Mike Rowe Talks on Moving “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” Away From CNN, and How Following Your Passion Isn’t the Way to Happiness

You know Mike Rowe’s voice the moment you hear it, and I knew it the moment my phone rang and heard the familiar “Hey Brandon! It’s Mike Rowe.” It’s baritone and friendly and sounds like the voice you most want to hear a story from. His unique voice has been featured everywhere from television, radio, to the internet, making him one of the best-known voice actors in America.

But Rowe’s voice isn’t the reason he’s famous here in the states. Rowe is famous because he’s the guy who could make castrating lambs look charming and humorous, and digging out muck from a pipe look fascinating. Rowe, as most know him, is the former host of Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs.” Now he’s the host of “Somebody’s Gotta Do It.”

Rowe called me to tell me the great news that “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” is now finding a new home at TBN, and took a moment to tell me about his philosophy behind it. This is a major treat, as much of the U.S. would love to sit down and hear Rowe’s philosophy behind everything from safety precautions on the job to how he puts the bread bag back in the pantry.

As Rowe tells it, “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” is the ideological offspring of “Dirty Jobs.” If you’ve never seen the show, Rowe goes around the country to hang out with people who do the jobs no one really thinks about and participate in it himself. This includes Hollywood demolition experts, prairie dog relocation teams, and scientific taxidermists. All of them are important jobs and rarely do any of them get the glory for what they do.

The show was formerly shown on CNN, but “shown” would be an improper word to describe the shows time on the channel. Rowe tells me that “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” got a sour deal on CNN, as it would always be preempted by breaking news when it was supposed to air. It also had the problem of just not being sensational enough. You sadly tune into CNN to check up on just how on fire the world is, not see a bunch of people having a good time doing the jobs you don’t often pay mind to, if ever.

And that’s a shame, because these people are having a very, very good time, and we need to see that in this day and age. Sadly, Rowe tells me these episodes of “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” are three years old, and hardly anyone has seen just how awesome these jobs are due to its out of place position on CNN.

Rowe has always had a talent of glorifying the trades little glorified, and that’s one of his goals for his shows. To “tap people on the shoulder, and get them aware of the working man” as Rowe tells me. There’s real opportunity out there, and he wants to show people how much opportunity there is.

While America, especially millennials, have their eyes on the white collar jobs that require expensive degrees, everyday success stories are going untold. What’s more, these are success stories that are far more interesting than any that can be told about a person sitting behind a keyboard.

“There’s a bigger issue surrounding our view of America’s job market. It seems one dimensional, and that’s inaccurate,” Rowe tells me. “You don’t see the success stories. You don’t see people who prosper.”

He’s right. Too often we glorify the big highrise office job and look down on the jobs where you get your hands dirty. Rowe holds “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” very dear because it allows him to help America garner an appreciation for an entire populace the rest of us are disconnected from.

“We flip the switch, or flush the toilet, and never think about all the people that makes these everyday miracles possible,” said Rowe.

“My first responsibility when it comes to the show is fun,” said Rowe, who tells me how he tells these people’s stories. “I want to generate the feeling of “I wish I was there with Mike,” and get people to think that in all this joy and satisfaction that these people know something that the rest of us don’t.”

One thing we don’t know, and that Rowe would like to get across, is that the joy behind these jobs didn’t just spring up out of the blue. These people certainly all have a passion for their jobs, but as Rowe tells me, these people didn’t come by this passion by accident. They worked for it. They fostered it.

And this is the brutal truth behind Rowe’s message. Too often we’re told by society to follow our dreams and our passions. Sadly, too often this path leads us to dead ends, or our passion isn’t what we thought it was. We become resentful of the jobs we have to work at because we’re not succeeding in doing our what we thought our dreams were.

Rowe tells me that you don’t always love the job you work at, but you should always work to love it. Real passion for your job is earned. It’s not just something you bring with you.

What will get us to our passion, however, is opportunity. As Rowe tells me, pursuing opportunity is the basis for all passion just as courage is the basis for all virtue. It’s something he’s been helping America along with with his scholarship from the MikeRoweWORKS foundation, which has helped 1,000 people go to trade schools to find good paying, and badly needed blue collar careers.

“Opportunity will get you further than passion,” Rowe said. “Your job satisfaction, and the passion for it, will come when you learn to love it.”

“There’s nothing inherently good about passion,” he continued. “Passion is just the symptom of a plan.”

And everyone on “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” definitely has a passion for what they do, and it’s safe to say that many of the people featured didn’t see themselves joyfully dissecting dead rodents or relocating them as a kid. However, they’re definitely having a better time doing it than the guy with all the student debt, trying to get the same job everyone else with the same debt is trying to get.

“Somebody’s Gotta Do it” airs soon on June 2, at 6 pm est. I highly recommend a stop by TBN to watch, and really see that there’s a world out there that, while not hidden, isn’t often seen. It’s a world overflowing the opportunity and prosperity, and Mike Rowe is just the guy to show you how much there is to see, do, and find passion in.

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