This blog is in response to a recent article in the New York Times entitled, “A Soap Opera on the High Seas”. The article was mostly about Thom Beers, the creator of Deadliest Catch but it also attempts to explain why “Deadliest Catch” is so popular.

(referring to Thom Beers) “He turned crab fishing into one of the best soap operas ever,” W. Clark Bunting, the former president of Discovery, says.

For years I have been reading this line, that “Deadliest Catch is a soap opera for men”. I think that’s condescending. At the very least, it’s lazy journalism. “Deadliest Catch” has been on cable now for eight years so we have had a few serious journalists write about the show. Often, the premise of their articles is based around the question, “Why is a television show about crab fishing so popular?”. The final conclusion, as if they are discovering an original thought, is that it’s like a “soap opera”.

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