Reality-based television show planned for Alaska

JUNEAU (AP) -- A production company is in Alaska this week to audition for bachelors to appear in a new reality-based television show set in the Last Frontier.

The proposed program would mingle four single women from the Lower 48 with 20 Alaskan men who aren't afraid of commitment, said Marki Costello, who is casting the show for Los Angeles-based LMNO Productions. The company also produced reality-based series Boot Camp, which aired on Fox Television.

Costello said the show has been picked up by a television network but would not divulge which network.

Anchorage, Fairbanks, Ketchikan, Juneau and the Kenai Peninsula are among the cities the company plans to hold auditions.

Producers decided to focus the show on Alaskan men after a recent poll showed the most common complaint among women in the Lower 48 was that men were noncommittal, Costello said. She cited an old myth about Alaskan men outnumbering women by a large margin, adding they would be more appreciative of women.

But Greg Williams, state demographer, said that typecasting doesn't hold up under recent Census figures. Those figures show men make up 51.7 percent of the state population, compared to 48.3 percent of women.

''We haven't really run way out of line in sex ratios since the Korean War,'' Williams said.

Susie Smutz, founder of the Anchorage-based Alaska Men magazine, is helping to cast the show. Smutz said producers chose Alaska for its romance. The program will be filmed in September and October at a secret location in Alaska, Smutz said.

''This is where men are men. They're independent,'' Smutz said.

The show will feature single, divorced or widowed men from the ages of 25-55. Smutz said she is looking for candidates who work in a cross section of industries such as oil and commercial fishing.

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On the Net:

LMNO Productions: http://www.lmnotv.com