Fishing TV: Enough With The Plugs!

I vividly remember not being able to sleep at night because I was so anxious to watch fishing on TV the next day. At the time, cable TV wasn’t for everyone, and we didn’t have it in our household. But my uncle made sure he had it over at grandma’s house, and Friday night sleepovers meant one thing: Saturday morning fishing shows. At the time, those shows were like a dream to me.

I remember Roland Martin wading in Florida and catching a 12-pounder, or guest appearances by the late Doug Hannon on In-Fisherman. Who could forget the Fishin' Hole; the television show that may have captured the innocence and purity of fishing more than any other, before or since. And later in the weekend was reserved for the crown jewel: The Bassmasters.

How I remember Dusty Pine “Rat” fishing at Thousand Islands, Denny Brauer masterfully flipping willows at Buggs, and watching Jim Bitter drop the Classic-winning fish over the side. Believe it or not, I still have those VHS tapes, and have reserved an old VCR in the garage just for late-night viewing. I doubt I was alone when I was younger, pretending to be those guys fishing for glory, all the while on a little pond with a rowboat. But I did so with a vest full of patches and my Nixon worm rod.

In any case, maybe I’m older, or maybe just too sarcastic, but most fishing shows of today are real bores. Sure, there are exceptions, but my patience is growing thin with some of the crap that’s on nowadays, and I think it hurts our sport. Many of the programs are becoming such blatant sales pitches that they’re almost unwatchable.

A guy wearing matching logos on his hat and jersey (really dude, a jersey? You’re filming a TV show!) plugs his lure, or rod, or reel, or whatever, over and over again. Like it’s the only thing in the world that catches fish, and everyone should run out right now and buy the matching gear. What these clowns don’t understand is that people aren’t watching to learn about what gear to buy, they’re watching to be entertained. If I wanted to know what gear to buy, I’d go to Bass Pro and let the sales clerks work me over for a couple hours – I mean, who’s not into that?

The point is that viewers still want what I got all those years ago: to anticipate the arrival of their weekly fix of fantasyland. They don’t want to be bombarded with a rehearsed line of bull. The fault for this, at times, falls on the marketing departments of the TV show sponsors. The producers of the shows are jockeying constantly for those departments' dollars, and the sponsors are taking it one step further as to how they require exposure.

Yet, by doing so, they’re creating a boring, unwatchable product. They can’t seem to understand that the average guy watching this stuff is smart enough to see through their “one-brand” haze, and that it’s a big turn-off.

Throughout time, a few shows have figured this out and continue to be solid players. Take Hank Parker’s show, for example. Now everybody here knows that companies like Berkley, Ranger, Plano and others sponsor Hank’s show. He does a pretty solid job of giving those groups exposure. But the show is produced in a way, and his message is delivered in a way, that you feel as though the fishing experience is what’s foremost in the message. That’s rare these days.

Newcomers to the television game seem to have it the hardest. Everyone thinks they can go out and film a show, but then reality sets in, and the fish don’t bite, and the weather sucks, and you’ve spent a jillion dollars on equipment, and the autograph session was a dud. Unfortunately for these guys, the only way out is to be the biggest sponsor-butt-kissers ever, and their television shows end up lousy.

Occasionally someone breaks through, like Mark Zona. Again, we all know there are sponsors being given exposure there, but it’s his maniacal message that comes across strongest. There’s two guys in a boat, they’re going fishing, and God only knows what’s going to happen next. At times it’s crazy, even a little over the top, but it’s entertaining, I’ll give it that.

I hope some of the powers that be in the marketing world start to realize that their brutal sales approach is hurting, more than helping, their brands. I mean, sure, what do I know? There are people who study these things. They study buying trends, they study numbers of impressions, they study how often a guy buys fishing line; they could tell you whether he pays with cash or plastic. But everyone I know, all the guys who grew up craving more programming, all of them are sick of what’s being delivered today. Even with three or more networks showing hundreds of fishing shows weekly, I still only record about three. How about you?

I regularly speak with professionals who have TV shows, work in the business or decide on ad dollars. Many are saying that manufacturers are pulling dollars out of television. Social marketing, at first the downfall of much of the print media world, seems to be making an impact on the television world, as well. People just aren’t watching fishing shows on TV anymore, they say.

Yet, a friend recently sent me a link that seemed almost contradictory. It sent me to a YouTube sight that was nothing but old Bassmaster television shows, some as much as 25 years old. Many have thousands of views – the episode with the Rojas record is over 50,000, and that’s just some guy loading a bunch of videos on YouTube without any real promotion. I’m not sure 50,000 people are even watching some of today’s television shows.

Now some of the producers of these shows are really beginning to wise up and are creating a product that people can actually watch. They’re doing so by integrating other “lifestyle” aspects besides fishing, and I think we’ll see more of this to come. Maybe it’s Charlie Moore partying with his 30-something nightclub buds, or the rich retirees of Buccaneers and Bones giving us Hemingway’s view of the Caribbean.

One of my favorite shows ever was the original Fish Fishburne show. He had some of the zaniest, most comical stunts, yet I can’t remember what he endorsed. Funny how that happens.

(Joe Balog is the often outspoken owner of Millennium Promotions, Inc., an agency operating in the fishing and hunting industries. A former Bassmaster Open and EverStart Championship winner, he's best known for his big-water innovations and hardcore fishing style. He's a popular seminar speaker, product designer and author, and is considered one of the most influential smallmouth fishermen of modern times.)