel wants men to put down the iPad and get their plump rumps into the great outdoors. And they're not mincing words: the new show is called "Fat Guys in the Woods."
Survival expert Creek Stewart will lift three sedentary males out of their couch indentations and plop them into the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee for one week, during which they will battle "frigid and unpredictable weather" (that's the part that makes the show on-brand apparently) and learn how to survive with "little or no mass-made camping tools," according to a release from the network. They have ordered eight episodes.
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“Fat Guys in the Woods is an adrenaline-filled -- and often hilarious -- look at the battle between man vs. nature as these typical guys bravely choose to eliminate modern luxuries and learn what their fathers and grandfathers knew -- how to survive without access to the drive-thru,” said TWC president David Clark.
On one hand, Naked and Afraid is also a thing that exists on TV -- on the Discovery Channel, no less -- so why pan TWC when a low bar has been set? On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of programming that the Weather Channel was criticized for back in January during its carrier agreement fight with DirecTV.
At the time, the Weather Channel asked DirecTV for increased compensation, but the broadcast satellite service provider fought back against the attempted fee hike, saying numerous customer complaints about Weather Channel's reality programming had led to the creation of DirecTV's own weather information provider, called WeatherNation, back in 2011. The two parties reached a new agreement in April, with TWC agreeing to reduce reality programming by half on weekdays.
Fat Guys in the Woods premieres Aug. 10 at 10 p.m. ET. That's a Saturday.