A new reality show, ‘Hang Men,’ will debut Friday, March 14 at 11 p.m. on the Discovery Channel. It is about people who climb telecommunications towers for a living, and the show is the brainchild of Jim Fryer of Lansdowne.
‘I’ve been a consultant in the telecom business for the last 25 years, and while I’ve seen it go through many technological changes, the job of building towers and installing antennas has not changed,’ Fryer said. ‘Someone has to climb up there, sometimes as high as 1,500 feet (the towers in Roxborough go that high). It is considered by OSHA as one of the most dangerous jobs in the US. It’s tough enough on a nice sunny day, but you can imagine the wind chill 500 feet up on a snowy day. In short, the general public has no concept of these people and what they risk daily so we can go seamlessly through our lives texting, tweeting, downloading Angry Bird apps while we’re barreling down I-95.’
This dangerous job attracts people from all sorts of backgrounds and Fryer said he thought it would make for an interesting television show.
‘I came up with the idea over two and a half years ago while watching yet another mindless reality show called ‘Rock Stars’ about guys who busted up rocks along the side of the road.’ Fryer said. ‘The telecom tower business I thought, in comparison, offered not only the high-tech element, the relevance to everyone’s everyday life and the eye-popping, chest pounding visuals but very interesting characters.’
Unwilling to let the idea drop, and since he knew nothing about producing a reality TV show, he said he ‘called my friend in the movie business, Brian Gallagher, and he made the introduction to a film director/producer who lives near Scranton and makes horror films (recent ones with Billy Zane, Dee Wallace and Cloris Leachman). He loved the idea and said we need to shoot a ‘sizzle reel’, a 5 to 8 minute demo of what the show is about to show to network execs. They don’t want to see a full half hour.’
Fryer said he used his industry contacts and ‘tried to not only find a tower location and a crew, but someone to finance the reel.’ The estimate was that the shoot would cost $40,000. One of the contacts they made ‘knew the players at NatGeo and Discovery and this guy also loved the concept and thought it was very sellable. After many sales pitches to investors (and we made no bones about how risky an investment it was) I was lucky to find an independent tower owner in N.J., a man I’d done business with for 20 years, who was quite the showman (a body-builder, with a law degree who drove a Bentley). His first response was: ‘can I be in it?”
Once the site and the crew were acquired, Fryer said, ‘We shot the sizzle reel in a week. Yes, we had to concoct the scenes…spoiler alert, there’s very little reality in reality TV. But using flying cameras, the visuals were stunning.’
The sizzle reel, which even included a scene at a male strip club, was used by people in Hollywood to sell it to production companies (who then sell it to the networks), Fryer explained.
‘A company called Electus, producers of many reality shows, made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. They sold the idea to Discovery…the biggest and best outlet imaginable. Discovery bought a full season,’ Fryer said.
Two shows have already been filmed. Fryer says he will get a credit as a ‘producer’ although not as creator and says he has yet to see any money come from the venture.
But it is still a thrill, he says, to have thought of an idea in Lansdowne and see it come to fruition before a national audience on the Discovery Channel. Fryer says he has no further creative input with the show as of now, but that he did help them ‘find a tower in Alaska where they shot recently.’ He also gives them good story lines when he finds them.
‘One climber just fell 80 feet into a snow bank barely missing the nearby barbed wire fence. He broke his leg. Don’t be surprised if that’s not ‘recreated’ down the road,’ he said. And if it is, it’ll be thanks to Jim Fryer, who makes his home in Delco.
